The following is a guest post from Christina Comben.
Fisher Yu is the co-founder and CTO of Babylon, the Bitcoin staking protocol causing a stir among forward-thinking HODLers. Polite and friendly, he asks how I’m doing and where I’ve flown in from to attend the first Bitcoin Conference in the MENA region. “Not as far as you,” I smile and he laughs, having traveled thousands of miles from Australia to Abu Dhabi.
We make our way through throngs of people meandering in the exhibition hall, striking up conversations, checking out booths, and listening to panelists discuss the latest advances in Bitcoin mining. It’s a notable crowd and finding a quiet space to speak is a challenge. Fisher remains unphased, unlike most people in his position who would be incessantly checking their watch and rolling their eyes by now.
At last, we find a vacant table with a couple of high, wonky chairs that scrape the floor with jarring abrasion and challenge our center of gravity as we sit. He makes sure that I’m comfortable and I move the recorder closer, hoping his gentle voice isn’t muffled by the rising din.
Enabling HODLers to Earn Money on Their Bitcoin
I ask Fisher to give an overview of Babylon. He replies,
“What Babylon does is to build native use cases for Bitcoin, and use it to empower the rest of the decentralized world.” I nod and he smiles. “This sounds very abstract. Let me give you a concrete example.”
He says there are currently four broad use cases of Bitcoin—holding, transacting, lending, and bridging—“but they are far from equal.” He explains that “native” use cases mean anything that happens on the Bitcoin blockchain that does not involve a third party (i.e. holding and transacting). Generating yield by lending or carrying out DeFi by bridging requires trust in a third party, either in the person who borrowed your Bitcoin or the developers behind the bridging protocol.
“This implies a much greater level of risk,” Fisher explains. “Holding it and simple payment, it’s very safe to use, as long as you are honest and the Bitcoin chain is secure
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Author: Christina Comben
