Two protocols I think of as competitors were actually co-authors on the same paper. That stopped me mid scroll today.
Babylon's origin traces back to a security paper written by David Tse, Fisher Yu, and Sreeram Kannan, alongside a few other researchers. Kannan later founded EigenLayer.
I had to sit with that for a second. The two biggest names in restaking right now did not start as rivals, they started as collaborators on the same idea.
What surprised me more is that the connection never actually ended. Kannan still sits on Babylon's advisory board today, even while running the protocol most people treat as Babylon's direct competitor.
In my opinion, that reframes the rivalry entirely. This is not two opposing camps fighting over the same users, it looks more like one shared insight that split into two implementations, staying loosely connected the whole time.
I checked the leadership structure after that, mostly out of curiosity. Babylon has no CEO, Tse is research scientist, Yu is CTO, and that is the entire structure at the top.
Tse said the reason plainly in an interview, research papers only reach a handful of people, and a startup was his way of turning the idea into something usable by more than a few academics.
I do not think shared origins make the technical rivalry less real. I just think it is worth remembering that before this was a competition, it was one conversation between people who saw the same gap at the same time, and apparently still talk.
@BabylonLabs_io #baby $BABY
Babylon's origin traces back to a security paper written by David Tse, Fisher Yu, and Sreeram Kannan, alongside a few other researchers. Kannan later founded EigenLayer.
I had to sit with that for a second. The two biggest names in restaking right now did not start as rivals, they started as collaborators on the same idea.
What surprised me more is that the connection never actually ended. Kannan still sits on Babylon's advisory board today, even while running the protocol most people treat as Babylon's direct competitor.
In my opinion, that reframes the rivalry entirely. This is not two opposing camps fighting over the same users, it looks more like one shared insight that split into two implementations, staying loosely connected the whole time.
I checked the leadership structure after that, mostly out of curiosity. Babylon has no CEO, Tse is research scientist, Yu is CTO, and that is the entire structure at the top.
Tse said the reason plainly in an interview, research papers only reach a handful of people, and a startup was his way of turning the idea into something usable by more than a few academics.
I do not think shared origins make the technical rivalry less real. I just think it is worth remembering that before this was a competition, it was one conversation between people who saw the same gap at the same time, and apparently still talk.
@BabylonLabs_io #baby $BABY