I used to think that what BTCFi lacks is applications. After studying BABY, I realized that what it may truly be missing is the underlying layer.
Over the past few days, I’ve been looking at the technical materials for @BabylonLabs_io . At first, like many others, I focused on TVL, the number of ecosystem projects, and whether more yield-generating products would emerge in the future. But the deeper I looked, the more I found that the problem Babylon aims to solve is quite different from most BTCFi projects. Many protocols are thinking: “What else can we add to make BTC more usable?” Babylon, however, feels more like it’s asking: “Why don’t developers dare to build boldly around BTC?” The answer is actually simple. Once BTC enters another ecosystem, it needs to re-establish an entire set of trust relationships.
Developers don’t just have to consider cross-chain security, asset mapping, and custody risk—they also have to deal with all kinds of complex verification logic. The more complex the underlying layer is, the higher the development cost for applications on top. So many BTCFi products look very rich, but not many can truly run reliably in the long term. Babylon’s approach struck me as particularly interesting. It doesn’t ask developers to redesign a whole new version of BTC. Instead, it makes as much use of Bitcoin’s native capabilities as possible: keeping the asset state on the Bitcoin network, and using Taproot, scripting rules, and verifiable states to provide external applications with a more stable foundation. The biggest significance of doing this is not just security. It’s that in the future—whether it’s lending, stablecoins, payments, or other financial products—they can be built on the same set of trusted rules, rather than each project having to rebuild the underlying layer from scratch. Put another way, Babylon is more like fixing a highway.
What truly changes an industry isn’t necessarily the first car that drives down the road—it’s the road that lets all cars drive faster and more safely. If, going forward, more and more BTCFi applications choose to integrate Babylon, then BABY’s value may come not only from ecosystem growth, but also from network effects. The more complete the infrastructure is, the lower the development costs become, and the more people will naturally enter the ecosystem.
Of course, it’s only just beginning. For me, the part of BABY that deserves the most attention has never been about short-term price moves, but whether it has a chance to become the foundational infrastructure behind BTCFi.
#baby $BABY
Over the past few days, I’ve been looking at the technical materials for @BabylonLabs_io . At first, like many others, I focused on TVL, the number of ecosystem projects, and whether more yield-generating products would emerge in the future. But the deeper I looked, the more I found that the problem Babylon aims to solve is quite different from most BTCFi projects. Many protocols are thinking: “What else can we add to make BTC more usable?” Babylon, however, feels more like it’s asking: “Why don’t developers dare to build boldly around BTC?” The answer is actually simple. Once BTC enters another ecosystem, it needs to re-establish an entire set of trust relationships.
Developers don’t just have to consider cross-chain security, asset mapping, and custody risk—they also have to deal with all kinds of complex verification logic. The more complex the underlying layer is, the higher the development cost for applications on top. So many BTCFi products look very rich, but not many can truly run reliably in the long term. Babylon’s approach struck me as particularly interesting. It doesn’t ask developers to redesign a whole new version of BTC. Instead, it makes as much use of Bitcoin’s native capabilities as possible: keeping the asset state on the Bitcoin network, and using Taproot, scripting rules, and verifiable states to provide external applications with a more stable foundation. The biggest significance of doing this is not just security. It’s that in the future—whether it’s lending, stablecoins, payments, or other financial products—they can be built on the same set of trusted rules, rather than each project having to rebuild the underlying layer from scratch. Put another way, Babylon is more like fixing a highway.
What truly changes an industry isn’t necessarily the first car that drives down the road—it’s the road that lets all cars drive faster and more safely. If, going forward, more and more BTCFi applications choose to integrate Babylon, then BABY’s value may come not only from ecosystem growth, but also from network effects. The more complete the infrastructure is, the lower the development costs become, and the more people will naturally enter the ecosystem.
Of course, it’s only just beginning. For me, the part of BABY that deserves the most attention has never been about short-term price moves, but whether it has a chance to become the foundational infrastructure behind BTCFi.
#baby $BABY