Friday, April 11th 2025, Union will launch a limited mainnet in support of the Babylon Genesis chain, Bitcoin Secured Networks, and Bitcoin LSTs. As a key interop provider for the Babylon Bitcoin staking protocol, Union will enable message passing and asset transfers in and out of Babylon Genesis network.
Bitcoin is the gold standard, with its dominance continuing to rise. At Union, we see Bitcoin as the way to free the world from the shackles of economic oppression. This vision is why Union is becoming a launch interop provider for the Babylon protocol, and supporting the broader Bitcoin ecosystem as it continues to evolve. Union will serve as a pivotal point at the Babylon Genesis network launch:
Genesis Drop distribution to BSNs: Union will serve as one of the connection points between Babylon Genesis and Bitcoin Secured Networks such as Corn (Arbitrum-based) and BOB (OP Stack-based). Union will play a pivotal role in abstracting away the complexities around the settlement proofs of these two different stacks using state lenses.
Bridging LSTs to Babylon for DeFi opportunities: Since Union has already established the Ethereum to Babylon Genesis connection, all ERC-20-based LSTs can be bridged to Babylon Genesis for DeFi use cases, such as LPing on Tower (the native DEX of Babylon Genesis). This includes LSTs such as uniBTC (Bedrock).
Transport hub for Escher LSTs: BABY staked on the Babylon Genesis network will be relayed through Union’s infrastructure to Escher Finance’s LST protocol. There, the tokens will be minted or converted into derivatives such as eBABY or sBABY, which will be sent back through Union to various controller chains. These controller chains will abstract away the underlying complexity, so the end user will only interact with simplified staking, minting, and token utilization steps.
Beta Release of App v2 (v1.5)
Starting tomorrow, users will get a sneak peek of Union’s App v2. Transfers between Babylon Genesis, BOB, and Corn will take place in a limited Beta version of the new design for select whitelisted assets.
This v1.5 of the Union app will feature some (though not all) of the functionality of the full App v2 release, and will be redirected to app.union.build once fully completed. More information on this will be shared in the coming days.
About Union
Union is a hyper-efficient zero-knowledge infrastructure layer that provides:
General message passing
Asset transfers
NFT bridging
DeFi interoperability
With 50M Testnet transfers, 250K Dashboard users, 4K Trusted Setup Ceremony contributors, and $16M raised to date, Union is building a decentralized interoperability network that connects all blockchains and rollups, across any ecosystem.
By leveraging advanced zero-knowledge cryptography and BLS signatures, Union solves the limitations faced by existing interoperability solutions. Rather than relying on external validators, oracles, multi-signatures, or other trusted third parties, Union trustlessly validates the entire chain consensus in ZK. This results in faster and more secure bridging that scales to thousands of chains.
ZK Consensus Verification: Verifies chain consensus without external trust, maintaining the highest level of security.
Unprecedented Efficiency: Generates ZK proofs on consumer-grade hardware, a breakthrough in scalability and cost efficiency.
Sub-second Transfer Times: Through the use of intents and state lenses, Union targets near-instant transactions across the network.
Any Execution Environment: Union can transfer assets across ecosystems, including EVM, MoveVM, BitVM, and Cosmos.
Union’s ultimate vision is a frictionless web of chains, where security, performance, and user experience scale together without compromise. Learn more at union.build/learn, read the developer docs at docs.union.build, and sign up for dashboard.union.build to get involved.
About Babylon Labs
Babylon Labs focuses on Bitcoin security-sharing protocols with a vision of building a Bitcoin-secured decentralized world. The latest software development is the world's first trustless and self-custodial Bitcoin staking protocol, which enables Bitcoin holders to stake their BTC on other decentralized systems such as PoS chains, L2s, Data Availability (DA) layers, etc, enabling stakers to earn staking rewards without the need for third-party custody, bridge solutions, or wrapping services. The greater idea is to combine the high security and wide adoption of Bitcoin with the efficiency and scalability of PoS systems, increasing Bitcoin's utility. For more information about Babylon Labs, a developer of the Babylon Bitcoin staking protocol, please visit: Website | Twitter | Discord | Linkedin