pSTAKE Finance’s Bitcoin liquid staking testnet is finally live on Babylon, a project unlocking 21 million Bitcoin to secure the decentralized economy.
To get early access to the testnet, one can obtain invite codes on the pSTAKE Telegram or Discord. The entire process of accessing the pSTAKE’s BTC liquid staking testnet is on the project’s website to encourage testing and refine the user experience.
In the coming weeks, Bitcoin liquid staking will be launched on the mainnet. Once that happens, pSTAKE will introduce a points program, and those who participated in the testnet will receive extra points.
For now, the testnet introduces v1 of pSTAKE Finance’s innovative BTC yield and liquid staking solution. This initial version only supports test deposits and withdrawals of the testnet BTC, namely sBTC, into pSTAKE. “We’re excited to see how this unique solution performs in real-world testing,” said the team on X (Previously Twitter).
To engage with the platform, users can utilize the OKX Wallet. Soon, the testnet will also support Ledger and Bitget. These sBTC tokens can be withdrawn at any time during the testnet, as there is no unbonding period. To get your hands on these testnet versions of BTC, you can use the Babylon Discord or the SignetFaucet.
In v2, the pSTAKE Finance team will deposit BTC into Babylon to offer the primary source of liquid staking yields. At this stage, the yield will be generated through economic security and distributed to pSTAKE depositors.
In the subsequent version (v3), the idea is to begin minting yBTC, the yield-generating representative token. Then, in v4, multiple avenues for yield will be introduced to provide a diverse range of earning opportunities.
“We’ve been working hard behind the scenes on this BTC Liquid Staking solution,” said the team, adding, “The testnet is necessary to test our novel mechanism for BTC liquid staking built on top of Babylon and battle-test our infrastructure before going live in a mainnet environment.”
To ensure user fund safety, the protocol has gone through several rigorous security audits by multiple cybersecurity firms. Babylon has also completed its own comprehensive auditing process to bolster overall security.
A Renewed Focus on Bitcoin
Over the past year, Bitcoin has become the focal point for both developers and users. We have seen a heightened interest in utilizing the largest crypto network to build a truly decentralized future of finance.
Amidst the race to leverage the trillion-dollar Bitcoin opportunity, pSTAKE Finance has emerged as a leading solution to unlock and capture Bitcoin’s untapped potential. The project achieves this by liquid-staking BTC to earn rewards from Babylon’s trustless BTC staking while maintaining liquidity powered by institutional custody providers.
The project began its journey within the Cosmos ecosystem in 2020 and pioneered ATOM liquid staking in 2021. At that time, the sector was not yet hyped and was just starting to gain traction. This early start allowed pSTAKE Finance to introduce liquid staking for various blockchains, and it has now shifted its focus to Bitcoin.
According to its co-founder Mikhil Pandey, people have given up on using Bitcoin for payments because it’s difficult, and USD stablecoins are already doing a great job as preferred means of payment. The largest cryptocurrency by market cap, valued at $1.23 trillion, is predominantly utilized as a store of value, acting as digital gold.
However, if we look at gold itself, it inherently has no yield and is, as such, a negative carry asset, “which is never a good thing when it comes to a large asset class,” said Pandey during his appearance on the Epic Web3 podcast. Much like gold, Bitcoin hasn’t had any inherent yield either until now.
With shared security and restaking, doors to different forms of yield creation have finally been opened for Bitcoin. Unlike Ethereum, it’s native staking for Bitcoin, which is now brought to users trustlessly. pSTAKE co-founder is super bullish on this concept due to the fact that Bitcoin has no yield, providing a way for people to generate yield on their idle-sitting BTC. Simultaneously, the largest and most stable asset can be used to secure other chains.
Pandey points out that the most appealing way for people to use their BTC is to maintain custody of their Bitcoin. Babylon facilitates this by allowing holders to retain custody of their BTC at all times. Users simply have to sign a transaction that locks Bitcoin for a certain period.
This is why pSTAKE Finance is providing Bitcoiners with yield opportunities through Babylon to drive the Bitcoin DeFi movement forward. Moreover, Babylon has a strong research-focused team that has been building on the largest network for a while now, explained Pandey, highlighting why pSTAKE chose to collaborate with Babylon. This partnership allows pSTAKE to focus on offering yield, maintaining token liquidity, and making sure the Bitcoin that is securing these other services through Babylon is as secure as possible.
