In addition to WBTC, what other BTC custody options are there?

Original title: "After WBTC, a Perspective on the Landscape of Custody BTC"

Original author: Wenser, Odaily Planet Daily

The impact of the WBTC controversy continues to spread.

On August 19, the well-known market maker Wintermute recharged 1631.863 WBTC to Binance in 13 hours, with a value of US$97.03 million. Since the 17th, the cumulative transfer volume has increased to 5860.67, with a total value of up to US$348 million; MakerDAO passed the "Reduce WBTC Collateral Size" proposal on August 15, and subsequent implementation includes: the core treasury will reduce WBTC-A DC-IAM (maximum collateral amount) from 500 million to 0; WBTC-B DC-IAM (maximum collateral amount) from 250 million to 0; WBTC-C DC-IAM (maximum collateral amount) from 500 million to 0; disable WBTC lending in SparkLend; reduce WBTC LTV from 74% to 0%.

In the face of implicit risks, the operations of these institutions are understandable. But many people also ask: After WBTC, what other custodial BTC options are available for DeFi liquidity?

Odaily Planet Daily will briefly introduce other existing alternatives in the market in this article.

FBTC

In April this year, FBTC, a new Bitcoin asset and brand supported by Ethereum L2 network Mantle, Mantle LSP and digital asset financial service platform Antalpha Prime, announced plans to launch its full-chain Bitcoin asset.

It is understood that FBTC maintains a 1:1 peg with Bitcoin, aiming to adopt a yield-enhancing strategy in the Bitcoin ecosystem to enhance the utility and liquidity of Bitcoin. In the initial launch phase in May, FBTC is expected to be deployed on chains such as Ethereum, Solana, Aptos, Sui, Merlin Chain, BNB Smart Chain and Polygon POS. Later, FBTC may be integrated with wallets such as Binance Wallet, Bybit Wallet, Bitget Wallet, OKX Wallet, Particle Network, TokenPocket and UniSat.

FBTC launches promotional materials

According to the FBTC official website, FBTC will launch Genesis Bonfire and income strategy-related plans in the third quarter of 2024; and start ecosystem construction and multi-chain expansion in the fourth quarter. It is worth mentioning that FBTC supports seamless interoperability to support various applications on L1 and L2 networks.

swBTC

On August 14, Ethereum staking project Swell (@swellnetworkio) announced the launch of the liquidity re-staking token "swBTC". Users can deposit WBTC to obtain swBTC to generate income. It is expected that the re-staking income will be distributed from mid-September.

The platform later announced that since the launch of swBTC this week, the platform has deposited more than $13 million in WBTC (currently about $13.6 million), and Curve Finance has a liquidity of $3 million. In addition, lending integration is coming soon.

According to the official announcement of Swell, the security guarantees of swBTC mainly include:

· Based on the proven @yearnfi v3

· Risk monitoring provided by @gauntlet_xyz

· Safe deposit strategy provided by @aerafinance

· Security audit conducted by @NethermindEth and @chain_security

swBTC exchange website

According to the official website, as of the time of writing, the locked amount of swBTC has reached 13.9615 million US dollars, which is close to 14 million US dollars in less than a week after its launch, equivalent to 234 BTC.

yBTC

In July, @pStakeFinance officially stated that pSTAKE aims to use the expertise accumulated since entering the field of liquidity staking in early 2021 to solve "Babylon's staking income problem, that is, to achieve automatically compounded Bitcoin income with the help of yBTC. pSTAKE will issue yBTC (yielding BTC) on Ethereum, the leading ecosystem in DeFi and liquidity, in future versions. Subsequently, yBTC will also be integrated into the EVM ecosystem and BTC L2 network to provide additional accessibility and income, so as to achieve "providing reliable Bitcoin income to everyone."

Babylon's mainnet staking activity is about to start. Users will be able to deposit BTC into @pStakeFinance to mint yBTC. Subsequent native BTC deposits will flow into Babylon, and the corresponding income will be automatically compounded to yBTC holders as BTC derivatives.

pSTAKE's description of yBTC's operation mode

Previously, according to official explanations, after pSTAKE launched the semi-public v1 (BTC deposits only) testnet, 46,710 users deposited 54.69 testnet BTC and completed 73,546 on-chain transactions. For more updates on yBTC, please refer to the official testnet website for relevant information.

cbBTC

On August 14, the official account of Coinbase posted that cbBTC will be launched soon, but no further details were disclosed. Community users speculated that the exchange is planning to launch its own wrapped Bitcoin token.

Earlier that day, Jesse Pollak, head of the Base protocol, also posted a message saying: "I want to say it out loud: I love Bitcoin, and I am very grateful for its pioneering role in the field of cryptocurrency. We will build a large-scale Bitcoin economy on Base."

Bitget Research Institute said in response to this news, "Coinbase may bring Bitcoin into the DeFi ecosystem through centralized + compliant custody, and the market generally looks forward to the arrival of BTCfi."

Coinbase Official Tweet

tBTC

@tBTC_project allows users to create tBTC using BTC through a signer network. Signers are randomly selected and different signer groups are selected for each minted tBTC. Signers must provide ETH as collateral to ensure that they cannot take away the locked BTC. In effect, signers must overcollateralize their deposit by providing 1.5 BTC worth of ETH. Signers are willing to lock up their ETH and will therefore be rewarded for the fees paid upon redemption.

According to the official website, the total amount of tBTC is currently 3344.7, equivalent to approximately $195 million.

According to Dune data, the number of tBTC holders is 1269, accounting for approximately 2.1% of the BTC share on Ethereum. The top contracts holding tBTC include Mezo, Wormhole, Curve, etc.

Others

It is worth noting that according to Dune data, the current custodial BTC on the Ethereum chain also includes renBTC, HBTC, imBTC, sBTC and other schemes, but both the number and the scale of funds are dwarfed by WBTC, including:

renBTC was coldly received by the market after FTX crashed in November 2022: MakerDAO canceled the use of renBTC as collateral and reduced the risk exposure of DAO as a risky asset. The asset was developed by RenProtocol, a project supported by AlamedaResearch, and is a wrapped Bitcoin asset like WBTC. Previously, hackers had exchanged 10,000 ETH for 685 renBTC and bridged it to the Bitcoin network. The last message from the official account stopped in January this year.

HBTC was previously questioned by Theblock for information transparency. The latest news on its official X platform account is a response to the question in 2022, but the official website seems to have not been updated for a long time. Perhaps after Huobi changed hands, the project was gradually abandoned.

sBTC is one of the synthetic assets created by the Synthetix protocol. Generally speaking, synthetic assets track the value of different assets, such as the SP500 index, TESLA stock, oil prices or Bitcoin. In Synthetix, all synthetic assets are secured by collateral in the form of SNX tokens. The protocol is overcollateralized, mainly to absorb the drastic price changes of synthetic assets. According to Dune data, the current ETHBTC trading volume of Synthetix V2 on August 14 was around US$280,000.

In addition, in March this year, the Bifrost Foundation announced a partnership with Stacks. The Stacks network is expected to be upgraded this year to enable sBTC, a non-custodial asset pegged 1:1 to Bitcoin. sBTC will be used as collateral for BTCFi services and support the use of BtcUSD in the Stacks ecosystem (BtcUSD is the over-collateralized stablecoin for BTCFi, the native Bitcoin staking service that Bifrost intends to launch).

Dune data information interface

Summary: Different xBTC, different functions

If WBTC’s role is to introduce BTC’s liquidity into the Ethereum ecosystem, then other types of xBTC are more like assets that meet different needs in different scenarios (such as interest-bearing, mortgage, etc.).

Now that the legitimacy and transparency of WBTC are being questioned, various decentralized or centralized custodial BTC assets may usher in a new wave of “overflow liquidity”, which may come from WBTC or native BTC assets.

Reference article:

Has Bitcoin finally taken over Ethereum? Learn about wBTC, tBTC, renBTC and sBTC in one article》

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