tBTC dApp: The first “killer app” for DeFi sector, built to prove the Keep Network concept
It is no longer a secret for anyone today that our current global financial system is far from ideal, and sometimes even completely merciless towards mere mortals, filling the pockets of bankers, members of governments, government agencies, and large stakeholders of world companies at their expense. Humanity has long dreamed of reorganizing the global financial system towards greater transparency, fairness, and decentralization. And thanks to the partial implementation of this long-overdue idea of decentralized finance, today the cryptocurrency market has entered a new cycle of rapid growth.
And although the DeFi wave has just begun to rise, many projects on this topic have already gone through the fast cycle of their peak of fame and blowing down, I think you know what kind of projects I'm talking about. So when choosing one for investment now, you need to be especially careful and judicious. As I remember, DeFi shouldn't look like gambling! This is not that thing for the sake of what we sat out the years of a bloody downtrend, isn't it?
So, as we all know, the vast majority of DeFi projects are being built on the Ethereum blockchain. And yes, exactly that's why we have such a gas price today. But, the absolute leader in terms of capitalization is still remaining Bitcoin, and it seems that he is not going to give up its honorable first place. Only the difference between BTC and the second-largest cryptocurrency in terms of capitalization ETH is more than $ 160 billion, which is almost four times more the capitalization of Ethereum. And this says a lot about the situation on the market as a whole.
So what is going on with BTC if the whole DeFi party takes place on the Ethereum blockchain, does Bitcoin now idle? Looking at the trading activity on several exchanges it does not seem that BTC is now being actively exchanged for ETH or tokens in the Ethereum network. And I would not believe that Bitcoin holders sit back and watch the DeFi market takes on new heights, even if I didn't know what is really happening. Hope you too.
And if you're interested then you're in the right place to get an answer. The following happens: nowadays several companies across the crypto area offer the solution that empowers Bitcoin holders to easily enter the DeFi ecosystem and participate in the events that are taking place there getting an income without spending their BTC. And about the most interesting on my mind solution, I want to tell you further here.
(the number of tokenized BTC for today according to the defipulse.com)
The Keep Network was founded in 2017 by Matt Luongo and Corbin Pon, two smart and experienced founders of a line of successful projects that were feeling an urgency of better privacy tooling for the Ethereum network. And they built a new privacy layer for public blockchains that allows decentralized applications to store and access private information. This idea was realized thanks to the designing of the off-chain containers for private data called keeps. These keeps are managed by KEEP token stakers that must delegate a certain number of KEEP tokens and run a network node, while the core dApp of the project, called Random Beacon serves as a source of randomness while assigning keeps to these stakers. Also, the Random Beacon dApp ensures that any individual staker that is functioning as a signer, cannot decode the information stored in the network. The keeps encrypt private data and keep it protected through the multi-party computation (sMPC). And the assigned signers are getting paid in the form of service fees in exchange for managing and serving these containers for private data.
The second core Keep Network dApp, built to prove the concept is tBTC.
tBTC dApp is the first use case for keeps built by Keep Network dev team. And, looking at today's market, I assume it may be the most popular and useful Keep application. tBTC token is a 1-to-1 Bitcoin-backed ERC-20 token pegged to the price of Bitcoin. And the use of the tBTC dApp makes it possible for Bitcoin holders to enter the DeFi sector that is built in most cases on top of the Ethereum blockchain. In other words, the role of tBTC dApp is to be a trust-minimized bridge between the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains. Anyone can mint tBTC absolutely anonymously and without any intermediates. All that you need is to have BTC, Metamask, and access to the dApp. While the Keep Network signers will do all the rest of the work for you.
For now, tBTC is launched on the Ethereum and Bitcoin mainnets, and the code has already gone through the three deep audits and expects to be sent to the fourth, and maybe even fifth one in September 2020.
If you want to go through these audit docs you can find them here:
The code is planned to be audited frequently in the future so that everyone is sure he is using a reliable and quality product.
Also, it definitely should be emphasized that the Keep and tBTC launch is supported by more than 40 industry-leading DeFi projects that are choosing tBTC as an alternative to BTC on the ETH chain. Such whales like Compound, Aave, Uniswap, Curve Finance, Maker DAO, Balancer, Loopring, and a lot of other decent partners are impatiently waiting for an official Keep&tBTC release.
Summing up I should say that tBTC dApp is a truly great mechanism to convert your BTC into a 1-to-1 Bitcoin-backed ERC-20 token and redeem it back. The use of tBTC tokens allows you to get access to the DeFi world and earn there passive or even active income. tBTC dApp is absolutely accessible for anyone, noncustodial, trustless, and doesn't require user's KYC data. Meanwhile, all the risks and working processes are laying on the network node operators which are selected randomly among the general pool. I will try to disclose this mechanism more detailed a bit later, in my next post about tBTC where I will provide you a simple guide of how to convert your BTC into tBTC and redeem it back. But if you're interested to use it right now then go through the links below to carefully learn the process and risks.
Keep Network website, tBTC website, tBTC dApp, tBTC Yellow Paper, Keep Network GitHub, Messari transparency page, Keep Blog, Staking documentation, tBTC mainnet contract on Etherscan, KEEP on CoinGecko, Twitter, Telegram, Reddit, Discord.
If you have any questions or suggestions contact me via Discord app, my username is: alterkahn#1033