Binance Labs Invests in Babylon to Support the Advancement of Bitcoin Staking

Binance Labs, the venture capital and incubation arm of Binance has invested in Babylon, a Bitcoin staking protocol that pioneers the concept of native Bitcoin staking allowing users to stake bitcoins for PoS blockchains and earn yields without any third-party custody, bridge solutions or wrapping services. It provides slashable economic security guarantees to the PoS chains while ensuring efficient stake unbonding to enhance liquidity for Bitcoin holders.

Historically, PoS chains have always been tethered to their native assets for their underlying security. Bootstrapping security is challenging for emerging chains due to the volatile price movements of a new token. High inflationary rewards are typically implemented and distributed to incentivize staking early on and this could lead to adverse economic effects for the token in the long run. Babylon’s Bitcoin Staking Protocol provides a way for PoS chains to acquire staking capital from the largest crypto asset in the world instead of their native token thereby reducing PoS chain’s inflationary pressure and unlocking new utility for their tokens. Additionally, Bitcoin, despite reaching a trillion-dollar market cap, has been serving as an idle store of value without much utility. Babylon’s innovation provides a new avenue for Bitcoin holders to earn additional yields from PoS chains in a secure and decentralized way. 

Yi He, Co-Founder of Binance and Head of Binance Labs, commented: "Bitcoin staking introduces a crucial new use case for the industry, marking a significant stride in the integration of Bitcoin with the Proof-of-Stake economy. Binance Labs’ investment in Babylon represents our commitment to supporting innovative projects leading the Bitcoin narrative and advancing its use cases.”

Built using the Cosmos SDK, Babylon chain provides Bitcoin timestamping services to PoS chains and acts as a control plane to synchronize between the Bitcoin network and the PoS chains. It is responsible for the facilitation of BTC staking, finality round participation, and tracking of validator staking information, ultimately acting as a channel between Bitcoin’s PoW world and PoS chains. 

The protocol is led by a team of consensus protocol researchers and experienced Layer-1 engineers. The foundation of Babylon is based on the accumulated research and synthesis of ideas around PoW and PoS consensus. 

“The Bitcoin staking protocol unifies the entire blockchain industry, from Bitcoin to the PoS world. We are thrilled to have the support of Binance Labs in building such a broad-based Babylon ecosystem,” commented David Tse, Co-Founder of Babylon.

About Babylon

Babylon is a blockchain project that designs security-sharing protocols for the decentralized economy, founded in 2022 by Stanford Professor David Tse and Dr. Fisher Yu. Professor Tse is a member of the U.S. Academy of Engineering. He is renowned as the inventor of the legendary proportional-fair scheduling algorithm for wireless communications, and is the recipient of prestigious awards such as the IEEE Claude E. Shannon Award and the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal. The project is led by a team of consensus protocol researchers and experienced layer 1 engineers from around the world.

Babylon's mission is to scale Bitcoin to secure the decentralized economy. To achieve this, Babylon utilizes the three primary facets of Bitcoin: its asset, its reliable timestamping service, and its most censorship-resistant blockspace in the world. To leverage these facets, Babylon is developing three innovative security-sharing protocols: Bitcoin Staking Protocol, Bitcoin Timestamping Protocol, and Bitcoin Data Availability Protocol. Through these pioneering protocols, Babylon envisions a more secure and decentralized future. For more information, follow Babylon on X.

About Binance Labs

As the venture capital arm and accelerator of Binance, Binance Labs has now grown to be worth over $10 billion. Its portfolio covers 250 projects from over 25 countries across six continents and has a return on investment rate of over 14X. Fifty of Binance Labs’ portfolio companies are projects that have gone through our incubation programs. For more information, follow Binance Labs on X.

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