Marathon Launches Anduro, a Multi-Chain Layer-2 on Bitcoin

Marathon Unveils Anduro: A groundbreaking multi-chain layer-2 solution to enhance Bitcoin

Marathon Digital Holdings, a leading Bitcoin mining company, has announced the launch of Anduro, a new multi-chain layer-2 network on Bitcoin. Anduro is designed to expand Bitcoin's functionality, spark innovation, and encourage adoption by allowing developers to create multiple sidechains on the Bitcoin network.

Anduro is a programmable layer-2 network that aims to serve as an application layer while strengthening the underlying incentives behind Bitcoin's Proof-of-Work. Anduro leverages a process called merge-mining, which enables participating miners, like Marathon, to earn Bitcoin-denominated revenue from transactions that occur on Anduro's sidechains while continuing to mine Bitcoin on the base layer uninterruptedly.

Marathon has been developing Anduro over the past year, but the network is designed to be community-led and driven. The network is intended to gradually integrate decentralized governance, to become the most dependable, developer-centric Bitcoin layer 2. Marathon has already created the first two sidechains for Anduro, Coordinate, and Alys, which can be expanded by open-source contributors. These chains highlight Anduro's programming flexibility. Coordinate provides a low-cost UTXO stack for the Ordinals community, whereas Alys is an Ethereum-compliant chain for institutional asset tokenization.

Marathon's Chairman and CEO, Fred Thiel, stated, As the largest publicly traded Bitcoin miner working to process Bitcoin transactions and secure the network, Marathon has a vested interest in supporting innovation in the Bitcoin ecosystem, which includes incubating projects like Anduro. For starters, it contributes to Marathon's expanding technology stack by potentially offering a new stream of fee money. Beyond that, by increasing Bitcoin's functionality, Anduro may be able to increase its popularity, and if Bitcoin thrives, so will we.

Anduro is expected to launch its mainnet in the second quarter of 2024, with a testnet already available for developers to experiment with. Anduro's native token, ANDU, will be used for governance, staking, and paying fees on the network. Anduro will also conduct an initial exchange offering (IEO) of ANDU tokens on a major cryptocurrency exchange in the coming weeks.

Anduro is one of the latest projects to explore the potential of Bitcoin layer-2 solutions, which aim to improve the scalability, privacy, and interoperability of the Bitcoin network. Anduro's vision is to become a platform for creating multiple sidechains, providing a new avenue for innovation within the Bitcoin ecosystem.