The investment giant Franklin Templeton says it is actively monitoring five areas of the Bitcoin (BTC) ecosystem.

The asset management firm says it is enthusiastic about Bitcoin developments following the approval of BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs) earlier this year.

In particular, Franklin Templeton is monitoring Bitcoin layer-2s, restaking/native yield primitives, ordinals, decentralized finance (DeFi)/runes and BTC’s OP_CAT proposal.

Bitcoin ordinals allow users to inscribe digital data such as images and videos to a single satoshi, or an individual unit of BTC, to create the equivalent of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Bitcoin network.

Runes is a protocol that aims to make creating fungible tokens on Bitcoin more efficient.

OP_CAT is a scripting feature that BTC’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, spiked back in 2010. A Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) proposes bringing the feature back, according to the crypto exchange OKX.

Explains OKX,

“OP_CAT is a Bitcoin feature that expands its scripting abilities. It combines data into a single output — a process in programming known as concatenation — making transactions simpler and allowing for the development of complex smart contracts.”

Franklin Templeton also says it’s monitoring the Ethereum (ETH) ecosystem.

“Investing in ETH represents ownership in the Ethereum blockchain, the largest decentralized ecosystem. We are seeing continued innovation across the modular stack. Areas we are excited about include:

· Parallel Execution
· Restaking Primitives
· Alternative [Data Availability]
· Blob utilization post EIP 4844″

Parallel execution is a feature where the network can process multiple transactions at once. It aims to help with scaling, according to CoinGecko.

Data availability refers to “the confidence a user can have that the data required to verify a block is really available to all network participants,” according to Ethereum.org. The rollup deployment platform Caldera notes that alternative data availability means there’s a separate layer where blockchains can maintain access to relevant data.

“Blobs” are dedicated data storage spaces designed to reduce transaction fees, according to Etherscan.

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