Babylon Bitcoin Staking Platform Sees Significant Uptake

According to CoinDesk, Bitcoin protocol Babylon completed its second staking round on Tuesday, significantly increasing deposits to approximately 24,000 BTC ($1.5 billion) from about 1,000 BTC previously. The staking round was 'duration-based,' lasting for 10 Bitcoin blocks. Babylon, a Bitcoin staking platform designed to provide the original blockchain's security to new protocols and decentralized applications, attracted about $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin after briefly opening to additional deposits. This uptake indicates a robust demand for a growing decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem on the 15-year-old Bitcoin blockchain, which was previously limited to alternative networks like Ethereum and Solana. According to Babylon's staking dashboard, around 18,601 BTC had already been staked as of 20:03 UTC (4:03 p.m. ET), with an additional 5,419 BTC pending in the staking queue. The cap was lifted for about 10 Bitcoin blocks over the course of one hour and 23 minutes, with the only restriction being that users could stake up to 500 BTC per transaction. This structure marked a departure from the initial opening in August, where the cap was set at a fixed 1,000 BTC and filled up in an hour and 14 minutes. Babylon aims to allow proof-of-stake chains to acquire capital from the deep reserves stored in BTC. It is one of many initiatives aimed at introducing utility to Bitcoin, which is commonplace on networks such as Ethereum but historically largely absent from the world's first blockchain. The project gained attention in May this year when it completed a $70 million funding round, following an $18 million round the previous December.