Babylon

What is Babylon?

Babylon is a suite of Bitcoin security-sharing protocols. Built using the Cosmos SDK, it leverages Bitcoin's security to enhance Proof-of-Stake chains. Developed by Stanford researchers and Layer 1 developers, it uses Bitcoin for trust and timestamping, improving security without sacrificing autonomy.

Babylon currently includes two protocols: Bitcoin timestamping and Bitcoin staking.

Bitcoin timestamping sends succinct and verifiable timestamps of any data to Bitcoin and enables several use cases, such as:

• Bitcoin staking
• Fast unbonding
• Bootstrapping new zones
• Transaction protection
• Censorship resistance

Its architecture, incorporating Bitcoin and IBC for checkpointing, boosts security for consumer zones and applications, making it a pivotal solution for blockchain ecosystem security.

Bitcoin staking allows Bitcoin holders to stake their coins in a fully non-custodial manner, and without bridging. It enables Bitcoin stakers to contribute to the security of decentralized networks such as PoS consensus protocols and earn a staking yield for doing so.

How does BTC staking work on Babylon?

Staking is a great way for long-term Bitcoin investors to earn passive income. BTC will be staked through Babylon Bitcoin staking protocol utilizing Proof of Stake (PoS) blockchains without needing any custody, bridging, or wrapping tokens.

Stakers, by initiating the staking transaction on the Bitcoin chain, lock their BTC to a self-custodian vault. Once the transaction is confirmed, the chosen finality provider starts validating transactions and proposing new blocks on the PoS chain.

Stakers, by delegating tokens to BTC finality providers, give voting rights to these to validate transactions on the blockchain and propose new blocks. The more stake is attributed to finality providers, the more it will be able to take part in the network consensus and earn rewards for its stakers.

A quick example: Suppose a blockchain network offers a 5% reward rate for a staking period of 1 year (5% APR). You decide to lock up and stake 100 tokens on the network. After a year, you can access your staked tokens and receive five additional tokens as your reward – minus eventual fees charged by the staking provider.

Staking BTC through Babylon Bitcoin staking protocol does not require stakers to transfer their token. It is a non-custodial process.

Why is Stakin a great choice as a Babylon finality provider?

There are several advantages when staking your BTC with Stakin, such as:

• Triple AAA-rated institutional staking provider by Staking Rewards

• ISO 27001 certified staking provider

• Reliable infrastructure - We distribute our servers across various geographical locations and partner with premier bare metal and cloud providers

• Dedicated support for all your staking, unstaking, and network-related questions

• Institutional grade SLAs with uptime and slashing guarantees for both the validator and oracle operations

What kind of institutional services does Stakin offer for BTC staking?

As an institutional-grade Babylon network node operator, Stakin has a full range of staking services and advantages to cater to the needs of enterprises and investors, such as asset managers, company treasuries, exchanges, VCs and hedge funds, wallets, custodians, and liquid staking services.

• Institutional grade SLAs with 99.5%+ uptime guarantees and slashing guarantees

• A dedicated Account Manager to answer all your technical and commercial questions

• 24/7 monitoring and alerting with a private dashboard for dedicated and Whitelabel nodes