Bitcoin DeFi Mining Soars as Rootstock Hits All-Time High in Merged Mining Despite TVL Dip

Rootstock Sees Record Merged Mining Growth in Q1 2025

Smart contract platform Rootstock reached a significant milestone in Q1 2025, achieving an all-time high of 81% merged mining participation—up from 56.4% in Q4 2024. This surge in network security came as major players Foundry and SpiderPool joined the merged mining effort, according to Messari’s inaugural “State of Rootstock” report.

Hash power on Rootstock surpassed 740 exahashes per second, even eclipsing Bitcoin’s October 2024 total hashrate. Messari analysts now position Rootstock in a “mature phase” of merged mining, further establishing its place in the Bitcoin layer-2 ecosystem.

The network also experienced a 60% decrease in transaction fees, further improving usability for developers and users.

“As BTCFi expands, Rootstock is ready for increased adoption,” said Messari analyst Andrew Yang.

TVL and User Metrics Decline Despite Mining Milestone

While mining boomed, Rootstock’s decentralized finance ecosystem suffered. Dollar-denominated TVL dropped 20% quarter-on-quarter to $179.9 million, and BTC-denominated TVL dropped by 7.2%.

TVL had previously surged to $244.6 million in January due to a Bitcoin rally but dropped steadily from March as the larger market cooled.

Ethereum-based DeFi performed also poorly with a 27% Q1 decline, partly due to macroeconomic uncertainty and the $1.4 billion Bybit exploit, DappRadar reports.

Rootstock’s stablecoin market also saw realignment. USDt remained at the top at $3.8 million worth but lost dominance, decreasing to 27.5% market share from 41.3% in Q4 2024. No single stablecoin topped 30% by quarter-end.

User activity metrics showed this decrease:

Active addresses decreased by 26.5%

New addresses fell 54.7%

Daily transactions rose 4.3% to 11,524

Development Progress and Ecosystem Growth Continue

While DeFi performance eased, Rootstock continued down its technical and ecosystem tracks. Lovell 7.0.0 upgrade tightened Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility to further improve smart contract functionality.

New LayerZero and Meson Finance integrations helped broaden Rootstock’s footprint. The platform also launched a hackathon and improved community governance through RootstockCollective updates.

Bitcoin layer 2 evangelist Alexei Zamyatin stated,

“First company in DeFi that brings an easy to use set of products on Bitcoin will capture the whole 300 million user market.”