It’s been quite the year for members of the Keep and NuCypher communities. The launch of Threshold Network is only the final result of a series of important developments that opened new doors for user privacy, censorship-resistance, and decentralization. With our merger process well underway, let’s take a look at what has happened.
Codename KEANU
Before Keep and NuCypher began working together, we shared the common goal of providing tools for user privacy on the public blockchain in a secure and trustless manner. We had also built technology that was complementary to each other and based on the same principles. To that end, both teams put together a proposal to their respective communities for what would become the first ever on-chain merger.
Codenamed KEANU, the process started by that proposal became a completely community-driven effort. Members participated on Discord, Medium, and other social media to discuss, debate, and fine tune the details of what this merger would look like. By June 11, both the Keep and NuCypher communities had voted overwhelmingly in favor of the RC0 T Token Proposal which detailed the timeline and tokenomics of the merger.
A lot has happened since then. The smart contracts for the Threshold network have been greenlit by Certik and ChainSecurity, some of the top auditors in the space. Our combined communities have been actively engaged in the launch of the Threshold DAO by voting on snapshots for the Reward Mechanism and keeping the Emergency Security Developer Multisig separate while the DAO’s Council Elections are underway.
It’s important to note that during this process KEEP and NU stakers will be seamlessly integrated into the new network without any steps required on their end. Moreover, we recently shared a provisional timeline for the merger detailing everything that’s coming up within the next month including the staking activation of Threshold coverage pools.
Scaling with tBTC v2
In the interim, we have already been collaborating on the development of new tools and opportunities for stakeholders. The most important of these has perhaps been tBTC v2. This application is at the core of what we’re able to offer in terms of censorship-resistance. A truly trustless, permissionless, and decentralized bridge for BTC holders to take advantage of the opportunities in other ecosystems has always been a strong necessity.
DeFi has grown exponentially over the past year and it's done so without BTC, the largest crypto asset by market cap. In this new iteration of the tBTC bridge we will scale its capabilities by 1000x, allowing more than 1,000,000 BTC to be deployed and used on the Ethereum ecosystem. Ultimately, tBTC v2 aims to bridge over a million BTC into Ethereum in a safe and decentralized manner that stays true to the project’s core values. Nothing like this has existed before since other options are custodial or centralized.
However, this scaling of capabilities also requires scaling of the amount of stakers in the Coverage Pools that ensure and secure the network. The launch of the tBTC v2 bridge will count with the support of both KEEP and NU token holders who will be able to provide collateral to the shared Threshold network’s Coverage Pools.
The tBTC v2 token is already available to holders of the v1 token. It was also recently introduced to the mStable decentralized stablecoin ecosystem by a unanimous community vote.
The Road Treaded in 2021
These highlights in our journey are not everything that happened throughout the year. Other important developments also took place, including the lowering of Collateral Ratios and the activation of Risk Managers on tBTC v1 Coverage Pools.
We’re in the middle of a period of fundamental growth, both as a tool for user sovereignty and as a decentralized community. The new year will bring even more important changes as we finish deploying essential infrastructure, finalize the Threshold merger, and launch tBTC v2 as the most decentralized option for bridging BTC.
We hope you join our community if you haven’t done so yet by participating in our Discord and staying up to date with everything we’ll be building in 2022.
