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Unlocking 21 Million Bitcoins to Secure the Decentralized Economy
Proof-of-stake (PoS) security is extremely capital-intensive: enormous capital needs to be staked to secure it. On the other hand, the largest crypto asset, the 21 million bitcoins, are mostly idle and unencumbered. Why not harnessing the idle bitcoins to bolster the economic security of Proof-of-Stake (PoS) chains and decentralized apps (Dapps)?
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An Impossible Mission?
Bitcoin network only has a scripting language with limited expressiveness (i.e., no Turing-complete smart contract), which prevents it from understanding any off-Bitcoin-chain events. Thus, to have utility outside the Bitcoin network, the bitcoins have to be wrapped, bridged, or sent to a third-party custody. None of them is secure: they all need trust on a third-party. This is why most of the bitcoins are idle. Securely utilizing them to protect the decentralized economy seems a mission impossible.
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Babylon’s Bitcoin Staking Protocol: Trustless, Secure, and Fast
The key to PoS security is to slash the stake if the staker attacks the PoS chain. Babylon uses cutting-edge cryptographic technologies such as extract one-time signature (EOTS) to convert slashable PoS attacks to spendable Bitcoin UTXOs for burning. This primitive, together with Bitcoin’s native time-lock, allows bitcoin holders to stake their bitcoins and participate in PoS security by simply locking their bitcoins on Bitcoin network. No third party is involved, and the bitcoins are secure as long as the staker does not attack the PoS chains. Babylon also applies the most advanced Bitcoin timestamping protocol to enable tight synchronization between Bitcoin and PoS chains, which allows fast unbonding of the staked bitcoins.
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Babylon’s Bitcoin Staking Protocol: A Modular and Scalable Two-Sided Market
Babylon's bitcoin staking protocol creates a two-sided market and acts as the control plane of the market. Bitcoin holders can securely lock their bitcoins and choose which PoS chain(s) to stake for and earn yields from. PoS chains and dApps can opt-in to bitcoin-backed security and enjoy high security, healthy economics, and broader adoption. The protocol is modular and can secure any PoS chain. It also enables scalable restaking for bitcoin holders.
Babylon's Shared Security Protocol
Bitcoin Staking
Protocol
Say goodbye to the risk of bridging, wrapping, or pegging your Bitcoin.
What happens on Bitcoin, stays on Bitcoin
Trustless staking
No bridging. No custodians. Full freedom.
Scalable restaking
One stake, multiple yields
Fast unbonding
Your Bitcoin, your rules. Unbond when you want.
Secure
Complete security against PoS attacks.
Modular design
The perfect plug-in for every PoS chain.
Bitcoin Timestamping Protocol
We trace our genesis to a transformative research paper on Bitcoin security, an original work co-authored by our co-founders, David Tse and Fisher Yu, and co-authors. Their combined intellect and foresight have set the cornerstone of Babylon.
In a testament to our dedication to advancing the field, our research paper has been accepted by the highly-respected 2023 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy - a significant global platform for security discourse.
Babylon: Scaling Bitcoin to Secure the Decentralised Economy
Leveraging the 3 facets of Bitcoin, Babylon is developing three innovative security-sharing protocols: Bitcoin Staking Protocol, Bitcoin Timestamping Protocol, and Bitcoin Data Availability Protocol.
