Bitcoin staking protocol Babylon rolls out Genesis mainnet in second stage of its phased launch

Bitcoin staking protocol Babylon has launched its "Genesis" mainnet, the second stage in a three-part “phased” rollout , according to an announcement on Thursday. The protocol, launched last August, has accumulated over 57,000 BTC, worth over $4 billion, in total value locked. 

Babylon is a self-custodial system designed to let users earn yield on their bitcoin, which is locked up in a proof-of-stake scheme to provide security to additional applications. The team is pitching Babylon Genesis as “the world’s first L1 blockchain secured by Bitcoin.”

"Bitcoin has always been the benchmark for security, but until today, that security has been limited to the Bitcoin network itself," Babylon co-founder Fisher Yu said in a statement.  "Through Babylon Genesis, Bitcoin is evolving from an underutilized asset into a dynamic cornerstone of the broader digital economy." 

Babylon also enables users to stake its BABY token, with rewards split 50-50 between BTC and BABY token stakers. According to tokenomics details announced earlier this month, BABY will have an initial total supply of 10 billion tokens, of which 6% will go toward early adopters. 

Thursday's launch comes several exchanges including Bybit and Bithumb list BABY futures. 

A number of major crypto firms and projects reportedly plan to integrate Babylon as a bitcoin staking solution, including crypto custodians Bitgo and Anchorage and the non-custodial Binance and OKX wallets. Cosmos-based decentralized exchange Osmosis also announced a planned integration. 

Allnodes, Figment, and Galaxy Digital are among the protocol’s 250 "finality providers." These maintain network uptime by approving transactions, similar to the role of validators in traditional PoS ecosystems.

Babylon raised an $8 million seed funding round disclosed in March 2023, an $18 million Series A co-led by Polychain Capital and Hack VC in late 2023 and an additional $70 million funding round led by Paradigm around the time of its testnet launch in 2024.