Smart Contract Platform Rootstock, the Maison de la finance decentralized (DEFI) on Bitcoin, experienced a strong increase in network security and mining engagement in the first quarter of 2025, even if the activity has cooled.
The merged mining has reached an 81% summit, compared to 56.4% in T4 2024, driven by the integration of the main pools of mining and Spiderpool basins, according to Messari’s first report “State of Rootstock” for 2025, shared with Cointelegraph.
The increased interest of minors has increased Rootstock’s hash power to more than 740 exehashs per second, exceeding the total hashrate of the Bitcoin network recorded in October 2024. Consequently, the network is now considered in a “mature phase” of merged mining.
The increase in security has coincided with a reduction of 60% of transaction costs, improving the user experience and the positioning of the more competitive rootstock in the Bitcoin Layer-2 ecosystem.
“While BTCFI continues to grow, Rootstock is well positioned for wider adoption by basic upgrades, such as a 60% reduction in transaction costs, as well as prolonged investments in the education of manufacturers and incentive programs,” said Andrew Yang, Messari analyst.
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Rootstock TVL DEFI
Despite the mining milestone, Rootstock’s DEFI ecosystem experienced a decrease in the total locked value (TVL) during T1 2025, with Bitcoin TVL (BTC) by lowering 7.2% and TVL labeled in US dollars, down 20% quart-district to $ 179.9 million.
Although TVL briefly culminated at 244.6 million dollars in January during a Bitcoin price rally, it tends to descend compared to March, reflecting wider cooling on the market.
For the prospect, DEFI TVL based on Ethereum also experienced a sharp drop of 27% in the first quarter, hit hard by macro uncertainty and the feat of $ 1.4 billion, according to a Dappradar report.
The Stablescoin market on the rootstock has also undergone notable changes. The USDT (USDT) remained the main stablecoin in value, holding $ 3.8 million and a market share of 27.5%. However, its domination went from 41.3% considerably to T4 2024.
At the end of Q1, no Stablecoin had more than 30% of the Rootstock Stablescoin market.
Active addresses dropped by 26.5%and new addresses dived by 54.7%, although daily transactions increased slightly by 4.3%, reaching an average of 11,524 per day.
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The rootstock sees progress on the development front
In terms of development, the platform has activated its Lovell 7.0.0 upgrade, improving the compatibility of the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) and the performance of the smart contract.
Rootstock has also expanded its ecosystem thanks to integrations with Layerzero and Meson Finance and launched developer initiatives, including a new hackathon and improvements in its governance platform, RootstockCollective.
On May 1, Alexei Zamyatin, the co-founder of Bitcoin Layer 2, relies on Bitcoin, said that the first company DEFI to launch a sequence of user-friendly products on Bitcoin “would earn the entire market” of the 300 million blockchain users.
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