Thus far, decentralized finance (DeFi) has been a trend largely focused on Ethereum. While there are products such as Wrapped Bitcoin, there is a lack of Bitcoin-focused infrastructure and marketing in DeFi.Badger Finance/Badger DAO is trying to change this, having launched an Ethereum-based application focused on bringing Bitcoiners and BTC by extension to DeFi this past week. The protocol has already garnered dozens of millions worth of deposits in its first few days of operation.The airdropLike many other DeFi projects, Badger’s popularity began with an airdropThe Ethereum-based project was announced months ago by a small public team of around four with the premise of distributing a token called BADGER to users who have interacted with tokenized Bitcoin, such as WBTC or renBTC, or have contributed to DeFi by participating in governance or contributed to GitCoin.Due to the vast array of users encompassed in this airdrop, the project gained a lot of popularity on Twitter amongst DeFi natives and tokenized Bitcoin holders.Even funds such as Three Arrows Capital claimed the airdrop, claiming tens of thousands of dollars worth of coins for free.The airdrop amount differed, though was at minimum 20 coins, which currently is valued at around $100.Thus far, Badger does not have a product, except for five staking pools that allow users to earn BADGER for staking BADGER, BADGER-WBTC Uniswap liquidity provider shares, or tokenized Bitcoin Curve Finance liquidity provider shares.These five pools have garnered more than $70 million worth of deposits, according to Badger. The Badger team is working on a new token called according to Badger. . DIGG will be an elastic supply coin based on Ethereum that will be pegged to the price of Bitcoin and governed by BADGER holders:
“Digg’s rebase of supply is distributed on a 10 day rolling period, based on the direction Bitcoin price is moving, it can be used to hedge against a known increase or decrease in BTC price.”
The Bitcoin DeFi app on EthereumAnalysts in the space are excited about the prospects of BADGER allowing DeFi to gain more mindshare amongst more hardline Bitcoiners.DeFi analyst “CryptoYield” noted that Badger and other projects that can bring Bitcoin from the “original chain” to Ethereum via tokenized products is how DeFi can “50x over [the] next 12 months.”
If you’re excited about $BADGER the risky play is to buy it.
But the real play is to move $BTC off its shitty native chain and onto ethereum and farm it up. https://t.co/QtrIUAIAV0
This is how we make all of defi 50x over next 12 months.
New money. Billions of new money.
— Cryptoyieldinfo.YFI (@Cryptoyieldinfo) December 6, 2020
“DT,” another popular DeFi analyst weighed in, arguing that the project does have a viable use case, but did note that there may be “too much hype” at the moment:
“Badger has a great value prop and genuine (while infant) community. I would hope for a bit less hype atm, not to scare bitcoiners just coming into the space and scared of pumps and dumps. But the market has no obligation to agree with what we hope.”
