With the recent announcement of another round of US$70 million in financing for the BTC ecosystem project Babylon, the BTC ecosystem staking track has once again attracted attention.
Liquidity staking service providers with a keen sense of smell have begun to establish cooperation with Babylon, and have expanded their liquidity staking services to the BTC ecosystem to seize the opportunity. There are many small projects among them, which have expanded their territory to the BTC ecosystem to gain growth opportunities, and there may be potential alpha here.
Some time ago, Binance wrote a research report on the current situation of high FDV and low MC (https://www.binance.com/en/research/analysis/low-float-and-high-fdv-how-did-we-get-here), and will take the lead in supporting small and medium-sized cryptocurrency projects in the future, inviting high-quality teams and projects to apply for Binance listing projects. For Binance, it values small and medium-sized cryptocurrency projects with good fundamentals, organic community foundation, sustainable business model and industry responsibility.
Therefore, some small projects in the liquidity staking track can’t help but make people think that there may be opportunities to be listed on Binance. For example, pSTAKE Finance @pStakeFinance, a small staking project invested by Binance Labs, announced last month that it has reached a cooperation with Babylon to launch a BTC liquid staking solution based on the Babylon Bitcoin staking protocol.
pSTAKE raised more than 20 million USD in the last bull market, and its investors are all top-tier companies, including Coinbase Ventures, DeFiance Capital, Spartan Group, etc. The public offering round was valued at 200 million USD, but now FDV is only over 60 million USD, and the circulation rate has reached 94%.
After the financing at the end of 21, it didn’t take long for the bear market to turn around. Due to the restrictions on unlocking conditions, it is highly likely that the chips in the hands of institutions will not be sold in such a depressed currency price and liquidity in the bear market. Instead, they are more willing to help the project grow. And sufficient funds also support the team to continue to work steadily throughout the bear market.
pSTAKE's team has extensive experience in the crypto world. Its founder and CEO Tushar Aggarwal @Tushar307 was previously the head of LuneX Ventures. As a management consultant in the financial services industry, he has extensive experience in finance and web3. Co-founder Mikhil Pandey @PandeyMikhil has more than 5 years of web3 experience as an engineer and has led a full suite of products.
pSTAKE was first born in Cosmos and is a pioneer in Cosmos’ liquidity staking service. It has been deeply involved in Cosmos for 4 years and is applying its professional experience in liquidity staking to the BTC chain.
pSTAKE has been exploring more application scenarios for LST in the past two years. Since the beginning of this year, the project has also been active. Some time ago, pSTAKE was cross-chained to the BASE chain and provided liquidity on Aerodrome.
Excluding the fluctuation of the coin price, TVL did see a wave of growth after pSTAKE supported BNB staking in August 2022. Recently, pSTAKE announced that it would build a Bitcoin liquidity staking solution on Babylon, which is likely to increase its TVL with the help of BTC staking. Since the announcement, the price of pSTAKE has also risen sharply.
In addition, security is the basic skill of staking projects and the pain point of BTC asset staking users. In terms of security, pSTAKE selects leading global security providers such as Hexens, Halborn, PeckShield, etc. to conduct audits. Especially for BTC liquidity staking solutions, pSTAKE is working with trusted institutional custody providers to enhance the security of its products, thereby attracting TVL from BTC whales and institutions.
Therefore, whether from the perspective of token circulation and fundamentals, or from the perspective of a sustainable business model and the team's sense of responsibility, pSTAKE does meet Binance's requirements for listing small and medium-sized cryptocurrency projects.
In the future, with the launch of BTC ecological projects such as Babylon, there will also be a wave of asset growth for liquidity staking projects. Early birds who are well prepared will be able to seize this wave of dividends first.