BTCFi: A New Chapter in Bitcoin's Financial Evolution

As the U.S. regulation of virtual currencies becomes increasingly clear, DeFi has also become one of the main themes of this bull market.

As the U.S. tightens its grip on virtual currencies, a new buzzword has emerged in the crypto sphere: BTCFi. But what exactly is BTCFi and how does it fit into the broader DeFi narrative?

In essence, BTCFi refers to a financial service platform and protocol built around Bitcoin (BTC) and its ecosystem. By integrating decentralized financial technology, BTCFi expands the financial functions of Bitcoin.

Specifically, BTCFi enables Bitcoin itself to participate in financial activities on-chain, enhancing the inherently poor smart contract functions of Bitcoin. The Bitcoin ecosystem gains more complex DeFi protocols similar to other public chains, such as centralized exchanges, over-collateralized stablecoins, and re-staking. In addition to BTC itself, some BTC ecosystem-related assets, such as inscriptions, runes, RGB++, etc., also participate in DeFi-related activities.

According to DeFiLlama data, BTC's total TVL currently stands at $6.545 billion, while Solana's total TVL is $8.297 billion and Ethereum's total TVL is $68.31 billion. As evident from these figures, BTCFi remains a vast blue ocean with high development potential.

Currently, there are star projects like Babylon on BTCFi, which mainly introduces the Bitcoin staking protocol, allowing users to stake Bitcoin on another PoS blockchain and earn income without using third-party custody, bridging solutions or packaging services.

Beyond Babylon, what other projects are worth keeping an eye on in the BTCFi space? Let's delve into the overall development, top projects, and present problems of BTCFi.

Overall Development of BTCFi

According to DeFiLlama data, the total TVL of representative projects in the BTCFi track, such as Babylon, has exceeded $5 billion. Among them, lending and re-pledge protocols are the two core components of the BTCFi ecosystem, occupying the largest market share.

DefiLlama forecasts that the BTCFi market size will grow to about $1.2 trillion by 2030. This year marks a period of rapid development for the BTC ecosystem. At the beginning of 2024, BTC's overall TVL was $300 million, and by the end of 2024, it had reached $6.5 billion, an increase of more than 20 times.

In the BTCFi track, lending protocols are one of the most important applications. Traditionally, Bitcoin, as a digital asset, has not participated in the lending market. However, the BTCFi protocol enables Bitcoin to be used as collateral for decentralized lending. Typical projects include Liquidium, Shell Finance, etc.

Next is the stablecoin protocol. The stablecoin protocol in BTCFi uses Bitcoin and its derivative assets (such as Ordinals and Rune) as collateral to issue stablecoins pegged to the price of Bitcoin. In the practice of stablecoins, there are Shell Finance's Bitcoin-pegged stablecoins, Babylon's Bitcoin-collateralized stablecoins, and so on.

The re-pledge mechanism is also an innovation in the current BTCFi ecosystem. This year, these projects have also made considerable achievements in terms of locked-up volume.

There are currently many re-pledge protocols in the BTCFi ecosystem. Users can re-pledge already pledged Bitcoin or other crypto assets to receive additional rewards. For example, BounceBit and Lombard Protocol in the Babylon ecosystem are protocols that support re-pledge.

Introduction to Top BTCFi Projects

BabylonWhen it comes to BTCFi, Babylon must be a project that cannot be ignored. It is the first project in the industry to introduce Bitcoin’s own standard Staking. It is essentially a pledge, security and liquidity protocol.

The main innovation is the introduction of Bitcoin's own standard Staking. Through the technical upgrades achieved through the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal, such as Schnorr signatures, Taproot upgrades, and Tapscript updates, the efficiency and privacy of Staking transactions are improved, allowing Bitcoin holders to lock BTC assets in the form of instruction code contracts in the Bitcoin mainnet in a self-custodial manner without the need for third-party custody, and output "secure consensus services" on many BTC layer2s, thereby obtaining rich benefits from other extensions.

Currently, the TVL exceeds 5 billion US dollars, and it has a rich ecology. According to public information, its ecological projects cover 7 categories including Layer2, DeFi, liquidity pledge, wallets and custodians, Cosmos, finality providers and Rollup infrastructure, with a total of 91 projects, including many well-known projects, such as BisonLabs, BSquared Network in the Layer2 field; Kina Finance, LayerBank in the DeFi field; Bedrock, Chakra, Lombard in the liquidity pledge field, etc. These projects have formed a huge ecosystem around Babylon, promoting the diversified development of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Shell FinanceIt is the first decentralized lending and stablecoin protocol