For over a decade, the blockchain industry has faced a formidable obstacle: scaling Bitcoin’s network to keep up with its fast-growing number of users and transactions. Existing ecosystems face significant limitations, including high fees, slow transaction times, and lack of scalability, preventing blockchain technology from achieving its full potential.
Babylon is revolutionising the way we scale Bitcoin. Babylon doesn’t rely on adding new layers or building new ecosystems on top of Bitcoin. Instead, it extracts the security from the Bitcoin chain and shares it with various proof of stake (PoS) chains like Cosmos, Binance Smart Chain, Polkadot, Polygon and other blockchains which already have strong, interoperable ecosystems.
Babylon’s vision is to scale bitcoin security to secure the decentralised world. By utilising the three facets of Bitcoin — its timestamping service, blockspace, and asset value — Babylon is able to deliver Bitcoin’s security to all the many PoS chains, creating stronger and united ecosystems.
So, what makes Bitcoin such a powerful foundation for security? Before we dive into Babylon’s approach, it’s important to understand the three facets of Bitcoin:
- Timestamping server: As Nakamoto has stated in his paper, Bitcoin’s PoW is effectively a secure and reliable timestamping service that timestamps all the BTC transactions to achieve immutable total ordering.
- Bitcoin Blockspace: Bitcoin’s blockspace is limited and small, with a capacity of only about 54 kilobits per second. This has led to high fees and slow transaction times during periods of high demand.
- Bitcoin the asset: Finally, Bitcoin is an over $500 billion asset globally recognized as a store of value.
Babylon’s Strategy:
The Babylon project focuses on these three facets of Bitcoin, aiming to design security-sharing protocols that make use of them:
Bitcoin staking protocol: Babylon is developing a Bitcoin Staking protocol that allows Bitcoin holders to stake their BTC on PoS chains and earn yields to stake (and restake) their BTC to secure Proof of Stake (PoS) chains, applications, and appchains. Unlike existing approaches, this innovative protocol by Babylon eliminates the need for the staked Bitcoins to be bridged, wrapped, pegged, or held in custody.
The primary purpose of Babylon’s Bitcoin Staking protocol is twofold: firstly, to provide enhanced security to PoS chains, apps, and appchains, and secondly, it offers a monetary reward, which provides an incentive for BTC holders to participate in this security model, thus further bolstering the overall security of these networks.
By sharing Bitcoin’s robust security with other chains and applications, Babylon aims to expand the utility of Bitcoin beyond being a simple store of value or medium of exchange. We aim to scale Bitcoin’s security in a way similar to Ethereum’s scaling efforts, effectively sharing Bitcoin’s robust security with the rest of the decentralized world.
Bitcoin timestamping protocol: A key aspect of Babylon is its BTC timestamping protocol. It timestamps events of other blockchains onto Bitcoin, so that these events can enjoy Bitcoin timestamps in the same way as Bitcoin transactions. This effectively borrows Bitcoin’s security as a timestamping server.
The BTC timestamping protocol enables fast stake unbonding, composable trust, reduced cost of security, cross-chain security, and bootstrapping new chains by combining the long-range security of Proof-of-Work Bitcoin with the short-range security of Proof-of-Stake chains.
Babylon Testnet is now integrated with 31 Cosmos Zones, bringing Bitcoin security to Cosmos! Explore our testnet
Bitcoin data availability protocol: Babylon is developing a Bitcoin data availability protocol that uses Bitcoin’s limited block space for critical tasks, such as providing a censorship resistance layer for PoS chains. As the most secure and censorship-resistant storage globally, Bitcoin’s blockspace serves as an invaluable resource for safeguarding the decentralized world against censorship.
Babylon is currently working on the development of both the Bitcoin data availability protocol and the Bitcoin staking protocol. Keep an eye out for updates on these two innovative protocols.
Babylon is ushering in a new era of blockchain innovation. By extracting Bitcoin’s security and sharing it with PoS chains, Babylon creates a much stronger and united ecosystem that can overcome the limitations of existing blockchain ecosystems. Its timestamping service, data availability layer, and cutting-edge Bitcoin Staking protocol position it as a key player in shaping the future of blockchain technology.
As blockchain technology continues to evolve, it is clear that scalability will be a critical factor in its success. Babylon’s approach offers a promising solution to the challenges of scaling Bitcoin and other blockchain networks. By delivering Bitcoin’s security to PoS chains, Babylon is creating a stronger and more efficient ecosystem that can enable faster and more secure transactions.
About Babylon
At Babylon, we envision a future where Bitcoin and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) chains thrive together. Our mission is to build a Bitcoin-driven decentralized world by evolving Bitcoin into a trusted security backbone for PoS chains, delivering yields for bitcoin holders while fostering an integrated, secure, and decentralized economy.
Babylon is a project that designs security protocols for the decentralized world. Babylon’s origins come from a research paper about Bitcoin security, an original work co-authored by our co-founders, David Tse and Fisher Yu, the founder of EigenLayer, Sreeram Kannan and co-authors. 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.
The project is led by a team of consensus protocol researchers from Stanford and experienced layer 1 engineers from around the world. Babylon’s mission is to scale Bitcoin to secure the decentralized world. To achieve this, Babylon utilizes the three primary facets of Bitcoin: Bitcoin as an asset, its reliable timestamping service, its most censorship-resistant blockspace in the world. To leverage these facets, Babylon is developing three innovative security-sharing protocols: Bitcoin Staking Protocol, Bitcoin Timestamping Protocol, and Bitcoin Data Availability Protocol. Through these pioneering protocols, Babylon envisions a more secure and decentralized future.