Vitalis

cto @babylonlabs_io

[Babylon @babylonlabs_io]

Today we published a temp check on the @aave governance forum: Babylon Trustless BTC Vault Integration on Aave v4.

The temp check proposes two new Aave v4 Spokes to onboard native BTC as collateral via Trustless Bitcoin Vaults and seeks community input.

https://t.co/l4oa3MdXJA

[YQ @yq_acc]

https://t.co/AlnU6W3zFO

[YQ @yq_acc]

https://t.co/860OTKLD3v

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

I'm not very happy with the code quality and I think agents bloat abstractions, have poor code aesthetics, are very prone to copy pasting code blocks and it's a mess, but at this point I stopped fighting it too hard and just moved on. The agents do not listen to my instructions in the AGENTS.md files. E.g. just as one example, no matter how many times I say something like:

"Every line of code should do exactly one thing and use intermediate variables as a form of documentation"

They will still "multitask" and create complex constructs where one line of code calls 2 functions and then indexes an array with the result. I think in principle I could use hooks or slash commands to clean this up but at some point just a shrug is easier.

Yes I think LLM as a judge for soft rewards is in principle and long term slightly problematic (due to goodharting concerns), but in practice and for now I don't think we've picked the low hanging fruit yet here.

[Vitalis @vitsalis]

@Seb28_7 @dionyziz @gubatron @CommonPrefix @OpenAI @claudeai Claude writes code and codex reviews it in a loop until both are satisfied.

[Common Prefix @CommonPrefix]

Mid-season recap is live🎙️

Honest Majority explores the people and ideas shaping trust technology. Guests share their journey into the space, the technical problems they are solving and the future of secure, scalable, and interoperable distributed systems.

Here’s a quick recap of the first six episodes before the second half of the season. 1/3

[Vitalis @vitsalis]

@dionyziz Thanks for having me 🫡

[Vitalis @vitsalis]

@dntse BaBe saved us from a lot of pain, costs, and complexity in the long term. It was a no brainer :)

[Peter Steinberger 🦞 @steipete]

@IGLIVISION @Cloudflare spin up codex and fix it

[Vitalis @vitsalis]

@dionyziz @CommonPrefix @poddotnetwork @SuiNetwork @dedaub @babylonlabs_io @chainlink @circle @Talus_Labs @OpenZeppelin lfg 🇬🇷

[Vitalis @vitsalis]

Constantly amazed by the work our research team puts out. Soon you'll see it in a live system as well :)

[David Tse @dntse]

Today we release BABE, a new Groth16 proof verification protocol for Bitcoin. It improves the state-of-the-art by three orders of magnitude in setup and storage costs.

https://t.co/Yxfwql6y1E

BABE (BAbylon-BErkeley) is a synthesis of two key ideas:

Witness encryption on linear pairing, and Argo MAC, a recently introduced garbling primitive.

Witness encryption on linear pairing reduces the complex pairing operations in Groth16 verification to a single scalar multiplication on the BN254 elliptic curve. The single scalar multiplication can further be transformed into a vector homomorphic MAC, which can be efficiently computed by Argo MAC.

BABE will be launched as part of Babylon's alpha-testnet for the Trustless Bitcoin Vault in February.

We thank:

- our Berkeley collaborators @SanjamGarg and Dimitris Kolonelos for teaching us so much about witness encryption

- @liameagen and @therealyingtong for sharing their amazing work on Argo MAC

- the Babylon engineering team, for turning our theoretical ideas into a real system with demonstrable performance gains

Check out the paper and give us feedback!

[Vitalis @vitsalis]

Today's a good day. Proud to see the team’s creativity, dedication, and execution recognized.

Back to building now. Can’t wait to get the trustless Bitcoin Vaults protocol into users’ hands.

[Babylon @babylonlabs_io]

Today we’re sharing a major milestone for Babylon.

@a16zcrypto is backing the Babylon Project with $15M to support the development and scaling of Babylon's new protocol Trustless Bitcoin Vaults.

The BTCVaults are designed to provide new, functional utility for the BABY token through the token’s intended role in the usage and operation of the BTCVaults.

Read more in @dntse’s blog:
https://t.co/hmg4lRHlqp

[Vitalis @vitsalis]

@dionyziz @babylonlabs_io @a16zcrypto @dntse @baby_fisherman 🧡

[Babylon @babylonlabs_io]

Did you know only around 1% of Bitcoin is used in DeFi?

We’ve been quietly building the missing infrastructure to make native BTC usable across financial systems without custody, wrappers, or compromise.

Now some very serious long-term thinkers agree.

More soon.

[Vitalis @vitsalis]

@dntse Something to be truly proud of. So many smart people staying curious, working hard, and taking on truly ambitious challenges.

[David Tse @dntse]

Our engineering team is remarkably stable. Most have been with Babylon for 2+ years.

This continuity matters when you're making fundamental design changes like integrating a new cryptographic approach.

The team immediately understood the value and embraced the complexity of implementation.

Stability creates the foundation for ambitious pivots.

[Vitalis @vitsalis]

@alphaleaked excited to work with you

[Vitalis @vitsalis]

@dionyziz @dntse appreciate it! 🫡

[Sun @sunandr_]

Native bitcoin backed loans on @aave V4 is huge. The current market for this lives offchain and is enforced by multi-party legal agreements.

Rates tend to be materially higher because BTC holders don't need to give up custody - e.g. @maplefinance has created a very successful business offering loans against BTC in qualified custody.

Bringing this capability onchain is a major boost in capital efficiency, transparency, and security with much less counterparty risk.

Bullish

[simo @alphaleaked]

As a former Bitcoiner, I’m incredibly proud to announce our partnership with Babylon.

For the first time, native (yes, native) BTC will be used as collateral on Aave.

No bridges.
No custodians.
Purely trustless.

Aave v4 will open a new market.
Gentle reminder, btc market cap = $1.86T.

Just Use Aave.