decrypt.co
Bitcoin-powered layer-one blockchain Core Chain is now letting investors stake their BTC—something that, historically, BTC holders haven’t been able to do.
Staking tokens reward users with a percentage yield—often in the single digits—over a period of time. This has notoriously been exclusive to proof-of-stake blockchains. Traders on Bitcoin, which uses proof-of-work, haven’t been able to stake their tokens.
But Core Chain now allows BTC holders to earn yield by participating in Core Chain’s consensus mechanism, called Satoshi Plus, which combines Delegated Proof of Work (DPoW) and Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS). Enabling users to stake BTC is the next step in strengthening the Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible blockchain, according to Core Chain.
In a way, traders could have previously staked Bitcoin if they didn't mind wrapping the token or losing custody of their assets. Core Chain’s new offering requires neither and, they say, it's the “first-of-its-kind” non-custodial BTC staking.
Alongside this announcement, DeFi Technologies Inc.’s subsidiary, Valour, has is announcing the launch of a yield bearing BTC exchange traded product (ETP) and a novel Core ETP in collaboration with the Core Foundation.
According to the release, the yield bearing BTC ETP will offer yield directly from Core Chain’s block rewards. Whereas the Core ETP is aimed at widening investor access to Core’s staking opportunities through indirect exposure.
"We are at a pivotal moment in the evolution of digital assets, where the boundaries between traditional finance and decentralized finance are not just blurring but merging,” Olivier Roussy Newton, CEO of DeFi Technologies, said in the release. “By introducing yield-bearing opportunities to Bitcoin through these ETPs, we're not only enhancing its utility but also offering investors novel ways to engage with the world's premier cryptocurrency.”
Valour will also manage a validator node on the Core Blockchain, saying it have plans to stake $100 million in BTC through the new non-custodial BTC staking product.
For Core, this comes after a couple of good months. In March, the Core Foundation launched the Core Venture Network which committed $15 million of funding for builders across Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.
A month later, Core announced a new NFT marketplace to run natively on its blockchain and launched CoreBTC as a way to bridge BTC to the Core Chain. Not long after, its CORE token spiked 218% in just one week.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.