Babylon Attracts $1.42B In BTC Over 10 Bitcoin Blocks

Bitcoin staking remains a major burgeoning narrative within crypto, with users piling more than $1.42 billion worth of BTC into Babylon over roughly two hours.

On Oct. 8, Babylon, a Bitcoin staking protocol, opened deposits for the second time, allowing users to deposit up to 500 BTC per transaction over the course of 10 Bitcoin blocks.

Roughly 12,570 users deposited 22,891 BTC over 10 blocks, adding $1.42 billion to Babylon’s total value locked (TVL). With Bitcoin blocks lasting roughly 10 minutes each, the surge in deposits was received over less than two hours.

Babylon earned 1.56 BTC (nearly $97,000) in fees from the deposits.

“Today, Babylon reached an incredible milestone — almost 23,000 bitcoins staked in Cap-2!” Babylon said. “A big thank you to all of our stakers for being part of this journey.”

Any BTC deposited from block height 864,800 onwards was labeled as overflow. Babylon urged users to unbond and withdraw any overflow BTC deposited to the protocol.

The flurry of deposits follows Babylon’s mainnet launch on Aug. 22. The protocol’s initial cap of 1,000 BTC was filled within three-and-a-half hours, with individual deposits limited to 0.05 BTC per transaction.

While Babylon’s launch drove a more than 900% increase in Bitcoin fees as users raced to deposit BTC to the protocol, its second round of deposits had a lesser impact on Bitcoin fees — with average fees up 76% at $1.46 from $0.83 on Oct. 7, according to Ycharts.

Babylon’s roadmap

Babylon aims to cultivate a Bitcoin-powered Proof of Stake (PoS) marketplace and consensus layer that third-party protocols can leverage for security.

The first phase of Babylon’s rollout allows users to earn points in exchange for locking up BTC. Babylon increased its points distribution to 10,000 Babylon points per Bitcoin block from 3,125 points following the second round of deposits.

Babylon will next activate its consensus mechanism and launch the Babylon PoS chain, before evolving into a marketplace offering BTC-powered shared security that PoS networks and protocols can leverage. Users will be able to stake BTC to secure multiple PoS systems to earn rewards from multiple protocols once the rollout is complete.

Bitcoin liquid staking

Babylon is also propelling the growth of Bitcoin liquid staking (LST) protocols leveraging the protocol.

Binance allowed users to pre-emptively deposit BTC to Babylon via the Bitcoin LST protocols including Bedrock, Solv, Lorenzo, PumpBTC, pSTAKE Finance, and Chakra ahead of Babylon opening its second round of deposits, with Binance’s campaign closing on Oct. 6.