Very cool to see native BTC as collateral on Aave.
Babylon's temp check PASSED to deploy two Aave V4 spokes where you borrow against BTC that never leaves Bitcoin chain.
So no wrapping, no bridging, no custodians.
How it works, as I understand it:
- You lock BTC into a Taproot vault on Bitcoin. The script is fixed at creation: who can ever redeem BTC, and which Ethereum contract decides who currently holds that right.
- Aave mints vaultBTC against it, a transfer-restricted ERC-20 for accounting. You borrow stables or any other asset on a dedicated V4 spoke.
- Repay the loan, submit a ZK proof of repayment on Bitcoin, get your coins back.
But how do you liquidate on slow Bitcoin mainnet?
Nothing gets liquidated on Bitcoin in real time. Liquidators liquidate you on Ethereum, then instantly swap the seized vault for WBTC from the Aave hub at a small premium.
Permissioned arbitrageurs later buy the escrowed vault, repay the WBTC, and redeem the actual BTC on Bitcoin through a fraud-proof window that takes days.
And no, you can't watch the price dump and move your BTC to another wallet.
Locking means the coins sit in a UTXO that only the vault script can release.
Your Ledger txs can't move BTC same as you can't spend from a multisig alone.
Claims without a valid proof get challenged and blocked during the fraud window.
This is super cool and 2022/23 CT would be full with discussions about it.
Also 'trustless' does some work here mainly because arbitrageurs are a permissioned entity.
Babylon has ~51k BTC ($3.1B) staked natively, so demand for skipping wrappers is here.
Personally, I love the idea of native BTC but wBTC risk is replaced by experimental risks in the meantime.
Open interest (two-sided) on @tradexyz is close to all-time highs at ~$2.6b, up ~10x since the start of the year.
Largest markets by OI:
🧺 S&P500, $442.61m
🧺 XYZ100, $380.28m
🛢️ BRENTOIL, $351.38m
🛢️ WTIOIL, $228.46m
🤖 NVDA, $166.66m
🤖 MU, $137.85m
🤖 MRVL, $89.14m
Not a good take.
DeFi infra today is materially more resilient than in prior cycles (partially also thanks to AI).
Also DeFi has improved across the board over the years:
- better risk engines + lending market structures
- formal verification, audits, bug bounties
- better cap management, oracle improvements
- automated monitoring and security operations inc. circuit breakers
- far better tooling for smart contract security (including AI-assisted analysis)
Ironically, a lot of the remaining attack surface now comes from web2-type opsec, which is why many DeFi teams are investing heavily into better processes (inc. SOC2-based), infra hardening, and internal controls.
DeFi is constantly evolving, but pretending the industry hasn’t matured significantly or that AI is only a net negative for DeFi security is simply not true. The same AI capabilities attackers use are also increasingly used by security researchers, auditors, and whitehats to strengthen protocols.
DeFi Will Win.
LlamaAI just one-shotted this Ethereum dashboard.
Creating a visualization with 50+ components like this used to take hours. Now you can convert analysis to a custom dashboard without interrupting your workflow.
$13B in DeFi TVL moved in 48 hours last week.
Reflexivity is what makes onchain markets work. Structure is what will make them scale.
Symbiotic is building stability for scale.
Aave was the least to blame in the whole situation, but suffered the most for it. Even more than Layer Zero and Kelp.
It will be great to see it making ATHs in due time.
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The Arbitrum Security Council has taken emergency action to freeze the 30,766 ETH being held in the address on Arbitrum One that is connected to the KelpDAO exploit. The Security Council acted with input from law enforcement as to the exploiter’s identity, and, at all times, weighed its commitment to the security and integrity of the Arbitrum community without impacting any Arbitrum users or applications.
After significant technical diligence and deliberation, the Security Council identified and executed a technical approach to move funds to safety without affecting any other chain state or Arbitrum users.
As of April 20 11:26pm ET the funds have been successfully transferred to an intermediary frozen wallet. They are no longer accessible to the address that originally held the funds, and can only be moved by further action by Arbitrum governance, which will be coordinated with relevant parties.