Bitcoin staking protocol Babylon has recently reopened for additional BTC deposits, and drew in about $1.5 billion worth of the flagship cryptocurrency shortly after doing so as investors rushed in to stake their coins in less than an hour and a half.
According to data shared by the protocol on social media, more than 23,000 BTC were staked after Babylon reopened deposits, with 25,000 stakers now having a total of 23,891.6 BTC on the protocol according to a data dashboard.
Babylon’s cap was lifted for 10 Bitcoin blocks over less than an hour and a half, with users only being restricted in not being able to stake more than 500 BTC per transaction. The round added nearly $1.5 billion to Babylon’s total value locked, making it the leader when it comes to the Decentralized Finance ecosystem associated with Bitcoin, often referred to as BTCFi.
The protocol itself, as The Defiant reported, earned nearly $100,000 in fees from users’ deposits, and quickly urged users who deposited BTC beyond block height 864,800 to unbound and withdraw their deposits as these were labeled as overflow.
Babylon aims to add utility to the flagship cryptocurrency by launching a Proof-of-Stake marketplace powered by Bitcoin that will allow third-party protocols to leverage it for their security.
It is one of various Bitcoin liquid staking protocols looking to allow BTC holders to earn rewards for staking their coins. Other methods holders use to leverage their BTC holdings to generate rewards include lending and options strategies.
Notably James Seyffart, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, has suggested that options on spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) could be launched in the United States in the first quarter of next year.
These options would allow spot BTC ETF holders to hedge their positions or generate yield from them, for example.
Featured image via Unsplash.
