21 Startup Ideas for sBTC

Week of April 7, 2023

Author

Andre Serrano
April 07, 2023

Dear Bitcoiners,

This issue covers the applications and startup ideas were most excited to see with sBTC. There is already active development in the ecosystem for many of these use cases. For the others, we are seeking founders to get involved. If you are interesting in building the next generation of Bitcoin DeFi products, please get in touch!

DeFi & Trading

1. Automated Market Makers - decentralized swaps between sBTC and other tokens.

2. Bitcoin Yield Aggregators - a protocol for yield optimization that automates investing in various strategies.

3. Bitcoin-backed Stablecoins - decentralized stablecoins to access liquidity.

4. Bridges between sBTC and wBTC - an onramp for wrapped Bitcoin users on other chains to convert to sBTC.

5. Crowdfunding Protocol - a collaborative Bitcoin-native financing platform.

6. Atomic Swaps between sBTC and BTC - easily convert between sBTC and native Bitcoin.

7. Liquid Stacking - earn a yield on BTC while maintaining liquidity in DeFi protocols.

8. Multi-chain DEX - cross-chain swaps involving sBTC.

9. Stableswap Protocol - liquidity infrastructure to trade multiple like-assets.

Derivatives

10. sBTC-backed Options, Perpetuals & Futures Trading - allow users to go long/short on BTC using sBTC as collateral

Lending & Borrowing

11. Collateralized Bitcoin Loans - permissionless lending and borrowing.

12. Bitcoin Flash Loans - flash loan protocol for arbitrage and collateral swapping.

13. Decentralized Mortgage App - built on an sBTC borrowing pool, this would allow users to borrow against BTC to get their dream house.

14. Under-collateralized Loans - Bitcoin loans for institutional borrowers.

Lightning network

15. Lightning Network Swaps - swaps between BTC on the lightning network, sBTC and stablecoins.

16. Borrow Taro stablecoins against BTC balance - BTC pegs in to sBTC to borrow a wrapped version of the Taro stablecoin from a lending pool on Stacks, which is then automatically unwrapped on Lightning for the user to start spending.

Infrastructure

17. Decentralized Mining & Stacking pools - use sBTC to distribute proceeds in Bitcoin.

18. Discreet Log Contracts - integrate sBTC with DLCs to improve the user experience for sBTC.

NFTs

19. Bitcoin NFT Liquidity - buy and sell NFTs directly with sBTC.

20. NFT Lending - borrow and lend NFTs using sBTC as collateral.

21. Ordinals Trading - use sBTC to improve access to Ordinals marketplaces and trading.

The list goes on! There are countless other applications to explore for sBTC and this is by no means an exhaustive list. If you have anymore ideas for a decentralized, programmable Bitcoin, the working group would love to hear from you.

💻 Engineering Updates

  • Igor

    • ✅ sBTC Web frontend and Web backend deployed to production. Remaining deployment: Stacks API and sBTC Signers / Coordinator.

    • ✅ Protocol Working Group projects assigned owners and design documents drafted.

    • ✅ Clarity Working Group with José, Fernando, Marvin, and Jesus. Assigned first round of tasks.

    • ✅ sBTC Coordinator and Signer remaining integration with Stacks progressing.

    • ✅ Crypto audit of WTF paper complete. Next, incorporate feedback and continue with the code audit.

    • 🤖 GPT-4 is leading to a significant productivity increase in the team.

  • @Ӿoloki#3105

    • Merged core-eng PR#229 Sign/verify all FROST messages

    • Merged p256k1 PR#54 Add TryFrom<&str> for ecdsa::PublicKey

    • Merged p256k1 PR#55 Add Scalar::get_u32

    • Merged p256k1 PR#56 Derive all Errors from Clone

    • Merged frost PR#94 Calculate party public keys during signature aggregation; use Signer trait for bip340 tests

  • @Jacinta#2534

    • Opened core-eng PR#248 Build mint/burn/set-address transactions

      • Currently blocked by insufficient information in the peg_out_request_op: See issue#3647

    • WIP: core-eng issue#202 for building bitcoin peg out transactions

    • Updated P-24 sBTC alpha stacks-coordinator project plan

  • @mårten#2709

  • @fjs#4368

    • Helping with mint/burn transaction

    • WiP: deployment

  • @mpj#2095

    • Drafted PR “Randomize port of bitcoind util for integration test” PR-171

⚒️ Go-To-Market Updates

  • Created UX research proposal to gather in-depth research on user behavior.

  • Kicked off sBTC marketing & communications planning and identified early needs for sBTC launch later this year.

  • Identified priority SIPs needed for sBTC development.

  • Reviewed critical bounty applications.

  • Presented sBTC to Stacks Chapter program.

🌍 Around the Ecosystem

Signing off,

Andre