new investment in Lombard to connect Bitcoin to DeFi

Binance Labs has announced its new investment in Lombard, the developer and distributor of the liquid staked Bitcoin token LBTC. The project allows LBTC holders to earn on their Bitcoin by leveraging their assets in DeFi. 

Binance Labs and the investment in Lombard and its token LBTC 

Binance Labs has announced that it has invested in Lombard and its liquid staked Bitcoin token, LBTC. 

https://twitter.com/BinazceLads/status/1846590943442632899

“We have invested in @Lombard_Finance. Lombard is the developer and distributor of LBTC, a liquid staked Bitcoin token that allows individual holders and large institutions to earn a yield on their Bitcoin by leveraging their assets in DeFi. Update on $LBD requests for all users of the $LBTC LST ecosystem. The collection window runs from June 11 to October 11, while requests will be active from November 13. Users can see their allocation below: http://snapshot-lombard.net”

Launched last August, the Lombard project allows both individual holders and large institutions to earn on their Bitcoin by leveraging their assets in DeFi.

Its goal is precisely to bridge the gap between the economic value of Bitcoin (BTC), security capabilities, and the dynamic opportunities of DeFi.

In these two months, Lombard has grown to hold 40% of the Bitcoin LST market, with a Total Value Locked (TVL) of over 500 million dollars, from more than 12,500 users. 

Not only that, over 60% of the total LBTC is fueling yield strategies on Pendle, institutional lending with Maple Finance, and lending on platforms like Morpho and ZeroLend.

Binance Labs to expand LBTC on new chains and connect Bitcoin to DeFi

With the new funding from Binance Labs, Lombard plans to expand access to LBTC through new chains, allowing users to stake BTC and obtain LBTC.

At the moment, Lombard is in phase 2 of its roadmap, focused on the integration of LBTC with the main Ethereum protocols DeFi.

Phase 3, on the other hand, will see LBTC available on more Layer-2 chains and Layer-1 networks, in addition to a deeper integration with the Babylon Bitcoin Staking protocol. Starting from the last Cap 2 of Babylon, Lombard is now the major contributor to the platform, with over 7,100 BTC delegated to it.

Regarding the new investment, Andy Chang, Investment Director of Binance Labs, said:

“We are excited to support Lombard’s vision of scaling LBTC across the DeFi. At Binance Labs, we are committed to supporting early-stage projects like Lombard that have the potential for a significant and sustainable impact on the Web3 ecosystem. Lombard’s approach to integrating Bitcoin with DeFi addresses a clear market need, and the rapid growth of LBTC demonstrates user interest in unlocking greater utility from their Bitcoin holdings.”

The investment in Movement Labs

Last May, Binance Labs invested in Movement Labs, the project of “Move Everywhere”.

Founded in 2022, Movement Labs anticipates the development of modular Move-based blockchains and the introduction of M2, the first Layer 2 of the Move Virtual Machine for Ethereum. 

The objective of the project is to expand the application of the Move programming language across various blockchain ecosystems through a range of open-source tools, frameworks, and protocols. 

Here too, just like for the investment in Lombard, the amount of the investment by Binance Labs has not been disclosed. 

What is known is that the Venture Capital arm and accelerator of the crypto-exchange makes strategic investments. With Lombard to connect BTC to DeFi, with Movement Labs to expand the blockchain landscape.