Babylon

BABY is the native token of the Babylon Genesis Chain. It supports core operations on the chain and coordinates activities across the Babylon protocol. Its key uses include:

• Staking: BABY is staked to secure the Babylon Genesis Chain. Delegators assign BABY to validators, who produce blocks and validate Bitcoin checkpoint proofs. Staking follows an epoch-based execution model using the custom x/epoching module.

• Governance: BABY holders vote on on-chain proposals related to protocol changes, parameter updates, software upgrades, and whitelisting of smart contract deployers. Proposals require a minimum deposit of 50,000 BABY and follow a 3-day voting period.

• Gas Payments: BABY is used to pay for transaction fees on the Babylon Genesis Chain.

• Incentives: BABY rewards are distributed to both BABY and BTC stakers. Token inflation is set at 8% annually, split evenly between the two staking groups.

During the protocol’s permissioned phase, smart contract deployments are limited to governance-approved whitelisted accounts. BABY also plays a central role in incentivising correct validator and finality provider behaviour and in enforcing penalties through Bitcoin-level slashing mechanisms.

Babylon Labs, the core development team behind the Babylon protocol, was co-founded by:

• Professor David Tse, a professor at Stanford University, known for his research in networks, consensus mechanisms, and distributed systems

• Dr. Mingchao “Fisher” Yu, a cryptography specialist and the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Babylon, who leads the protocol's technical design and architecture

Together, they introduced the concept of native Bitcoin staking as a solution to improve economic security in PoS networks without requiring token wrapping or bridging. Under their leadership, Babylon Labs has grown into a global team of engineers, protocol researchers, and Cosmos SDK developers.