Babylon, the Bitcoin staking protocol, launched the first phase of its self managed Bitcoin (BTC) staking mainnet yesterday (22nd), allowing users to stake BTC through smart contracts. Shortly after the opening of the pledge, Babylon announced that the initial total pledge limit of 1000 BTC had been reached.

Babylon's website shows that there are a total of 12720 stakers on the platform, executing over 20610 staking orders. According to the announcement, Babylon's Bitcoin staking mainnet will be launched in three stages, and the staking limit will be relaxed as the first stage progresses.

According to previous reports, the goal of Babylon staking mechanism is to strengthen various decentralized systems under self custody mode by applying the economic security of Bitcoin, allowing users to maintain control over their assets without intermediaries. These systems include sovereign PoS chains, layer 2 networks (L2s), data availability (DA) solutions, and oracle machines.

Babylon wrote on the X platform that the launch of its staking mainnet has brought a third native application scenario for Bitcoin assets, following value storage and simple payments: staking to protect PoS networks and generate revenue.

Babylon raised $70 million in a new round of funding led by the venture capital firm Paradigm in May this year. In December 2023, Polychain Capital and Hack VC jointly led its $18 million Series A funding round. In addition, Babylon has previously received investment from Binance Labs.

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