BTCFi Heats Up Again: The Competition Between BTC Staking and Anchor Asset Market Is Fierce

With the launch of the first phase of the Babylon mainnet, the listing of Pendle BTC LST, and the introduction of various wrapped BTCs, market attention on BTCFi has been steadily increasing. This article will focus on the latest developments in the BTC staking and BTC pegged asset sectors.

BTC Stake Market Overview

Currently, the competition among BTC LST (liquid staking tokens) is becoming increasingly fierce. In the past 30 days, Lombard Finance has achieved rapid growth, reaching the highest TVL with approximately 5900 BTC in deposits, surpassing the long-time leader, Solv Protocol. Lombard has gained a competitive advantage at this stage by establishing strategic partnerships with top re-staking protocols, providing participants with a richer source of re-staking yields and DeFi participation opportunities.

The Importance of Ecological Strategy

In the BTC LST field, ecological strategy has become a key influencing factor in the current competitive landscape. Unlike ETH LRT, which benefits from a mature DeFi ecosystem, BTC LST faces more complex considerations, including downstream DeFi application scenarios, the development stage of BTC L2, the combination with various on-chain BTC-pegged assets, and integration with re-staking platforms.

Each BTC LST provider has adopted different strategic directions:

1. Lombard Finance focuses on the development of the ETH ecosystem, providing rich external rewards for stakers through collaboration with multiple restaking protocols. At the same time, LBTC, as the first BTC LST, has gained support from the ETH restaking protocol.

2. Solv Protocol and Bedrock are actively expanding across multiple chains, with ecosystem development covering upstream deposit reception and downstream application construction. The main liquidity of SolvBTC.BBN and uniBTC is concentrated on the BNB and ETH chains, while also injecting BTC liquidity into other L2s.

3. Lorenzo Protocol and pStake Finance focus on building the BNB chain in the initial phase, supporting the reception of BTCB deposits and minting their respective LST.

Pendle Enters BTCFi

Pendle has recently integrated four types of BTC LST (LBTC, eBTC, uniBTC, and SolvBTC.BBN) into its points market. The actual adoption of LBTC on Pendle is higher than the surface value, as 37% of eBTC is backed by LBTC. This provides LBTC holders with more opportunities to optimize their yield strategies.

In addition to eBTC, the other three types of LST have collaborated with the emerging ETH L2 project Corn. Corn features two unique designs: veTokenomics and Hybrid Tokenized Bitcoin, which may form an integrated path of "Wrap BTC → BTC LST → BTCN → DeFi" in the future.

SatLayer Joins the BTC Staking Market

SatLayer, as a new entrant, competes with Pell Network. Both accept the re-staking of BTC LST to provide security for other protocols. Pell has accumulated a TVL of $270 million and integrates major BTC derivatives across 13 networks. SatLayer is deployed on Ethereum and currently supports various BTC LSTs, with more integrations expected.

BTC Wrapped Token Market Dynamics

1. Coinbase launched cbBTC: Coinbase has launched the wrapped asset cbBTC, supported by its custody services, with a current supply of 2,700 tokens. cbBTC is deployed on the Base and Ethereum networks, has received support from multiple mainstream DeFi protocols, and plans to expand to more chains.

2. Multi-chain expansion of WBTC: Despite security concerns, WBTC still occupies over 60% of the wrapped BTC market. BitGo announced the deployment of WBTC on Avalanche and BNB chains, and multi-chain expansion via LayerZero's universal token standard. However, the adoption rate of WBTC continues to decline, with several top DeFi protocols beginning to remove it from their collateral lists.

3. The active expansion of FBTC: FBTC, managed jointly by Mantle, Antalpha, and Cobo, has been deployed on Ethereum, Mantle, and BNB chains. FBTC is actively promoting widespread adoption in the BTCFi space through the "Sparkle Campaign" and has been adopted by several BTC stake protocols.

Summary

In the trend of continuous growth of BTCFi, BTC staking and BTC pegged assets are two key areas worth noting. There is a trend of excessive construction on the supply side in the BTC staking field, while the market size on the demand side remains uncertain. The trend of various BTC pegged assets being nested with each other has also introduced new systemic risks. For BTC pegged assets, trust remains a key issue. Exchanges, L2, and BTC LST parties are actively developing their respective BTC pegged assets to compete for market share.