Bankless · Monday, July 13, 2026
Dan Held believes Bitcoin has failed to fulfill its promise of fostering trustless Layer 2 (L2) solutions, a commitment made during the block size wars. He argues that the lack of robust, trustless L2s has led to Bitcoin missing out on significant DeFi demand and market share, which has instead been captured by platforms like Ethereum and Solana.
“I do think Bitcoin, the Bitcoin community has failed in that regard. We could have implemented things like OPCAT or other very basic scripting functions in the Bitcoin base layer that would enable trustless L2s.”
“Most of Bitcoin L2s have different security assumptions. that basically make the process of using your Bitcoin on an L2 less secure than Bitcoin's L1, and we could have made it almost equivalently secure. So I do think that that is a promise that was made back then in the block size wars that we have not fulfilled.”
“And so I would say that's a big mess because we could have had, and I think the rise of different other smart contract platforms like Ethereum, Solana, and others represent that missed opportunity.”
“I think that the lack thereof of really capable L2s that are anchored really well into Bitcoin's L1 I think because we haven't made those changes happen in the community, I do think, like I said, those protocols represent that missed opportunity.”