In a bear market, watching the charts is the most exhausting thing you can do. With every flicker of the candles, anxiety increases by one notch. But what truly deserves attention has never been the small swings you see right in front of you.
BTC’s market cap is in the trillions, yet the proportion entering DeFi is below 1%. It’s not that there isn’t demand—it’s that there’s no channel. In the past, if you wanted BTC to generate returns, you either had to trust an institution, or trust a bridge, or trust a packaged IOU. For true holders, these three options amount to the same thing at the core: you hand the coins over.
Babylon is trying a different route. It keeps BTC in place on the Bitcoin mainnet without moving it, while using cryptography to manage the custody and settlement logic. Technologies like zero-knowledge proofs and BitVM3 make “assets don’t move—proofs come first” a reality. BTC doesn’t need to be relocated in order to participate in on-chain applications such as lending, stablecoins, and derivatives. By May 2026, Babylon’s TVL that does not require trust in Bitcoin staking protocols has already surpassed $4 billion; by June, that figure has exceeded $6 billion.
More importantly, ecosystem integration is underway. Babylon has submitted a proposal to Aave to let native BTC be used directly as collateral for lending—without relying on wrapped BTC, without relying on cross-chain bridges, and without relying on custodians. Lending functionality supported by native Bitcoin has already gone live on Aave v4’s public test network. Aave’s founder has publicly said this could unlock more than $4 billion in liquidity.
Amid market fluctuations, the most valuable infrastructure is often forged in the trough. Babylon is trying to turn Bitcoin from a sleeping asset into a productive one—not by handing coins over, but by letting BTC “live” within a native security framework. This is a way to preserve strength during a bear market, and also a way to build understanding for the next phase.
When others are still fixated on the candle charts and anxious, it may be worth looking at the projects that are truly solving problems. A bear market is the best learning period—don’t waste it.
#baby $BABY @BabylonLabs_io
BTC’s market cap is in the trillions, yet the proportion entering DeFi is below 1%. It’s not that there isn’t demand—it’s that there’s no channel. In the past, if you wanted BTC to generate returns, you either had to trust an institution, or trust a bridge, or trust a packaged IOU. For true holders, these three options amount to the same thing at the core: you hand the coins over.
Babylon is trying a different route. It keeps BTC in place on the Bitcoin mainnet without moving it, while using cryptography to manage the custody and settlement logic. Technologies like zero-knowledge proofs and BitVM3 make “assets don’t move—proofs come first” a reality. BTC doesn’t need to be relocated in order to participate in on-chain applications such as lending, stablecoins, and derivatives. By May 2026, Babylon’s TVL that does not require trust in Bitcoin staking protocols has already surpassed $4 billion; by June, that figure has exceeded $6 billion.
More importantly, ecosystem integration is underway. Babylon has submitted a proposal to Aave to let native BTC be used directly as collateral for lending—without relying on wrapped BTC, without relying on cross-chain bridges, and without relying on custodians. Lending functionality supported by native Bitcoin has already gone live on Aave v4’s public test network. Aave’s founder has publicly said this could unlock more than $4 billion in liquidity.
Amid market fluctuations, the most valuable infrastructure is often forged in the trough. Babylon is trying to turn Bitcoin from a sleeping asset into a productive one—not by handing coins over, but by letting BTC “live” within a native security framework. This is a way to preserve strength during a bear market, and also a way to build understanding for the next phase.
When others are still fixated on the candle charts and anxious, it may be worth looking at the projects that are truly solving problems. A bear market is the best learning period—don’t waste it.
#baby $BABY @BabylonLabs_io
