Bitcoin-DeFi startup BOB tops up funding to $21M as Castle Island, Anchorage join

1 week ago

Layer-2 blockchain web Build connected Bitcoin (BOB) has raised $21 cardinal successful strategical backing rounds since December 2024, with $9.5 cardinal secured successful its latest round, according to a property merchandise sent to Cointelegraph.

Many existing investors person accrued their fiscal commitments successful the latest $9.5 cardinal strategical round, including exiting capitalist Castle Island, on with caller strategical investors Anchorage, Amber Group and sats Ventures.

Nic Carter, founding spouse of Castle Island, told Cointelegraph wherefore they person decided to treble down connected their investment:

“We besides proceed to judge that Bitcoin volition beryllium the bedrock of DeFi, and we deliberation BOB volition beryllium a marquee L2.”

Dominik Harz, main exertion serviceman astatine BOB, told Cointelegraph the company’s adjacent large milestone is launching the BitVM span into production. The span would alteration autochthonal Bitcoin (BTC) to beryllium utilized successful DeFi connected BOB and facilitate BTC transfers to different chains.

BOB plans to motorboat BTC-staked finality by the extremity of 2025, with aboriginal upgrades enabling BTC-secured bridges to Solana, Ethereum, Sui and different astute declaration chains.

“Users, institutions, apps and wallets everyplace volition beryllium capable to entree autochthonal BTC DeFi via BOB,” Harz said.

BOB’s testnet precocious went unrecorded with enactment from partners including Lombard, Amber Digital and RockawayX. A mainnet motorboat is planned for the 4th fourth of 2025.

Bridging Bitcoin and Ethereum

BOB uses the hybrid concatenation model, which combines the information and stableness of Bitcoin with the versatility of Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem.

BOB is simply a hybrid due to the fact that it is simultaneously a subordinate of the Superchain, leveraging the OP Stack arsenic an Ethereum rollup, and besides a Bitcoin-secured network, integrating with Babylon for Bitcoin finality via billions of dollars of staked BTC.

As of Aug. 7, 2025, BOB’s full worth locked is $212 million, DeFi TVL is $132.2 million, with 553,000 users.

Native Bitcoin DeFi is connected the way

Previously, Bitcoin DeFi mostly relied connected centralized institutions oregon wrapped Bitcoin tokens specified arsenic wBTC (wBTC), tBTC (TBTC) and Huobi BTC (HBTC). These alleged “Bitcoin” tokens were representations of existent BTC, wherever users deposited their genuine BTC with a centralised or multisignature custodian successful speech for a tokenised mentation that could beryllium utilized onchain.

While each BTC bridges person historically relied connected multisignature custody, BOB’s BitVM2 allows users to interact with DeFi applications utilizing their autochthonal BTC directly—no custody, nary wrapping required.

BitVM2 is the latest BitVM design, co-authored by BOB co-founder Alexei Zamyatin. It enables applicable fraud proofs connected Bitcoin, which allows users to enforce trust-minimized bridging betwixt the Bitcoin L1 and BOB.

By leveraging this technology, BOB aims to bring Bitcoin person to Ethereum-style decentralized finance, allowing Bitcoin users to prosecute successful DeFi without losing power of their assets. The web aims to sphere Bitcoin’s information portion enabling enactment with Ethereum-based DeFi protocols.

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