Born from the 2008 financial crisis, Bitcoin offered an answer to systemic failure: a decentralized, permissionless network capable of storing and transmitting value without banks, governments, or approval. However, the Bitcoin network, by design, was not built for global transaction volume. It could only process about seven transactions per second and as adoption grew, blocks filled quickly, fees surged and delays became commonplace.
Today, Bitcoin remains the most secure, decentralized, and widely held crypto asset globally, with over 100 million holders and a market cap exceeding $1.8 trillion.
Yet, this success raised a critical question: could Bitcoin scale?
That question has haunted Bitcoin for over a decade.
A History of Stalled Progress
Over the years, several solutions have emerged, yet none have achieved meaningful adoption or fully addressed Bitcoin’s core scalability issues.
- Increasing Block Size: A seemingly simple fix, but it triggered deep ideological splits, most notably the Bitcoin Cash fork in 2017, which fractured rather than unified the community.
- Segregated Witness (SegWit): SegWit optimized block storage but provided only incremental improvements, failing to resolve the underlying bottleneck.
- The Lightning Network: A second-layer solution promising instant, low-cost transactions via off-chain channels. Despite its technical brilliance, it remained difficult for newcomers, opaque and increasingly centralized.
Across the board, existing scaling solutions have encountered similar obstacles: complexity, low adoption, infrastructure fragility, and trade-offs conflicting with Bitcoin’s original ethos.
As a result, over $500 billion worth of BTC remains locked as passive collateral, unable to participate in DeFi without being wrapped, bridged, or handed to a custodian.
Sundial: Built Around Bitcoin, Not Against It
Bitcoin doesn’t have to scale by itself.
That’s the thesis behind Sundial —a joint DeFi framework that bridges Bitcoin’s unmatched liquidity with Cardano’s advanced smart contract capabilities. Built on the belief that Bitcoin should remain secure and simple, Sundial focuses on building the infrastructure around it.
Through a trustless bridge between Bitcoin and Cardano, Sundial unlocks a new design space where BTC can be used to earn, trade, lend and collateralize, all while preserving custody and decentralization.
But this isn’t just about expanding what BTC can do.
It’s about doing so in a way that meets the standards of capital entering the space, particularly institutions that demand auditability, compliance, and risk controls.
Sundial integrates all of these: compliance tooling, audit trails, reporting systems, multi-signature wallets, and advanced risk frameworks making it viable for institutional-scale capital.
“Bitcoin scaling has failed because solutions like Lightning and SegWit either complicate or centralize what should stay simple and free. Sundial doesn’t mess with Bitcoin’s core—it builds a trustless bridge to Cardano, letting BTC shine in DeFi without losing its soul. We’re here for the hodlers and the institutions, no compromises,” states Sheldon Hunt, Sundial Founder.
Under The Hood: A Hybrid Layer-2 Precision
At the core of Sundial is a hybrid Layer-2 system, built in collaboration with Anastasia Labs and powered by their high-performance execution environment, Midgard.
Transactions are processed at high speed on Layer-2 and anchored back to Cardano’s mainnet for security and finality. This architecture ensures institutional-scale throughput with minimal latency, without sacrificing decentralization.
Key features include:
- Secure and automated reward distribution
- Optimized processing for institutional volumes
- Scalable infrastructure suitable for both retail and institutional growth
- Advanced mempool management ensuring predictable execution and efficiency
This is DeFi done differently built on a foundation that can support both individual and institutional scale.
Building A Trustless Bitcoin Bridge
To move native BTC into this system, Sundial integrates a trustless Bitcoin bridge, developed with BitcoinOS. Unlike traditional bridges reliant on centralized validators or wrapped assets, this one uses zero-knowledge proofs for direct, decentralized transaction validation.
This native, non-custodial bridge provides:
- Real-time ZK-proof-based transaction verification
- Automated custody and asset release mechanisms
- Multi-signature support for institutional-grade controls
- Full composability with Cardano-based DeFi apps
For the first time, Bitcoin can engage in a smart-contract-powered ecosystem without sacrificing its security model.
What Makes Sundial Different?
Every cycle, we see attempts to force Bitcoin to do things it was never meant to do, from smart contracts to high-frequency payments to complex dApps. But trying to turn Bitcoin into something it’s not has consistently failed.
Sundial takes a different approach: respect Bitcoin’s design, and build around it.
By combining a scalable, secure execution environment with a trustless BTC bridge, Sundial creates a seamless layer between Bitcoin and Cardano unlocking utility, yield, and composability for the world’s most valuable crypto asset.
Bitcoin doesn’t need to become something it’s not.
It just needs a platform that knows how to work with what it already is.
That’s what Sundial delivers.
