With the vigorous advancement of the Bitcoin ecosystem, Bitcoin DeFi Summer has arrived. Various institutions and innovative projects rushed to the scene to fill the market vacancy of trillions in market value that provides value-added services for Bitcoin assets. According to the past experience of the Ethereum ecosystem, which is currently the largest in the industry,It can be foreseen that where the Bitcoin will flow by then, it will definitely be the place where the “golden eggs” are laid, and it is also the focus that we must pay attention to…

01 Where will Bitcoin go?

Head public chain value export, source: cryptoflows

The value flow chart of several major public chain assets displayed by cryptoflows, an encrypted data tracking website, shows that,Bitcoin is providing “value exports” of up to 15 billion US dollars to other ecosystems, ranking first.The demand and potential for increasing the value of Bitcoin assets is huge. The Bitcoin ecosystem has just started and is currently unable to support the demand for these assets. It is expected that a large number of idle assets are in a state of “ready to move”.

If we look at the capital flow in the Ethereum ecosystem, which has already innovated and developed in advance, we may be able to understand in advance where the funds will flow when the Bitcoin ecosystem gradually matures.

In the Ethereum ecosystem, the main TVL flows to tracks such as DeFi, Layer2, Staking, and Restaking. Smart money sees the security and stability of the proven old DeFi, the expectation of Airdrop of Layer2 (the demand for hair), and the stable and stable yield rate. Among safe Staking and Restaking.

Among them, the funds in Layer 2 may disappear due to the expected existence and implementation of airdrops, which has the disadvantages of high uncertainty and large fluctuations. However, the income of Staking and Restaking is relatively stable, high certainty, and high security, and Restaking is added as a new narrative. As a new trend, a large amount of funds quickly flowed into it, making it one of the tracks with the fastest improvement in TVL.

For example, the EigenLayer project in the Restaking protocol has locked in a total value of more than 10 billion US dollars within 8 months of its launch, which is a very impressive result.

Generally speaking, Staking and Restaking are currently one of the tracks with the fastest stable growth in TVL. How much TVL will the Bitcoin economy, which is about to “open”, inject into the market?

02 Ankr and Babylon launch first Bitcoin staking solution

Recently, Ankr and Babylon launched the first Bitcoin staking solution.The goal is to “unlock 21 million Bitcoins to provide protection for the POS network.”

Due to the advancement of cross-chain solutions, more and more proof-of-stake (POS) blockchains are being launched on the market, which has also brought a large number of POS staking demands. Babylon’s Bitcoin staking protocol can use idle Bitcoins for POS staking At the same time, it also provides Restaking similar to EigenLayer to increase security incentives.

Partner Ankr is responsible for creating liquid pledge tokens (LST) for the Bitcoins pledged by Babylon, similar to Lido’s stETH issued through the PoS chain.Of course, as an established staking infrastructure provider, Ankr is also responsible for providing staking nodes and providing security infrastructure to ensure the safe and stable operation of POS nodes.

What are the highlights of this collaboration between Ankr and Babylon?

1) Strong alliances bring new use cases in the Bitcoin ecosystem + Restaking industry

According to media reports, Babylon received $18 million in investment at the end of last year, led by Polychain Capital and Hack VC, with participation from institutions such as Framework Ventures, Polygon Ventures, Castle Island Ventures and OKX Ventures.

The research team formed by the two co-founders of Babylon, David Tse and Fisher Yu, and the founder of Eigen Layer, Sreeram Kannan,The co-authored research paper “Bitcoin’s Enhanced Proof-of-Stake Security: Possibilities and Impossibility” reaches a milestone by being recognized at the 2023 IEEE Security and Privacy Symposium.Based on this research, Babylon was born, a revolutionary protocol for improving the security of POS chains.

As a partner, Ankr is a veteran star project with rich experience in the field of Staking infrastructure services. It has also reached cooperation with EigenLayer, a leading project of the same type.

The background strength of the Babylon and Ankr project teams are among the top ranks in the encryption industry. This cooperation can be said to be a strong alliance, bringing stable and reliable new use cases to the two major narrative outlets of Bitcoin ecology + Restaking.

2) Bring three levels of income to idle Bitcoin assets

According to the design of the relevant incentive mechanism, LST can be obtained by staking Ankr to the Babylon protocol and after staking to obtain two levels of benefits, one can also participate in related ecological DeFi projects again to obtain the third level of rewards.

Income is the most direct incentive mechanism to attract the inflow of TVL. As mentioned above, it is stable, highly certain, and highly secure. Coupled with the super expectations of the two major narrative outlets of Bitcoin ecology and Restaking, its appeal is extraordinary. generally.

3) Bring the security value of the Bitcoin protocol to the POS chain

In the past, we always complained that DeFi’s “air” matryoshka behavior did not bring much value.The Staking and Restaking brought by Babylon and Ankr this time not only bring safe and stable value-added to idle Bitcoin assets, but also meet the strong security needs of the POS chain market and provide better security guarantees.Therefore, the POS chain provides “security fees” as incentives in return, and returns them to staking users through the Babylon protocol, forming a closed loop of value.

03 Ankr’s advantages in entering the Bitcoin ecosystem and its future prospects

From the strong cooperation between Ankr and Babylon in the previous article, it is not difficult to see the important role Ankr plays in the cooperation. This is not the first day that the industry has known Ankr. We can see its presence in mainstream encryption circuits and related ecological communities. No, it has appeared again in the mainstream of Bitcoin ecology, Restaking, etc.So what are its advantages in these trends? What actions will this crypto “catfish” take in the future?

1) Ankr’s own advantages: serving as the “glue” to connect all parties

The entry of Ankr into the Bitcoin ecosystem is not surprising, because Ankr’s own advantages lie here. In the Staking track, Ankr provides a variety of blockchain services and products, such as node deployment, developer tools, etc. wait,The main purpose is to allow developer teams and users to benefit from blockchain technology with less worry and effort.

The media has previously reported a series of important achievements and innovative products made by Ankr in 2023:

In terms of RPC request processing services, Ankr’s results are amazing,It supports 45 blockchains, and the total annual RPC requests reached 2.1 trillion.And added 22 new blockchain RPC services. also,Ankr also has partnerships with Microsoft and Tencent Cloud, providing a more reliable and easy-to-use node access service. \

Ankr has also launched a number of innovative products for infrastructure optimization.Including Rollup as a Service (Raas), Ankr Verify and more.

Anchor StakingThe results in 2023 are also gratifying. In addition to expanding the managed TVL and adding new Tokens and functions,Also partnered with EigenLayer.

at the same time,Ankr has successfully reached multiple major strategic cooperations by virtue of its strength and good reputation in the blockchain field.These cooperations cover many fields, including games, sports, entertainment, and blockchain infrastructure, including star partners such as Mirage, Chiliz, zkSync, and Polygon Supernets.

In the cooperation with Babylon, it can be said that it is like glue, connecting infrastructure services and users, staking protocols, related POS application chain ecology (Cosmos ecology, etc.), and even connected to DeFi and other on-chain Dapps, directly opening up Industry upstream and downstream.

2) Traffic portal partners bring service distribution

Ankr has also reached cooperation with super Web3 traffic portals such as Trust Wallet and Okx Wallet. These partners are the best on-chain service distributors in the industry.

For example, the Bitcoin staking service in cooperation with Babylon can be distributed through these partners, and users can also conveniently directly access related services on these wallet interfaces to efficiently complete the value-added of Bitcoin.

3) Further expand the Bitcoin economy

As the Bitcoin ecosystem further develops, Ankr is expected to further expand the Bitcoin economy and introduce BTC TVL into more other ecosystems, bringing more benefits to the upstream and downstream of these ecosystems.

4) Ankr’s DePin potential

In 2024, in addition to the two major narratives mentioned earlier, there is another eye-catching narrative outlet that completely matches Ankr, and that is DePin(The full name is Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks, which means decentralized physical infrastructure network in Chinese), which itself is also the main positioning of the blockchain infrastructure service provider Ankr, and now there is a new concept name to represent it. The services provided by Ankr in the past and currently all reflect its status as the “veteran” of DePin, and it has made many achievements.

Just now,Ankr posted an official announcement on its blog to launch a new DePin partner expansion network as a new infrastructure for decentralized Web3.(Ultra Sound Infrastructure), aiming to increase decentralization and expand its DePin network, make Ankr a DePin Token that incentivizes cooperation, support for on-chain AI and other use cases, and more. As a key symbol of the Ultra Sound Infrastructure project, the utility of the ANKR Token has been expanded, serving as a payment and reward token for network users and node providers.

04 summary

In the innovation and exploration of the encryption industry, there is always a variety of builders behind the new narrative, and excellent projects always choose excellent partners. Ankr is always chosen, perhaps because there are not many projects like Ankr that use their own advantages to connect the upstream and downstream of various cryptoecologies like glue. In the future Bitcoin ecosystem, Restaking, DePin and other new narratives, there is a high probability that Ankr will be seen frequently.

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