In the wake of its fourth halving event, layer-2 coins associated with the Bitcoin blockchain saw significant gains, outperforming BTC itself.
STX, the native token of Bitcoin L2 network Stacks, has seen an impressive surge of nearly 12% over the last week, reaching $2.9 per token post-halving. Besides STX, a few other coins, including RIF, ELA, and SAVM rallied after the fourth halving. In contrast, Bitcoin has seen a modest jump in its price, with the token's value increasing by just 2.4% since April 15.
Despite sounding similar to the layer-2 solutions of the Ethereum network, BTC's L2 chains differ quite a bit from the former. Ethereum's L2 networks primarily focus on scaling the ETH smart contract blockchain. Meanwhile, Bitcoin layer-2 projects aim to introduce programmability features to BTC's main blockchain.
It is worth noting that the surge in the value of the layer-2 coins was far from the only consequence of Bitcoin's fourth halving. Shortly after the block 840,000 was mined, Bitcoin's transaction fees skyrocketed to $2.4M before returning to normal by Monday.