2024 is the year when Bitcoin will explode. On the macro level, not only will the BTC ETF be approved, but the application-side inscriptions, Memes, and L2 will also blossom, making Bitcoin present a new ecological feature:
Bitcoin holders are no longer limited to holding, but can more actively participate in on-chain DeFi activities such as staking and lending. BTCFi is generally considered to be the hottest track with the most growth potential in this cycle. Therefore, how to better utilize the underlying infrastructure of the Bitcoin ecosystem and activate the trillion-dollar BTC assets dormant in the Bitcoin ecosystem has become a key issue that BTCFi needs to pay attention to in its development.
Against this background, the emergence of Pell Network is particularly timely: as the first universal security network built on Bitcoin re-staking, Pell Network aims to help all AVS share Bitcoin's strong security foundation and become a powerful driving force for the prosperity of BTCFi.
Since the announcement of the pre-launch, Pell Network has performed impressively, with TVL exceeding $200 million in just three weeks and the number of independent addresses reaching 410,000. It is reported that the project has received millions of dollars in financing.
The impressive growth data not only confirms the market's great enthusiasm for BTCFi, but also stimulates the community's desire to explore Pell Network more deeply. With the launch of BNB Chain Campaigns, Bitlayer Carnival and the approaching test network, Pell Network will attract more enthusiastic participation from a wider range of community members in the foreseeable future.
Looking at the growth drivers behind the data, this article will take a look at the future development potential of the project itself and the Bitcoin ecosystem from the perspectives of BTCFi's huge development prospects, the importance and necessity of AVS sharing Bitcoin's strong security foundation, and the operating logic of the Pell Network project.
BTC Enhanced Version of EigenLayer: Pell builds AVS network based on Bitcoin re-staking
In short, if you understand Eigenlayer, you can easily understand the basic principles of Pell Network.
As we know, the transition of Ethereum from PoW to PoS has ushered in the era of Ethereum staking, and EigenLayer is an Ethereum-based re-staking protocol that allows ETH that has been staked on the Ethereum network to increase the security of the network by re-staking. Active Verification Service (AVS) can use these staked assets to share the Ethereum security foundation.
AVS aims to provide Web3 trust guarantee for any calculation. In many cases, we can simply compare AVS to "middleware", so AVS exists in many forms, such as data availability layer, shared sorter, oracle network, etc. EigenLayer enables AVS to better provide better services for dApps including DeFi and games to promote ecological prosperity. At the same time, users who participate in staking can obtain additional contribution income. This process not only reduces the startup cost of the new blockchain protocol and enhances the anti-attack ability of the entire network, but also improves the efficiency of capital utilization.
In Pell Network: users pledge BTC assets, and the pledged assets will provide AVS with the strongest Bitcoin-based security. DApps that need AVS services will receive better services, thereby building more innovative and better-experienced products. AVS, node operators, Pell protocols, and users who provide pledged BTC will all receive revenue rewards.
But unlike Eigenlayer which focuses on the Ethereum ecosystem, Pell Network aims to build a full-chain AVS network to deliver Bitcoin's strongest security to the entire industry ecosystem.
The core of the full-chain vision is to break the barriers between chains. Pell Network has built a full-chain cross-chain relay network through cross-chain atomic communication, ZK-Rollup and other technologies, which will collect BTC and its LSD liquidity assets scattered in various Layer2s in a unified Pell network ledger, thereby solving the problems of BTC liquidity dispersion and ecosystem isolation, and then realizing a decentralized governance AVS ecological service network, so that Bitcoin can participate in the security verification of a wide range of decentralized ecological applications to expand profit scenarios.
In other words, with the development of Bitcoin re-staking, BTC has also started a nesting doll mode, but no matter how many fish are eaten in one game, users always hold a "voucher" linked to the principal. In addition to native BTC, Pell Network is also committed to giving all vouchers a "final destination", accepting all of these vouchers, in order to integrate fragmented liquidity as much as possible, and inject a solid foundation into the universal security layer supported by BTC.
Pell Network supports multiple asset staking options:
Local Re-staking: Validators can re-stake their BTC by pointing their withdrawal vouchers to the Pell Network contract.
LSD Re-staking: Deposit LSD into the Pell Network smart contract.
BTC LP re-staking: Validators stake a pair of LP tokens containing BTC.
LSD LP re-staking: Validators stake a pair of LP tokens, which includes a liquidity staked BTC token.
At present, Pell Network already supports BNB Smart Chain, Bitlayer, MerlinChain, B² Network, BOB, Core DAO, BEVM and other networks, and has established cooperation with protocols including Lorenzo Protocol, Solv Finance, FBTC, MapProtocol and others, and the full chain map is beginning to emerge.
When the pooled liquidity forms a powerful synergy, Pell Network is committed to guiding these pledged assets to empower the construction of the full-chain AVS network.
Specifically, the Pell Network ecosystem consists of three main roles: stakers, operators, and developers:
Pledgers can choose to directly pledge their assets to the Pell Network and run nodes, or they can choose to entrust them to other agents. The entrusted agents are responsible for operating the relevant verification nodes and collecting fees. Pledgers and agents will gain income, but agents and their pledgers who fail to fulfill their obligations will be punished; operators are responsible for managing and running the AVS network and using BTC LSD to enhance the security of the network; developers focus on designing and adjusting penalty and reward mechanisms for decentralized systems to ensure the safe and orderly operation of the network.
In order to enable Pell Network's pledged assets to be used to support AVS to a greater extent, and to further alleviate AVS's concerns about whether the expected income can cover the operator's operating costs and whether the operator has sufficient computing resources to participate in AVS verification, another ingenious design of Pell Network to build a large-scale AVS network is the layered AVS design.
Specifically, Pell Network's AVS is divided into two types:
Large-scale AVS: The total computational workload of large-scale AVS is evenly distributed across all participating operator nodes. For example, in a large-scale data availability protocol, the data is divided into N blocks, each of which is 2/N of the original data, making the total cost of storing the data comparable to the cost of storing the data by only two nodes. In this way, not only can the data processing requirements on each node be low, but the entire system can achieve high throughput by aggregating the performance of multiple nodes, and can achieve a higher degree of decentralization.
Lightweight AVS: Lightweight AVS is designed to solve many tasks that need to be performed repeatedly but at very low cost, such as using lightweight clients to verify certain information, verify zero-knowledge proofs, etc. These tasks have very low computing and infrastructure requirements, so they are suitable for running on the Pell Network.
Based on this layered design, AVS can build different AVSs according to its own capabilities and needs, ensuring that even single-operating validators can obtain considerable economic benefits from Pell Network, and larger-scale participation can effectively alleviate the concerns about staking centralization. Currently, Pell Network has successfully attracted more than 7 well-known node operators to sign letters of intent for cooperation. With the arrival of the test network activities, Pell Network will also attract more node operators and AVS to register and join.
At this point, Pell Network's vision and solution of building a full-chain ecological consensus layer by unleashing the powerful security of Bitcoin has already come to life. From product architecture design to multi-party benefits in the ecosystem, Pell's ingenious design enables the project to have a unique position in both re-staking and security sharing. This series of advantages is also inseparable from Pell Network's deep understanding of the ecological landscape.
Truly sharing the strongest security foundation of Bitcoin: the uniqueness and necessity of Pell
As we all know, security is the most basic guarantee for the establishment and prosperity of the ecosystem, but how to build a strong security foundation is by no means easy for most projects and practitioners:
Some projects will choose to build a new trust network themselves, but this method of reconstructing the consensus mechanism will not only cause further division of consensus, but the process of continuously improving the degree of decentralization is undoubtedly high-cost and long-term; some projects will choose to build based on mature blockchains such as L1 or L2 to share the security of these chains, but there are also a series of problems, such as the high development cost, and the need to sacrifice some flexibility and autonomy due to the need to comply with the chain's governance rules.
As the founder of the crypto industry, Bitcoin has the strongest security: it not only has a mature and stable consensus mechanism, but also has the widest adoption and recognition in the world, attracting more than $1.3 trillion in funds. The decentralization brought about by wider adoption has further increased the cost for attackers to control the network. If more and more projects can share Bitcoin's unbreakable security foundation, developers can focus more on innovation and functional expansion, thereby further promoting the prosperity of the on-chain ecosystem.
So, how to release the huge value of this "strongest security"? Faced with this problem, Ethereum, which is regarded as the "second safest" in the crypto industry, successfully provided entrepreneurs with a reference idea through the concept of empowering AVS proposed by Eigenlayer. However, successful experience has always been about reference and avoids copying, which also applies to the construction of the BTC version of Eigenlayer:
On the one hand, the operating idea of Eigenlayer built based on the Ethereum ecosystem is more inclined to serve the Ethereum ecosystem. For systems that support non-Ethereum ecosystems, Eigenlayer will face many challenges such as cross-chain staking, fines and governance.
On the other hand, since it is the strongest security for sharing Bitcoin, using Bitcoin as a pledged asset is undoubtedly the most natural choice, which is conducive to enhancing the identification of Bitcoin believers with the mechanism. In addition, Bitcoin volatility is significantly lower than most PoS assets, which largely avoids the possibility that some PoS chains provide attackers with attack opportunities due to a sharp drop in asset value. This makes the shared security solution with Bitcoin as a pledged asset more attractive.
But a very important issue is that Bitcoin’s PoW consensus mechanism itself does not have the ability to generate interest like PoS. Previously, interest-generating schemes built around BTC mostly adopted encapsulation, CeDeFi, cross-chain bridges and other models, all of which have trust assumptions to a certain extent. For example, WBTC needs to trust a single entity, and most BTC side chains need to trust a multi-signature committee, etc., and do not truly share the security foundation of Bitcoin.
The turning point came with the birth of Babylon: Babylon uses staked BTC to help protect the PoS chain and verify transactions on the chain. At the same time, the PoS chain will provide security benefits for Babylon and BTC holders. This innovation realizes the risk-free benefits of BTC native PoS, making the shared security solution with Bitcoin as the staked asset have a more solid implementation foundation. However, there is still a missing part that cannot be ignored in supporting the construction of large-scale AVS:
Babylon mainly serves Pos chains, especially the chains in the Cosmos ecosystem. Since the Bitcoin timestamp service needs to pass messages between the Babylon chain and the Cosmos chain through the IBC protocol, it has great limitations. Babylon cannot be fully utilized by large-scale lightweight AVS to obtain security, so it cannot be used as a general AVS solution.
Babylon makes non-pledgeable BTC pledgeable, completing the transition from 0 to 1, but how can the entire industry share Bitcoin's strong security foundation and realize the explosion of BTCFi from 1 to 10 or even 100? Pell Network aims to build the first universal security network based on Bitcoin re-pledge, enabling AVS in the entire industry to share Bitcoin's strong security foundation. Based on this solid foundation, users, AVS, Bitcoin ecology and even the entire industry ecology will benefit from it.
AVS builds ecological infrastructure together to accumulate BTCFi Summer explosive potential
The value of a healthy ecosystem lies in the fact that not only can all parties involved in the ecosystem benefit, but also from a long-term perspective, it can accumulate potential energy for the development of the entire industry. The universal security network built by Pell Network based on Bitcoin re-staking can be regarded as one of them.
For users, the attraction of participating in the Pell Network lies not only in the points income, but also in the ability to actively participate in the construction of the security foundation of the entire industry, which will bring more potential for profit.
On the one hand, by participating in the Pell Network’s staking, users will be able to receive points as rewards. These points are not only a recognition of user participation, but will also be closely linked to the Pell Network’s token airdrops in the future, providing additional value to users.
On the other hand, by forming a strong security foundation through staking, stakers can enable AVS to provide better services, thereby promoting safer and more efficient operation of dApp. In this process, the income from upper-level applications will be returned to the stakers according to a certain mechanism. The outbreak of a certain dApp will bring users potential and richer returns. As the number of dApp users and transactions increase, the income of stakers will also increase further.
For AVS, Pell Network provides a low-threshold and solid security foundation, allowing developers to focus more on the implementation of business logic without worrying about the underlying security architecture.
More importantly, Pell Network has achieved cross-chain interoperability from the bottom-level design and technology. AVS can be developed once and deployed on multiple chains. This makes Pell Network a fertile ground for the birth of various new AVS and will bring more complete infrastructure to the entire chain ecosystem.
For example, Pell Network can quickly build an economically secure oracle network. Developers do not need to spend a lot of effort to build an independent AVS layer, but can focus on data processing and feeding. Through Pell Network's secure infrastructure, the oracle network can operate more efficiently and reliably, ensuring the accuracy and timeliness of data.
For example, by utilizing the re-staking mechanism and community power within the Pell Network, we can build a high-efficiency, low-cost, large-scale data availability layer to provide strong data support for various dApps and ensure the accessibility and integrity of the data.
For another example, based on the Pell Network’s message passing mechanism, it will be very easy to build a light node cross-chain bridge. The staker can verify the cross-chain signature off-chain. If the challenge event is proven to be different, the validator in the Pell Network will be fined in slow mode (non-optimistic mode). This mechanism effectively guarantees the security and reliability of cross-chain operations.
Other AVS scenarios include ultra-low latency application chains, privacy DeFi protocols, blockchain games, Web3 AI applications, RWA tracks, etc. Through these application scenarios, Pell Network aims to provide more diversified and efficient services for the blockchain ecosystem and promote the development and innovation of the entire industry.
Various new active verification services (AVS) based on the Pell Network can further fill the long-missing ecological infrastructure of the Bitcoin ecosystem and better promote the development of BTCFi.
For the Bitcoin ecosystem, Pell Network's cross-chain interoperability is an important breakthrough. Through seamless connection with other blockchain networks, Bitcoin can flow more efficiently on different chains. BTC is no longer limited to application scenarios on a single chain, but can play a role in a broader blockchain ecosystem, achieving efficient configuration and use of assets.
Secondly, the AVS network built by Pell Network truly shares the security foundation of Bitcoin. This security guarantee not only enhances users' trust in the Bitcoin ecosystem, but also creates a good environment for the development of Layer 2 solutions and dApps. Developers can focus on product innovation and iteration and further improve user experience. Better products and services will also attract more new users to join. This virtuous circle further promotes the growth of the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Outside of the Bitcoin ecosystem, the full-chain attributes of AVS enable application developers in more ecosystems to also gain significant benefits from it. The security layer based on Bitcoin is stronger than any security foundation. Pell Network creates a more reliable and efficient environment for industry developers by realizing the full-chain sharing of Bitcoin security foundation. Developers can also focus more on In terms of product innovation and user experience, we can launch high-quality products in a shorter time to speed up market response.
With the widespread application of AVS services, the on-chain ecosystem will usher in unprecedented prosperity. Developers can use the strong security foundation to build a variety of new applications. These innovative applications not only enrich the diversity of the blockchain ecosystem, but also attract more users and capital to enter this field, promoting the rapid development and maturity of the entire ecosystem.
$300 billion growth space: How to participate in Pell Network?
As an enhanced version of BTC, EigenLayer, Pell Network has huge room for development and potential. First of all, in terms of capital volume, Ethereum's capital volume is about 400 billion US dollars, while Bitcoin's capital volume is as high as 1.5 trillion US dollars. Bitcoin's long-term dominance in the market also shows its more promising ecological expansion potential.
Further analysis shows that the current scale of ETHFi is about 80 billion US dollars. If we simply extrapolate based on this ratio, the scale of BTCFi is likely to reach 300 billion US dollars. This huge expected market size not only demonstrates the huge potential of BTCFi, but also indicates that as an important force driving the prosperity and development of BTCFi, the Pell Network ecosystem also has abundant opportunities and broad market space.
It is worth mentioning that EigenLayer mainly focuses on the Ethereum ecosystem. In comparison, Pell Network also has universal and full-chain advantages, which means that Pell Network can provide support for a wider range of application scenarios from a full-chain perspective. The wider range of services makes Pell Network have stronger potential in future development. For this reason, many community members believe that holding Pell Network chips has good expected returns.
So how can you participate in the Pell Network to accumulate chips more effectively?
First of all, the most important thing not to be missed is the points.
At present, the ecological benefits of Pell Network are presented in the form of points. The Pell points plan aims to achieve a TVL of US$1 billion. During this period, users can obtain basic points by completing tasks such as following Pell Twitter, joining Discord and Telegram, making a first deposit of more than 0.001 BTC, and staking more than 0.01 BTC for 14 consecutive days. In addition, more points can be obtained by participating in the Bitlayer mining ceremony, staking ecological cooperation projects, and inviting friends.
In the previous Bitlayer First Mining Festival, Pell Network, as a cooperative project, provided $3.75 million worth of rewards to users who participated in the interaction and staking, including 30,000 Pell points and 1.5x permanent points cards, etc., attracting the enthusiasm of the community to participate.
As a regular marketing method of the project, points will not only be linked to future airdrops, but will also represent a series of ecological rights and interests. At the moment when the tokens are not online, obtaining more points is equivalent to holding more token chips.
In addition, two major incentive activities in the Pell ecosystem are currently in full swing, and users can win generous rewards by participating in them.
One of the activities is the "TRAIN LIKE A CHAMPION" event held by Pell Network, BNB Chain and 15+ high-quality projects in its ecosystem:
The event is held from July 24 to August 14, 2024, to celebrate the opening of the 2024 Summer Olympics. Participants can earn points by connecting their wallets, minting AI NFTs, and completing project tasks. The top 5,000 participants will have the opportunity to share a $250,000 prize pool. In addition, users with more than 500 points can also participate in a lucky draw worth $100,000. The event has attracted more than 10,000 users.
Specifically, participants need to join the Pell Network Discord #bnb-code channel and enter the command "!bnb" to obtain the activity code, and then enter the activity code on the Pell page to complete the binding.
After binding the referral code, participants can obtain activity points and mint Pell Champion NFT by completing the task of staking at least 0.0001 BTCB (BounceBit), 0.0001 solvBTC (SolvBTC) and 0.0001 stBTC (Lorenzo) on Pell.
Click here for more details on the BNB Chain Campaigns
The second major event is the Yield Carnival jointly organized by Pell Network, Bitlayer and Bedrock. The event will be held from July 25 to August 25, and users can participate in two ways during the event.
The first method: Go to Bedrock’s Minting page, select the Bitlayer chain and mint uniBTC using WBTC/BTC, then pledge uniBTC to Pell.
The second method: Go to Pell's Stake page and select the Bitlayer chain, stake WBTC/BTC to Pell Network, and Pell will work with Bedrock to mint an equal amount of uniBTC for you and deposit it into Pell's restaking Vault. After Babylon goes online, Bedrock will stake BTC to Babylon and earn Babylon staking rewards for you.
Users who participate in this event will be able to receive multiple rewards including Bitlayer points, Bedrock diamonds, Pell points, and future Babylon staking income. In addition, a giveaway event will be held on social media during the event. Interested users can follow Pell’s official Twitter to get more information in a timely manner.
Click here for more details on the Profit Carnival
The simultaneous implementation of multiple activities aims to provide users with diversified benefits through a rich and active ecosystem, and guide users to further explore the specific gameplay of the ecosystem. It is also worth mentioning that according to the roadmap officially released by Pell Network, the Pell test network will be officially launched in early August. At that time, Pell Network will open registration to AVS and will launch a series of incentives to encourage large-scale participation. Pell Network will also take this opportunity to test its applications and services, so as to continuously improve and optimize its own projects.
Outside of the testnet, more milestones of Pell Network are being advanced in an orderly manner.
In August, Pell Network will launch an ecosystem builder incentive program to encourage more developers to join the ecosystem and participate in the construction. In addition, it will establish an AVS Technical Committee and a Node Operator Management Committee to promote the further implementation of the AVS network.
In September, Pell Network will focus on the launch of the mainnet and the release of the token economic model, and will also promote the expansion of AVS coverage to areas such as Al, DePIN and RWA.
In the last quarter of 2024, Pell Network will work on enhancing the decentralization and modularity of Pell and integrating with Babylon’s timestamping services and native BTC staking functionality.
Conclusion
For a long time, BTCFi users have held a large amount of Bitcoin, but due to the lack of efficient utilization methods like Ethereum, most of the Bitcoin assets are still lying in cold wallets, which makes it a general consensus that the BTCFi track has not been fully developed.
Based on this, if the underlying infrastructure of the Bitcoin ecosystem can be better utilized to provide users with returns while ensuring the security of the underlying assets, BTCFi will usher in explosive growth and even exceed the historical highest level of the Ethereum ecosystem.
Based on this trillion-dollar market, Pell Network's solution is not limited to building a specific product, but to establishing a decentralized free market of trust. On the one hand, it provides a variety of equity options and re-staking mechanisms, enhancing the economic and security utility of the Bitcoin network. On the other hand, it supports the construction of lightweight and large-scale decentralized components, providing economical and efficient solutions for the infrastructure and application security of the Bitcoin ecosystem. While promoting the exponential growth of the Bitcoin ecosystem, the entire industry will be able to share the Bitcoin security foundation through the Pell Network AVS network, further unleashing the possibility of on-chain innovation.
Although the Pell Network mainnet has not yet been launched and its future performance needs to be further verified, the TVL exceeded 190 million US dollars and the number of independent addresses exceeded 360,000 three weeks before the launch, which has already demonstrated the project's leading market position to a certain extent. With the development of testnet activities, multi-chain expansion, and BNB Chain Campaigns, we look forward to more exciting performances from Pell Network in the future.