Thesis, the developers behind the Keep protocol, have acquired $7.7 million in capital through an investment round led by Paradigm Capital.
Collaborative Funds and Fenbushi Capital also took part in the round. Thesis, which mainly serves as a venture production studio, is planning to introduce its tBTC product toward the end of this month.
Thesis has teamed up with Summa, a cross-chain (involving multiple independent blockchains) financial service provider, in order to create the tBTC solution, which will notably be the first major application launched on the Keep network.
tBTC is an (Ethereum) ERC-20 compliant token, which is fully collateralized by Bitcoin (BTC) and is always redeemable (can be exchanged for the leading cryptocurrency). Users have the option of spending their BTC on Ethereum.
To spend Bitcoin, users have to deposit the cryptocurrency into a threshold signature contract. Once the deposit has been made, the signing group submits a proof of deposit to the Ethereum network, and then a tBTC token is created and transferred to the BTC holder’s Ethereum (ETH) wallet.
Fred Ehrsam, co-founder at Paradigm, stated:
“Decentralized financial applications on Ethereum have seen clear demand.”
He added:
“Bitcoin is the world’s largest cryptocurrency. Building a bridge that allows Bitcoin to interact with DeFi makes a lot of sense, and tBTC is a credible attempt to do exactly that.”
There have been several Ethereum-powered crypto tokens pegged to Bitcoin. They include Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), ImToken’s imBTC, and Synthetix’ sBTC.
tBTC is different or unique because it can be redeemed for Bitcoin, unlike initiatives such as WBTC.
Matt Luongo, CEO at Thesis, said that the project developers are planning to integrate with lending protocols such as Compound.
