#baby $BABY I almost skipped past a specific phrase in Babylon's early staking design — a covenant committee — assuming it was just backend terminology for something fully automated by code. It isn't, not entirely. Bitcoin's script can't natively express the kind of multi-path, multi-party slashing logic Babylon needs, so early phases lean on a small set of designated signers whose co-signatures are required for certain transaction paths, like unbonding.
That's a meaningful asterisk on the self-custodial framing. Your BTC never moves without your key, technically true. But whether certain paths execute at all can depend on a defined group of parties cooperating, at least until Bitcoin's own covenant tooling matures enough to remove that dependency entirely. It's not custody in the traditional sense, but it's not zero-trust either. Somewhere in between.
I don't think this makes the design dishonest — it reads more like an acknowledged, temporary tradeoff while Bitcoin's scripting capabilities catch up to what the protocol actually wants to do. But "temporary" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and I'm not sure how long that committee dependency is actually expected to stick around in practice.
Does anyone track whether that trust assumption is shrinking over time, or is it still just as load-bearing as it was at launch?
@BabylonLabs_io
#HEİ #HFT $HFT $HEI #BTC #Babylonchain
That's a meaningful asterisk on the self-custodial framing. Your BTC never moves without your key, technically true. But whether certain paths execute at all can depend on a defined group of parties cooperating, at least until Bitcoin's own covenant tooling matures enough to remove that dependency entirely. It's not custody in the traditional sense, but it's not zero-trust either. Somewhere in between.
I don't think this makes the design dishonest — it reads more like an acknowledged, temporary tradeoff while Bitcoin's scripting capabilities catch up to what the protocol actually wants to do. But "temporary" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and I'm not sure how long that committee dependency is actually expected to stick around in practice.
Does anyone track whether that trust assumption is shrinking over time, or is it still just as load-bearing as it was at launch?
@BabylonLabs_io
#HEİ #HFT $HFT $HEI #BTC #Babylonchain