Babylon Bitcoin Stake Testnet-4 Chapter 3 is now online

This testnet accepts staking for 5 days (120 hours), starting from the Signet BTC block height of 200,665 at around 9 am (UTC) on Wednesday, June 19, and continuing for 720 blocks, starting with the Signet BTC block height of 200,665. It ended at an altitude of 201,385 at approximately 9 a.m. UTC on Monday, June 24.

What is Babylon

Babylon is a Bitcoin staking protocol that allows Bitcoin holders to stake their Bitcoins to the PoS blockchain without the need for any third-party escrow/bridging/wrappers.
Trusting a third-party controlled bridge exposes you to basic counterparty risk: when redemption time comes, you'll be at the mercy of the bridge owner to get your Bitcoin back.
As such, Babylon is pioneering the development of a trustless, self-custodial Bitcoin staking protocol. It provides PoS chains with economic security guarantees that can be slashed while ensuring effective stake unbundling to enhance liquidity for Bitcoin holders.

Babylon staking workflow

• Staking Bitcoin: The staking process is initiated by the staker sending a staking transaction to the Bitcoin chain, locking their Bitcoin in a self-custodial vault. Specifically, this creates a UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) with two spending conditions:
  

1. A time lock, after which the staker can withdraw using her key.
2. The UTXO can be burned using a special Extractable One-Time Signature (EOTS). In the case of delegation, this EOTS belongs to the validator to whom the stake is delegated.

• Validation on a PoS Chain: Once the staking transaction is confirmed on the Bitcoin chain, the staker (or the validator delegated by the staker) can start validating the PoS chain and sign valid blocks using the EOTS key. During her validation duties, there are two possible paths:
  
• Lucky Path: If the staker acts honestly, she follows the protocol and earns rewards. The staker can then unbind in two ways:
1. Wait for the existing clock to expire and then exit.
2. Submit an unbinding transaction to Bitcoin, which unlocks the Bitcoin and returns it to her after a parameterized unbinding period.

• Unlucky Path: If the staker behaves maliciously, such as participating in a double-spending attack on the PoS chain, the staking protocol ensures her EOTS key is exposed to the public. Thus, anyone can impersonate the staker and submit a slashing transaction on the Bitcoin chain, burning her Bitcoin. This unpleasant path ensures that security breaches are punished, maintaining the overall integrity of the system.

Babylon financing status

• Babylon raised $8 million in a seed round of financing.
• Following an $18 million funding round in December last year, Babylon completed a new round of financing on May 30th this year. This round was led by Paradigm, with participation from Polychain and Bullish Capital, successfully raising $70 million.

• It is worth noting that Binance Labs invested an undisclosed amount in Babylon. This investment, similar to Babylon's seed and Series A funding structures, consists of both equity and token warrants.

Babylon team introduction

David Tse (Co-Founder):

• Earned a Bachelor of Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo in 1989.
• Received a Master of Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1991.
• Completed his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at MIT in 1994.
• His research at Stanford University focuses on information theory and its applications in wireless communications, machine learning, energy, and computational biology.
• Awarded the Claude E. Shannon Award in 2017.
• Elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2018.

Mingchao Yu (Founder, CTO):

• Holds a Ph.D. in Telecommunications from the Australian National University, specializing in the development of theories and algorithms for network information theory and coding, with a particular focus on wireless communications.

Advisory Board:

• Includes Sunny Aggarwal, Co-Founder of Osmosis Lab.
• Includes Sreeram Kannan, Founder of EigenLayer.

Babylon partnership

Babylon signs partnership with Slinky Network

The partnership to enhance Bitcoin security for Micro AI dApps. , laying the foundation for a scalable and secure Bitcoin application layer tailored by artificial intelligence.

Babylon signs partnership with Particle Network

Particle's Omini unified portal, which is built on the on-chain abstract framework, needs to coordinate and process a large number of cross-chain communications and transactions. After introducing Babylon's Dual Stake model, the dual security of $PARTI + $BTC can provide "double insurance" for the underlying security operating mechanism of the Particle POS chain.