Babylon Phase-2 Launch: Official Announcement

The Babylon Genesis chain is scheduled for public launch at 10AM UTC 10th April 2025, following a brief set-up period (to activate essential components such as validators nodes, finality providers, vigilantes, bridges, etc).

Babylon Genesis will be the first chain that is secured by Bitcoin staking. It is a key step in realizing  the third native use-case of Bitcoin after payment and holding: staking.

1. Phased Launch of Babylon Bitcoin Staking

The Babylon project envisions a Bitcoin-empowered decentralized world. The vision is realized via a 3-phase launch of its Bitcoin staking protocol:

  • Phase-1, locking of Bitcoin stake to bootstrap the supply. Phase-1 staking caps have closed in Dec 2024, with over 57,000 Bitcoins staked in total.
  • Phase-2, launching of Babylon Genesis, a Cosmos-SDK based L1 blockchain. It will be the first Bitcoin Secured network (BSN), the control plane for other BSNs to come, and the liquidity hub for the BSN ecosystem.
  • Phase-3, launching of other BSNs  which will allow other networks to access Bitcoin staking security and liquidity via Babylon Genesis.

For more information about Babylon Genesis, please refer to this blog.

For more information about Babylon tokenomics, please refer to this blog.

For technical documentation, please refer to Babylon Labs docs.

2. Key Features of Phase-2 Launch

Airdrop

Eligible airdrop recipients will receive their BABY tokens in their registered BABY wallets. No claim is needed. For more details about the airdrop, please refer to the Babylon early adopters airdrop announcement.

Dual staking

Babylon Genesis is secured both by BABY and Bitcoin staking. The chain is secured by CometBFT validators that receive BABY delegation and by finality providers that receive Bitcoin delegation. The security is slashable: the validators and the finality providers are slashed if they misbehave. The BABY total supply has an annual inflation of 8%, half of it (4%) will be the reward for BABY stakers and the other half will be the reward for Bitcoin stakers.

BABY staking

BABY token transfer and staking will be enabled on Day 1. Various wallets, custodians, and exchanges support BABY staking.

Bitcoin staking

To register, Phase-1 stakers only need to submit a registration transaction to Babylon Genesis per stake. The transaction includes the technical metadata needed to activate the stake, including the staker’s cryptographic consent to provide slashable security. The registration transaction is a Cosmos SDK transaction that consumes BABY as gas. It is not a Bitcoin transaction.

Fresh Bitcoin stakers need to:

  • submit a similar registration transaction to Babylon Genesis
  • (optionally) wait for the stake unbonding to be programmatically pre-approved
  • submit the Bitcoin staking transaction to the Bitcoin chain

By waiting for the unboding pre-approval before committing to staking, the staker can ensure that it will be able to unbond unilaterally anytime after staking.

A two-week pilot period

  • Cap-1-only staking: For the first two weeks, for security reasons, only Phase-1 Cap-1 active Bitcoin stakes (about 1000 Bitcoin) will be whitelisted for Phase-2 stake registration. This effectively gives Cap-1 stakes two weeks of exclusive access to Babylon Genesis' Bitcoin staking reward, in recognition of the risk they have taken as the first participants.
  • Permissionless staking: After the first two weeks, Bitcoin staking registration will become fully permissionless. All other Phase-1 stakes that have not unbonded, as well as new Bitcoin stakes, will both be able to register.

Other key features include on-chain governance and permissioned CosmWasm smart contract deployment.

3. Key Parameters

Parameter Value Note
Universal chain ID bbn-1
Initial total supply 10,000,000,000 BABY At the public network launch, the estimated total supply will be about 10,015,636,491 BABY because new tokens are minted during the set up period as the inflation.
BABY inflation 8% p.a. 4% as BTC staking rewards.
4% as BABY staking rewards.
Investors, team members and advisors are not allowed to stake their locked BABY in the first year.
BABY stake unbonding time 300 Bitcoin blocks (about 50 hours) Fast unbonding due to BTC security, unlike Cosmos chains' common 21 days.
BTC staking unbonding time 1008 Bitcoin blocks (about one week)
BABY staking slashing ratio 5% The remaining 95% goes back to the BABY staker.
BTC staking slashing ratio 0.1% The remaining 99.9% goes back to the BTC staker, minus the slashing tx fee (0.001 BTC) charged by the BTC network.
BABY staking slashing destination burned
BTC staking slashing destination burned to op_return Why burning? Burning is the only way to ensure trustlessness.
Sending slashed BTC to any managed wallet will motivate collusion.
Burn the slashed BTC to op_return to avoid inflating the UTXO set permanently.
Explorers https://www.mintscan.io/babylon
https://babylon.explorers.guru
Scheduled to go live with the public network launch.

4. Supporting Infrastructures and Applications

4.1 BABY Token Support and Staking

Many mainstream wallets support BABY token and its staking features. Comprehensive guides are already available for users of Keplr, Leap, Cosmostation, Keystone, Ledger and Fordefi. Additionally, more wallet support is currently in the planning stages.

For users who seek custody solutions, the following custodies and a few others are readily available. More will come soon.

Technical user can refer to the BABY Staking CLI Guide here.

4.2 Bitcoin Staking Support

The Babylon Bitcoin staking dashboard provides full Bitcoin staking features, including:

  • allow Phase-1 stakers to unbond and withdraw without registering their stakes to Phase-2
  • allow Phase-1 stakers to register their stakes to Phase-2 to secure Babylon Genesis and receive BABY staking rewards. Bonus airdrop may also apply.
  • allow new Bitcoin stakers to register their stakes to Phase-2 to secure Babylon Genesis and receive BABY staking rewards.

A list of other platforms that support Bitcoin staking can be found here.

Technically savvy stakers could refer to Bitcoin Staking CLI Guide here.

Please kindly note that:

  • Finality provider first: For a Phase-1 stake to register for Phase-2, the finality provider it delegates to needs to register first.
  • Changing finality provider: In case a user wants to change its finality provider for any reason (e.g., the registration of a Phase-1 stake is blocked by an idle finality provider that does not register), the user can unbond, withdraw, and stake again by choosing a different finality provider. The updated airdrop rules allow users to unbond and change finality provider once within 10 days of the unbonding event while still be eligible for the bonus airdrop for transition.

Note: only cap-1 stakes can register for the first 2 weeks for security reasons.

4.3 Other Infrastracture and Apps

(Please note that infrastructures and applications that have an on-chain component will need to pass governance proposals. The projects mentioned here are those expressed their interests.)

4.4 Integration Guides

5. Security

5.1 Audits

The Phase-2 codebase has been audited by:

Further audits are being copy edited and their reports will be published in due course. All audit reports can be found on our documentation site.

5.2 Bug Bounty

The Babylon Genesis chain Bug Bounty Program is scheduled to launch upon the Babylon Genesis launch and it will cover the Phase-2 scope and impacts with a maximum reward of $2M. It will replace the current Phase 1 bug bounty program.

Legal Notice:

THIS IS NOT AN OFFER TO SELL OR THE SOLICITATION OF AN OFFER TO PURCHASE ANY BABY, AND IS NOT AN OFFERING, ADVERTISEMENT,  SOLICITATION, CONFIRMATION, STATEMENT OR ANY FINANCIAL PROMOTION THAT CAN BE CONSTRUED AS AN INVITATION OR INDUCEMENT TO ENGAGE IN ANY INVESTMENT ACTIVITY OR SIMILAR. YOU SHOULD NOT RELY ON THE CONTENT HEREIN FOR ADVICE OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING LEGAL, INVESTMENT, FINANCIAL, TAX, OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL ADVICE, AND SUCH CONTENT IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR ADVICE FROM A QUALIFIED PROFESSIONAL.

This page contains hypothetical, forward-looking, and projected figures, which are not guaranteed and are subject to change. Actual numbers may vary. Babylon Foundation and its affiliates make no representation or warranty, express or implied, as to the completeness, reliability, validity, or accuracy of this information. The content here may contain incorrect information and errors. You agree and acknowledge that any information contained herein is subject to change without notice. No advice or information, whether oral or written, obtained from Babylon Foundation, will be construed to create any warranty or representation. All information in this document is provided on an “as is” basis without any representation or warranty of any kind.

The documents provided herein describe certain planned and specified economic fundamentals of a digital asset, BABY. These materials are intended for informational purposes only and are meant to outline the usage and functionalities of the asset within Babylon Genesis. It is important to understand that the primary purpose of BABY is to pay for fees, provide a mechanism for securing consensus, and allow for decentralized governance on Babylon Genesis; it is not intended to serve as an investment.

Our Terms of Use (found here) include additional risk disclosures, warranty disclaimers, and limitations on liability. We recommend that you read these to ensure you understand the full scope of the applicable terms and conditions.