Bitcoin LST/LRTs are rapidly emerging as one of the fastest-growing categories in DeFi, with combined TVL approaching $10+ billion as of date. By transforming idle Bitcoin into yield-generating assets, Bitcoin LSTs have unlocked new utility for the world’s most valuable digital asset, enabling it to participate in staking, lending, and liquidity provisioning across chains.
Existing Bitcoin LST products have unlocked some utility for idle BTC, but their isolated smart contract design limits native cross-chain scaling, secure custody coordination, and seamless DeFi composability. This means:
Custodial Risk: Many rely on centralized or semi-centralized custody setups, introducing single points of failure.
Poor Crosschain Strategy: Many are locked to a single chain or use insecure/misaligned bridging solutions, hampering interoperability.
Lack of Sustainable Yield: Most LSTs offer synthetic or rebased yield, not sourced from native Bitcoin staking or protocol revenue. Most rely on new chain tokens and airdrop farming.
Low Adoption and TVL: Despite potential, user adoption remains limited due to low utility, unclear incentives, or integration barriers.
Limited Utility in DeFi: Few LSTs have meaningful integrations in lending, yield, or collateral markets—restricting composability.
In other words, Bitcoin LSTs depend on trustless interop protocols like Union to realize their full potential. So the question is: why shouldn’t crosschain L1s like Union be the distributor in the first place?
Introducing: Auro BTC
The Union Network and the Union Foundation are thrilled to announce the launch of Auro BTC, a Bitcoin LST that will leverage Union’s ZK-secured, trust-minimized interoperability layer to create a crosschain native asset that is composable, verifiable, and usable anywhere. Named Auro BTC after the Latin word for "golden" or "gilded," it pays homage to Bitcoin’s status as digital gold.
Unlike existing LSTs that are siloed to specific chains or reliant on trusted bridges, Auro BTC will be instantly available across Ethereum, Cosmos, and other ecosystems with ZK-verified custody and mint/burn logic.
This means DeFi integrations, real-time yield distribution, and crosschain governance without relying on centralized relayers or oracles. Union’s architecture also allows for modular incentives, programmatic transparency, and a scalable custody model—all secured by Union's zero-knowledge message layer and growing network of chains.
Bringing the Final Piece of the BTCfi Puzzle to Union
BTCfi has been the centerpiece of Union’s alpha mainnet launch, and introducing a Bitcoin LST product completes the missing piece of the Union BTCfi Flywheel. Since Babylon Genesis’ launch, Union has transported over $40M worth of Bitcoin LSTs to the Babylon ecosystem, accounting for 99%+ of the total bridge volume.
The addition of Auro BTC strengthens the Union Network’s native asset strategy and unlocks a new revenue stream to fund the network's growth.
Industry Veteran Joins Union to Lead BTCfi Expansion
To spearhead this effort, Union is working with Gandalf, formerly at Bedrock. Gandalf played a key role in driving over $700M in TVL to Bedrock over the past two years, and was instrumental in shaping the broader BTCfi narrative. With almost a decade in the industry, and deep expertise in yield strategy, product design, and institutional onboarding, he now brings that experience to the Union Network to help build the next generation of Bitcoin-native yield products.
Gandalf had this to say:
“Bitcoin has proven itself as a store of value, and, more recently, as a trusted, yield-bearing asset. However, I believe BTCFi needs to mature further before it can provide sustainable, ongoing, and secure yield at a global scale.
Union is in a unique position to lead BTCFi into its next phase. With a special focus on efficiency, security, and chain-agnostic utility, not only will we remove fragmented TVL challenges in DeFi, but we will also unlock the floodgates between TradFi and DeFi, significantly progressing the mainstream adoption of yield-bearing digital assets.”
With the upcoming public mainnet, Union is setting a new standard for how native assets can be composed and monetized across chains—natively, securely, and without compromise. As momentum around BTCfi continues to build, Union’s trust-minimized architecture, crosschain reach, will aim to lead this next wave of Bitcoin utility.
About Union
Dubbed as the “blockchain of blockchains,” Union uses advanced zero-knowledge cryptography to enable lightning-fast and trustless interop across any execution environment. By validating the entire chain consensus in zero-knowledge, Union achieves unprecedented speed and security without relying on external validators, multi-signatures, or oracles. Audited by top security firms and supported by a global network of contributors, Union is the backbone of seamless crosschain DeFi.