Babylon Chain aims to enhance Bitcoin’s utility through staking, reveals CEO

In the latest episode of the SlateCast, CryptoSlate welcomed David Tse, CEO and co-founder of Babylon Chain, to discuss the groundbreaking concept of Bitcoin staking and its potential to secure Web3.

Joining David was Senior Editor Liam “Akiba” Wright and CryptoSlate CEO Nate Whitehill, who delved into the intricacies of this innovative protocol and its far-reaching implications.

Bitcoin’s Underrated Properties

The conversation started with David highlighting Bitcoin’s often-overlooked properties, particularly its function as a global timestamping server. “Bitcoin is a global timestamping server, a global timestamping server. And that’s an underrated property,” he said, emphasizing the significance of this aspect in the context of Babylon Chain’s mission.

Introducing Babylon Chain and Bitcoin Staking

Akiba then inquired about Babylon Chain’s unique approach to enabling Bitcoin holders to earn yield by staking their assets securely without bridging or wrapping. David explained the shared security model that underpins their protocol:

“We start thinking that these proof of stake chains, they all have a native use case. So no matter whether the chain is useful, the economy is supposed to be useful, the application is supposed to be useful or not. At least it has one sort of a native use case, which is staking, and that’s by the nature of the proof of stake chain. Bitcoin doesn’t have this, because Bitcoin is proof of work.

And so we start thinking, well, there is this new and growing market of staking, but there’s Bitcoin, which is like the largest asset. Wouldn’t it be nice if we can also endow it with the staking use case?”

The Cosmos Ecosystem and Beyond

Discussing Babylon Chain’s focus on the Cosmos ecosystem, David highlighted the maturity of the Tendermint and Cosmos SDK technologies, as well as the App Chain Thesis, which aligns with their vision of securing multiple chains through Bitcoin staking.

However, he revealed an exciting development, noting that a new ecosystem is emerging around Bitcoin, driven by the learnings from proof-of-stake systems. “There’s a new ecosystem emerging, which is around Bitcoin itself,” David shared. He continued:

“This is not what we expected two years ago. We’re thinking this proof of stake ecosystem is really booming Bitcoin, sitting there by itself very lonely. We take the Bitcoin security that will help these proof of stake ecosystem. But now something happened is that people are…