Hex Trust, provider of digital custody services, has just formed a strategic partnership with Babylon, a layer-2 of Bitcoin.
The company headquartered in Hong Kong will contribute as the main agent to the oversight of the assets deposited on the network. Additionally, it will provide support for staking, enabling access for institutional investors and enhancing the utility of Bitcoin in DeFi.
Babylon currently boasts a TVL of 1.6 billion dollars, with 23,850 BTC staked in restaking.
Summary
Hex Trust and the partnership with Bitcoin Babylon’s layer-2
The leading oriental company in the digital asset market Hex Trust has announced a collaboration with Babylon, a well-known layer-2 built on Bitcoin.
This is great news for the world of cryptographic investments, as the presence of Hex Trust allows DeFi to be brought to institutional clients as well.
The custody service provider, based in Hong Kong, will indeed be fully integrated into the Babylon Bitcoin Staking protocol.
It will contribute to the management and securing of BTC deposited on layer-2 and will offer direct support for staking and trading on the platform.
For those who do not know, Babylon is a restaking protocol that allows staking in BTC directly on the Bitcoin network without using smart contracts or bridges.
Thanks to its infrastructure, it enables the acquisition of the security inherent in Bitcoin to other secondary chains, such as Babylon Chain. Furthermore, it allows BTC holders to stake and earn rewards to enhance the security of Proof of Stake networks and associated consumer chains.
In this way Babylon encourages users to enhance decentralized activities on Bitcoin, unlocking new features for the entire industry.
The new presence of Hex Trust in the processes of restaking and custody provides greater assurance for the growth of the BTCfi ecosystem of the layer-2 Babylon.
The partnership underscores the company’s commitment to continually providing new and cutting-edge products to its institutional client base.
As a provider of purposes, Hex Trust’s clients will be able to stake their Bitcoin on the Babylon mainnet and earn rewards from day one.
Throughout all this, users will keep their private keys safe, managing operations within a regulated and insured custody environment.
As reported by Calvin Shen, Chief Commercial Officer of Hex Trust, regarding the news:
“More than half of the entire crypto market capitalization is attributed to a single asset: Bitcoin. Unlocking value on the original digital asset through staking, and ultimately through DeFi, is a milestone for the sector and means new utility for Bitcoin holders beyond its traditional role as a store of value”.
Launch on mainnet of the layer-2 Babylon
The entry of Hex Trust as an infrastructural partner of Babylon follows the recent launch on mainnet of the layer-2 chain linked to the Bitcoin blockchain.
In particular, on August 22, Babylon began its existence in the on-chain world, introducing new secondary functions to BTC.
At its debut, the network attracted deposits of 1,000 BTC, immediately reaching the maximum cap set by the protocol.
Through a blog post, the project also established what the roadmap for the coming months will be.
After reaching a sum of capital adequate for its operations, Babylon will draw on these resources to expand the security of Bitcoin.
We remind you that the protocol includes in its ecosystem the layer 2 chains, the data availability layers and the oracles.
In addition to the Hex Trust partnership, which provides an access bridge for institutional clients, Babylon has also had relationships with Binance Labs.
Before the mainnet launch, the layer-2 raised as much as 70 million dollars in a funding round led by the VC department of the same exchange.
Other companies like Allnodes, Galaxy Digital, P2P, Figment, Luganodes, and Stakefish, have supported the initial launch phase of Babylon.
Not only that, with the latest news the protocol has seen its ecosystem expand towards hundreds of other dApps and decentralized services.
At the moment, it appears as one of the best crypto organizations that use Bitcoin security to enable a suite of products.
On-chain analysis: distribution of Bitcoin deposits on the chain
The provider Hex Trust has worked from the outset to support the first phase of development of the layer-2 Babylon and manage the stakes in Bitcoin.
The clients of the protocol have indeed sent their transactions to the blockchain L1 of Bitcoin using the finality provider Hex.
At this moment, Babylon has a TVL of 1.6 billion dollars, with 23,850 BTC restaked by users.
After the first round of deposits on August 22, on October 8 the caps of the pools were increased, bringing new capital onto the chain.
In its so-called “Cap2” Babylon attracted 22,891 BTC (~$ 1.5 billion) in just 10 Bitcoin blocks: a record time for such a significant amount.
To also consider how each user could not deposit more than 500 BTC per transaction.
These new deposits have immediately brought Babylon to the top of the ranking for the Bitcoin ecosystem projects.
The Lightning Network network is second with 350 million TVL, according to the latest data from DefiLlama.
Below are some metrics on the inflows of Babylon, extracted from Dune.Analytics.
Very interesting to observe also how these deposits are distributed on Babylon based on the various protocols that have acted as “finality provider”.
The majority of the capital comes from Lombard, which has managed operations for 7,170 BTC, equivalent to a value of 480 million dollars.
Next, we find Solv Protocol, with 6,000 BTC deposited for 402 million dollars.
Closes the podium PumpBTC with 2,080 BTC for 139 million dollars.
Included in the top 10 are protocols like Lorenzo, Rock-X-Bedrock, BSquaredNetwork, Chakra, P2P.org, Allo, and AmberGroup.
We will see if now with the entry of Hex Trust these metrics will see new records at the next increase of the cap on the layer-2 pools.
