Jumpstarting BabelFish and Reaching Our Destination
Half a year ago, on June 7th, BabelFish’s XUSD was released on RSK’s mainnet to enhance stablecoin flow to and from multiple chains. There’s been no last-names behind the development of BabelFish, nor marketing or design teams to speak of, just a group of pseudonymous developers from around the world passionate to build stablecoin solutions on Bitcoin Layer-2. Two months later, on August 26th, the FISH token pre-sale event took place to help sustain BabelFish’s development goals, raising ~$4.2mn in rBTC within half hour.
Since then, BabelFish’s XUSD has reached $22mn in circulation and grown its community to over 3,000 active members across social media platforms. Those numbers may sound big to some, but it’s a warm-up to those working behind the curtain on BabelFish. Having a live product has helped the community and devs get a sense of the demand and limitations to become a sustainable and reliable cross-chain stablecoin sitting on Bitcoin L2.
As the BabelFish distributed team continues to learn the controls of the DAO’s ship, the protocol is slowly positioning itself to deploy across chains and increase the selection of stablecoin collateral, implement governance staking and provide new saving features. As the great Douglas Adams said “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
Rest assured that the infinite improbability drive will soon be turned on, and BabelFish will travel across the DeFi galaxy at a much faster pace in the year ahead. Expect the unexpected and strap-on, there will continue to be growing pains, but BabelFish will always reach its destination, don’t panic.
It behooves BabelFish to stick to this original plan and distribute the collateral currently resting unutilized on the bridge. The amount of collateral lent out can be gradually increased over-time through BIPs. This will enable BabelFish to hedge risk across protocols, earn yield to buy rBTC, and increase xUSD in circulation with liquidity mining incentives. Right now, we are keeping our collateral way too safe inside the bridge, and capital and users will flow to where it is treated best.
To involve the immediate stakeholders in this important decision, the first BIP vote this year will be to commence the liquidity mining rewards to the protocol users and governance stakers, empowering them to vote on the DAO. We propose these FISH rewards, and all future liquidity mining rewards, to vest over six months (at least) and be automatically staked. Future vote will be to vote on the parameters of collateral lent out, liquidity mining rewards, and other priorities. A BIP-0001 draft has just been posted on the forum, and it’d be great to see your feedback.
Finally, expect us going back to basics and hitting the ground running re-energized across all schools. Bear markets are the time to build! If you want to help, reach out! We will be updating our website in the coming days as well, so it will be easier to get a grip on documentation to better understand our roadmap, community, stats and product.
As always, we appreciate your support, this is not investment advice: but patience will be rewarded. Let’s make this the year of BabelFish!
