On December 12, the total value locked (TVL) in the Babylon staking protocol for the leading cryptocurrency reached $3.63 billion.
? $3.5bn BTC staked so far?
Let that sink in.
And we’re only just getting started. Still 700+ blocks to go. Cap-3 is still open.
For those who have already staked directly through the Babylon protocol, you can now head over to our discord, verify your BTC address and secure… pic.twitter.com/p6ZIr7NByi
— Babylon (@babylonlabs_io) December 12, 2024
Over the past week, the metric increased by 77%, primarily driven by the launch of the second round of staking on December 9.
At the time of writing, Babylon accounts for over 75% of the total Bitcoin ecosystem TVL of $4.974 billion.
This development has propelled Bitcoin to the fifth position among all networks in terms of total value locked.
Babylon co-founder Fisher Yu told Cointelegraph journalists that DeFi on Bitcoin had not existed until recently—all methods of staking or wrapping coins through dapps required some level of trust. In his view, “true DeFi” only involves trust in the blockchain or smart contract.
“We invented Bitcoin staking as a native use case for the first cryptocurrency that does not require the holder to trust any third party. Similar to storing or using coins for simple payments, you only trust Bitcoin and yourself. You don’t need to trust anyone else,” Yu emphasized.
He believes that Bitcoin DeFi will face the same challenges encountered by similar niches in other ecosystems, including code errors and protocol attacks.
Earlier in December, Binance announced the launch of On-chain Yields financial products with support for Babylon staking.