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Babylon, a blockchain platform which combines the best of both worlds by reusing the immense Bitcoin hash power has successfully deployed a major upgrade to its testnet. V0.7.1 of the network will allow developers to extract security from Bitcoin to secure their applications and blockchains by deploying Babylon smart contracts. It also introduces comprehensive smart contract capabilities built using the popular CosmoWasm and Wasmd framework.
By providing a data-available timestamping service, Babylon protects PoS chains by allowing them to timestamp data-available block checkpoints, fraud proofs and censored transactions on Babylon. Babylon miners merge mine with Bitcoin and thus the platform has zero additional energy cost. The security of a Babylon-enhanced PoS protocol is formalized by a cryptoeconomic security theorem which shows slashable safety and liveness guarantees.
Sunny King and Scott Nadal created the proof of stake model in 2012. The first cryptocurrency project to use this algorithm was Peercoin. The Proof of Stake aims to make the validation process virtual. The flow process for the Proof of Stake consensus mechanism is the same as that of PoW. However, the method to achieve the end result is distinct. Proof of Stake replaces the miners with validators or forgers. These validators will house their resources in the blockchain as a stake.
They will wager on the next block that they feel should be included in the chain. Each contributor or validator will receive a reward according to their stake. Ethereum developers are planning to migrate from the Proof of Work (PoW) method to Proof of Stake (PoS). PoS will consume fewer electricity resources during mining compared to PoW. Proof of Stake can also make attacks on the blockchain more difficult. It will cost too many resources to make an attack on the chain. One downside of the PoS consensus mechanism is the large number of coins required before a forger is allowed to make a stake.
The community has been eagerly anticipating this upgrade ever since Babylon's initial testnet launch four months ago. During this period, Babylon's testnet has drawn significant interest and integrated with 28 of the top Cosmos SDK chains, including Osmosis, Akash, Sei Network, Injective, Evmos, and Stride, thereby demonstrating traction for its technology.
This upgrade extends Babylon's capabilities beyond the Cosmos ecosystem, enabling it to cater to a broader range of applications. It positions Babylon as a robust platform for developing decentralized applications for all verticals, especially DeFi, NFTs, and GameFi, where security is top priority.
David Tse, Co-Founder of Babylon, said: "We are thrilled to announce the launch of Babylon v0.7.1, introducing the integration of smart contracts. This marks a crucial milestone for Babylon, turning it into a powerful platform for deploying a wide range of protocols, thereby facilitating the development of decentralized applications secured by the strength of the Bitcoin network.
Babylon is a project that designs security protocols for the decentralized world. Babylon's origins come from a research paper about Bitcoin security co-authored by co-founder of Babylon David Tse, a professor at Stanford and Ethereum 2.0 researcher, and the founder of EigenLayer Sreeram Kannan, and their colleagues. The project is led by a team of consensus protocol researchers from Stanford and experienced layer 1 engineers from around the world.
Babylon's mission is to scale Bitcoin to secure the decentralized world. To achieve this, Babylon utilizes the three primary facets of Bitcoin: Bitcoin as an asset, its reliable timestamping service, its most censorship-resistant blockspace in the world,. To leverage these facets, Babylon is developing three innovative security-sharing protocols: Bitcoin Staking Protocol, Bitcoin Timestamping Protocol, and Bitcoin Data Availability Protocol. Through these pioneering protocols, Babylon envisions a more secure and decentralized future.
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