Merlin Chain (MERL) perpetual market

Merlin Chain is a Bitcoin layer-2 network that aims to extend Bitcoin with faster, cheaper transactions and support for smart contracts and decentralized applications. It uses a rollup-style design with technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs to batch activity off the main Bitcoin chain while anchoring back to it, and it is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine so developers can port existing tooling and contracts. The project is closely tied to the Bitcoin ecosystem that grew around inscriptions and BRC-20 tokens, seeking to give those assets a programmable environment for trading, lending and other on-chain uses. Its MERL token is used for network fees, staking and governance within the ecosystem. Merlin Chain launched in 2024 and became one of the more prominent efforts to build a scalable application layer on top of Bitcoin.