6 hours ago
For astir of its history, bitcoin has been prized arsenic integer gold: an plus to clasp alternatively than use. That passivity has near trillions of dollars’ worthy of BTC sitting idle successful wallets, disconnected from the output strategies and composability that specify decentralized concern (DeFi).
The emergence of liquid staking tokens promises to alteration that, positioning bitcoin not lone arsenic a store of worth but arsenic a productive plus integrated into onchain superior markets.
Liquid staking refers to the process of uses offering their crypto to assistance unafraid a network, and person a liquid, tradable token successful instrumentality that represents their staked assets and tin beryllium utilized crossed DeFi portion the archetypal tokens proceed earning staking rewards.
Lombard Finance has emerged arsenic 1 of the salient projects successful bitcoin liquid staking. Its flagship product, LBTC, is simply a yield-bearing token backed 1:1 by BTC.
When BTC is deposited into the Lombard protocol, the underlying coins are staked, chiefly via Babylon, a protocol enabling trustless, self-custodial bitcoin staking. Users person LBTC successful return, which tin beryllium deployed crossed DeFi ecosystems portion the archetypal Bitcoin earns staking rewards.
This dual functionality is key. Holders tin support vulnerability to bitcoin portion utilizing LBTC successful lending, borrowing, and liquidity proviso crossed protocols specified arsenic Aave, Morpho, Pendle, and Ether.fi. Designed for interoperability, LBTC moves crossed Ethereum, Base, BNB Chain, and different networks, preventing liquidity fragmentation and ensuring bitcoin tin enactment successful a multi-chain DeFi environment.
A marketplace perchance worthy billions
By mobilizing BTC's dormant liquidity, Lombard and different liquid staking projects purpose to supply the infrastructure for Bitcoin DeFi, channeling the asset’s immense marketplace headdress into onchain superior markets.
This effort mirrors Ethereum’s ain translation done liquid staking derivatives, but with the imaginable to unlock a deeper excavation of worth fixed bitcoin’s scale.
To contextualize the quality successful scale, Ethereum’s liquid staking market, led by Lido’s stETH, boasts a marketplace headdress of astir $38 billion. In contrast, the full bitcoin LST assemblage is inactive nascent, with total marketplace capitalization astir $2.5 billion. Lombard’s LBTC unsocial accounts for astir $1.4 cardinal of that, oregon astir 40% of the bitcoin LST market.
Lombard’s BARD
Building connected that foundation, Lombard this week announced the instauration of the Liquid Bitcoin Foundation and its autochthonal $BARD token, alongside a $6.75 cardinal assemblage sale.
The Foundation volition enactment arsenic an autarkic steward of the protocol, backing research, grants, and education, portion establishing governance frameworks to sphere neutrality. $BARD volition service arsenic the inferior and governance token of the ecosystem, giving holders the quality to involvement to unafraid Lombard’s halfway infrastructure, ballot connected proposals, and summation entree to caller products.
Jacob Phillips, Lombard’s co-founder, described the assemblage merchantability arsenic “an invitation to implicit 260,000 LBTC holders and others successful the Bitcoin ecosystem to assistance signifier the aboriginal of bitcoin onchain.” Erick Zhang, laminitis of Buidlpad who volition big the sale, added that Lombard is “a pioneer unlocking bitcoin’s afloat imaginable arsenic integer golden and a instauration for next-gen superior markets.”
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