01 Sep 2021

BabelFish, the leading stablecoin aggregator on Rootstock, has completed a successful fundraise totalling $5.8m via a listing on Sovryn’s Origins Launchpad, the first organisation to do so. Funds raised will be used to enable BabelFish users to vote on protocol upgrades, reward the community for work completed, and conduct general research and development to sustainably increase AUM and integrations.

Sovryn Origins is where new projects are able to expand their communities, and raise funds to build the economic, financial ecosystem around Bitcoin. Unlike other launch pads, Sovryn Origins is driven by the Sovryn community, which vets all projects and where funding can be sourced in native BTC. Sovryn itself used the Origins launchpad to raise $10m in a token presale in March 2021.

BabelFish aims to solve the significant problem of stablecoin liquidity fragmentation by aggregating and standardizing stablecoins across chains in order to evolve into the ultimate stablecoin translator across the DeFi space. This listing follows months of cooperation between Sovryn and BabelFish, which launched the alpha version of XUSD atop Sovryn in the first week of June to prove the value of a simplified UI and deep USD liquidity. XUSD stablecoins have proved easy to aggregate and distribute, which has rapidly made XUSD the most liquid stablecoin on the RSK network. Consequently, the FISH token and XUSD are already added by default in the Liquality and Defiant wallet and will soon be available on other Rootstock projects.

BabelFish has adopted a fork of Sovryn’s Bitocracy, which uses quadratic voting for better governance as part of its decentralized autonomous organisation (DAO) structure, where parameters of the protocol are voted on by FISH token holders. Babelfish’s FISH tokens will also be available for purchase on Sovryn’s exchange, or earned as rewards for contributing to the project’s development.

Bitcoin is the most secure and scalable blockchain, focused on fundamentals and simply designed to secure Bitcoin transactions. The Sovryn protocol extends the functionality of Bitcoin by using the same proof of work, it is mined and secured by Bitcoin and the transactions on the Sovryn system are paid in Bitcoin fees to Bitcoin miners to extend that security. The protocol achieves scale by adding additional layers of technology onto Bitcoin’s simple, basic blockchain, unlike building on Ethereum where modifications to the base layer increase complexity and cost.

A BabelFish spokesperson said: “We want to thank the Sovryn community for embracing the XUSD proof of concept early on, and for helping BabelFish successfully launch FISH as the first project in the Origins launchpad. This is the beginning of a long journey, and through the DAO everyone will be able to participate in shaping the direction of the protocol to enhance multi-chain stablecoin flow and contribute to Bitcoin’s adoption.

Edan Yago, core contributor at Sovryn, commented: “BabelFish and Sovryn share a vision of a financial and monetary system based on Bitcoin and the support we have seen for this sale has proven the traction we are seeing with that vision, in our communities and beyond. We are excited to see the proposals and the votes to improve the protocol and get us closer to both projects’ shared goal of accelerating hyperbitcoinization.”