The Smart Economy Podcast: Real-World Blockchain Applications with Crypto, DeFi, NFTs, and DAOs Building Bitcoin's Third Native Use Case with Babylon Labs Co-Founder Fisher Yu
Jan 16, 2025
53:39
In this episode of The Smart Economy Podcast, host Dylan Grabowski is joined by Mingchao (Fisher) Yu, co-founder and CTO of Babylon Labs, a non-custodial staking protocol that uses the underlying value of Bitcoin to secure a variety of proof-of-stake networks.
Join them as they discuss:
- How Bitcoin can secure PoS chains trustlessly
- The journey from 1,000 BTC to $3.3B+ TVL
- Building truly decentralized security markets
- The roadmap for Bitcoin's evolution in DeFi
- Uniting traditional finance with crypto through BTC
- The future of cross-chain security sharing
- Real institutional adoption insights
And much more!
Fisher's career has spanned a variety of roles from deep technology systems engineering to leadership in blockchain innovations at Babylon, where he's currently steering efforts to integrate Bitcoin more fully into the decentralized finance landscape. Before Babylon Labs, Fisher was a managing director at Hash Laboratories, senior staff research engineer at Dolby Laboratories, and senior system engineer at InterfereX Communications.
Episode Highlights:
- [00:01:57] Introduction to Fisher Yu and Babylon Labs' non-custodial staking protocol
- [00:16:32] Babylon's founding story and origin in late 2021
- [00:17:06] Evolution from merge mining to Bitcoin staking solution
- [00:23:11] Three target ecosystems: Cosmos, Ethereum rollups, Bitcoin rollups
- [00:27:27] Babylon's three-phase launch strategy
- [00:38:13] Current adoption metrics: 66.8K+ stakers, 74K delegations
- [00:42:57] Geographic restrictions and regulatory considerations
- [00:47:55] Discussion on Bitcoin centralization concerns
- [00:50:19] 2025 roadmap and vision for "Bitcoin DeFi genesis"
- [00:51:56] Contact information and community channels
Previous guests include: Rusty Matveev, Chief Strategy Officer at Calaxy; Andrew Lawrence, CEO and Co-Founder of Censo; Zac Townsend, CEO and Co-Founder of Meanwhile; Jesper Johansen, CEO and Co-Founder of Northstake; Tama Churchouse, COO of Cumberland Labs; Holly Wood of Boson Protocol; Sid Powell of Maple Finance; Chad Barraford of THORChain; and many others.
Check out our three most downloaded episodes:
- Laying the Groundwork for a Billion-User Blockchain with Rich Rines, Contributor at Core DAO
- Staking the Future: From Blockchain Beginnings to Institutional Innovations with Chen Zhuling of RockX
- The Unstoppable Nature of Blockchain: A Conversation with Bonart Mati of Obligate
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