Lombard, the developer of LBTC, announced its public launch after the successful completion of its private beta on mainnet, which has attracted $165M (2,767 BTC) in deposits to date from over 600 institutional capital allocators and the nearly 500,000 users on its waitlist.
LBTC is a liquid and yield-bearing representation of BTC, which can move seamlessly across chains and decentralized finance as collateral without compromising security. LBTC unlocks unprecedented access to staking, yield generation, lending, borrowing, and trading with Bitcoin.
Lombard began successfully staking initial users’ deposits into Babylon’s first mainnet cap last Thursday. Staked Bitcoin secures proof-of-stake (PoS) networks with liquid staking tokens (LSTs) like LBTC, earns yield, and remains liquid for use across DeFi.
Lombard has initially partnered with major DeFi protocols to integrate LBTC, including Symbiotic, Morpho, Pendle, Corn, Gauntlet, Derive, EtherFi, and Gearbox. These protocols span lending, yield-farming, and staking, showcasing the broad demand for LBTC.
“LBTC has the potential to bring over $1.2 trillion in bitcoin assets off the sidelines and into the arena. If just 10% of Bitcoin’s $1.5 trillion market cap flows into DeFi, the total value locked in the ecosystem could more than double,” said Jacob Phillips, co-founder and head of strategy at Lombard. “In the same way that staked ETH sparked an entirely new ecosystem built around liquid staking tokens, LBTC is poised unleash unprecedented growth, innovation, and market dynamics across DeFi.”
Lombard has overcome Bitcoin’s programmability limitations by collaborating with Cubist, a key management infrastructure company. To protect funds, Lombard has locked down the protocol using two Cubist technologies: hardware-enforced key management workflows for Lombard and Babylon, and a new cross-chain “drawbridge” designed to detect and stop bridge hacks in real-time. Together these technologies give even stronger security guarantees than those of a standard smart contract-based liquid staking provider on Ethereum.
“Cubist is extremely proud to be empowering Lombard with a principled approach to protocol security,” said Riad Wahby, Co-Founder and CEO of Cubist. “Bitcoin is super complicated, which means that building secure systems on top is even more complicated. Lombard has assembled the right team and partners to address this complexity and set a high standard in the emerging ecosystem of Bitcoin projects.”
Lombard is committed to building trust-minimized infrastructure. Its unique Security Consortium ensures there’s no single point of failure, with multiple independent parties validating transactions on the Lombard protocol. LBTC operates without trusted middlemen, offering full transparency and community-led governance. The permissionless nature of LBTC allows any DeFi platform to integrate it without requiring centralized approval.
Lombard is implementing a phased rollout strategy to make LBTC widely accessible across the DeFi landscape. Initially launching on Ethereum mainnet, where the bulk of bitcoin liquidity and blue-chip protocols currently exist, Lombard will then expand to Ethereum Layer-2 networks. Future plans include integrations with innovative bitcoin Layer-2s and next-generation chains.
For more information and to access LBTC, please visit Lombard’s website at lombard.finance.
About Lombard:
Lombard connects bitcoin to decentralized finance, unlocking over $1.5 trillion in idle bitcoin liquidity. Acting as foundational infrastructure and catalyst within the Web3 ecosystem, it provides crucial liquidity to decentralized exchanges and platforms. Its flagship product, LBTC, enables bitcoin holders of all sizes to fully participate in DeFi, offering unprecedented access to staking, yield generation, lending, borrowing, and trading. LBTC provides liquidity, and security with seamless cross-chain functionality, positioning it as a truly decentralized and versatile asset. Stay up-to-date with the latest developments by following Lombard on Twitter.