What is Babylon? Learn about staking solutions for Bitcoin

Babylon aims to bring Bitcoin's security capabilities to PoS blockchains, while increasing the use of Bitcoin by supporting BTC staking. So what is Babylon? Let's find out with Coin68 in the article below.

Babylon - Staking solution for the Bitcoin blockchain

What is Babylon?

Babylon is a blockchain in the Cosmos Zone ecosystem, built and developed based on the security and decentralization of the Bitcoin network. Babylon users stake Bitcoin on other Proof of Stake (PoS) blockchains without using bridges, custody or wrapping.

By sharing Bitcoin's strong security capabilities with other blockchains and applications, Babylon aims to bring more use cases to Bitcoin beyond just being a store of value asset.

Components of Babylon

Bitcoin Staking Protocol

Babylon's Bitcoin Staking Protocol allows users to stake their Bitcoin on PoS blockchains and earn profits. The main difference of this protocol compared to existing solutions is that users can stake their Bitcoin directly without having to convert their Bitcoin to other forms such as wrapped, pegged, or custody.

Bitcoin Timestamping Protocol

Bitcoin Timestamping Protocol is the key point of Babylon, this protocol takes advantage of Bitcoin's security as a timestamping server, allowing the timestamps of other blockchains to be recorded on the Bitcoin blockchain, so that these events will enjoy confidentiality. Bitcoin's privacy is like Bitcoin transactions themselves.

Bitcoin Timestamping Protocol offers many benefits such as: quick staking withdrawal, easy integration, lower security costs, cross-chain security, easy new blockchain creation.

Bitcoin Data Availability Protocol

Babylon's Bitcoin Data Availability Protocol allows Bitcoin's limited block space to be used for important tasks, such as providing a censorship-resistant layer for PoS blockchains. This Babylonian approach offers a promising solution to the challenges of scaling Bitcoin and other blockchain networks.

By bringing the security of Bitcoin to PoS blockchains, Babylon creates a more powerful and efficient ecosystem that can enable faster and more secure transactions.

Development team

Babylon's development team includes:
David Tse (Co-founder): He is both a professor at Stanford University and a member of the US National Academy of Engineering. Besides, he also received the 2017 Claude E.Shannon Award from the Information Theory Society and the 2019 IEEE Richard Award.
Mingchao Yu (Co-founder, CTO): Bachelor of Telecommunications Engineering at Northwestern Polytechnic University, followed by a Master's and Doctorate in Telecommunications at the Australian National University. He worked as an engineer at InterfereX and Dolby.

Investors of Babylon

Babylon raised 18 million USD from investment funds such as Polychain Capital, Hack VC, Polygon Ventures, OKX Ventures,...

Tokenomics

Currently, Babylon does not have information about tokenomics, we will update when we have more information.

summary

Through the above overview article about the Babylon project, we hope readers will grasp basic information about this project to make their own investment decisions. Wishing you a successful investment!
​Now, Babylon gives away NFT passes to those who participate in early staking on the testnet that just launched tonight.

Babylon, a Bitcoin staking solution that has been in the works since 2022, has just launched its testnet.

The testnet is built on the BTC Signet infrastructure. Therefore, there will not be any real Bitcoin staked into the network, Babylon said.

This is the first testnet of the protocol and there will be many more testing phases before reaching the mainnet.

Babylon co-founder David Tse revealed that it will open the door for users to lock Bitcoin and receive staking points throughout. Babylon plans to schedule post-audit testnets from May to June, and mainnet at the end of 2024.

Currently, to participate in the testnet, users need to download the OKX and Keplr wallet browser extensions, then faucet Bitcoin Signet and Babylon (BBN) testnet tokens through the project's Discord channel. For detailed information, readers are invited to see here.

The first people to join the Babylon testnet (called Early Stakers) get to mint a free "Bitcoin Pioneer Pass NFT” from February 28 to March 5. This NFT open project will give some exclusive access during future.

Using the Cosmos SDK toolkit, Babylon positions itself as an intermediary protocol layer, helping to convert and connect Bitcoin's Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism with Proof of Stake (PoS) protocols. Users can stake Bitcoin on Babylon, from which the protocol uses this capital to establish a secure network for PoS protocols. The above approach helps PoS networks minimize the risk of centralized attacks, along with the selling pressure placed on the network's native coin.

Yesterday, Binance Labs also announced an investment in Babylon. To date, this staking protocol has successfully raised more than 26.8 million USD from many reputable investment funds such as Polygon Ventures, OKX Ventures and Polychain Capital.