As everyone says, bear markets are for building, and this has been no different for Threshold Network. With the launch of tBTC v2 this year, Threshold is steaming ahead in powering the next generation of decentralised access to DeFi for BTC holders. Threshold’s tBTC is definitely set for big things, despite blockers such as lack of Oracle and low current TVL we’ve seen sustained interest from the community (wholely due to the relentless efforts from the marketing guild!), I personally haven't come across anyone voicing any dislike for the product, only praises and a surprise that they haven’t come across tBTC previously.
The integrations guild added two new members in Q1: myself (eh) and sap. I’ve really enjoyed my 4 months here at the guild now and I’m looking forward to the rest of my tenure on the committee. I wanted to comment that sap has been truly amazing, I don't think I’ve seen an hour on the clock go by where he hasn’t been avidly pursuing a tBTC integration through Telegram.
Now let's get into the H1 Objectives and Key Results🙂
In January, TIP-45 passed snapshot, approving funding for three bootstrap node operators to support the launch of tBTC v2 (TIP-45 was the successor to TIP-35 and addressed or incorporated feedback received from the community). Bootstrapped nodes are critical to the infrastructure for the tBTC application and are different from regular nodes, as their operator addresses are hard-coded in the client.
TIP-45 changed the number of bootstrap node operators from four to three in order to reduce the associated expense and introduced other requirements such as running an Electrum server. tBTC v2 launched successfully at the end of January and the bootstrap nodes have been working as intended.
tBTC v2 listings/ tBTC v1 being updated to v2 on supporting tools has seen slow, but steady progress, there was a fair amount of disconnect at the start of H1 from the whole of the IG, but Engin consolidated a list of Exchanges and DeFi information sites that needed upgrading, which very much helped centre the focus the Integrations Committee. Since then, the task has been made a priority and swift upgrades have been made. That being said it is still a lengthy process and will take some time. Current information on the progress of this can be found here:
https://coda.io/d/Threshold-DAO_dYEgPobzP_n/tBTC-Exchanges-DeFi_suZcx
A pipeline of top integrations has been completed on Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism and Polygon. These have been prioritised by the characteristics of: ease of integration, TVL, whether the protocol needs an oracle and whether when integrating, we will need to add protocol owned liquidity. Whether wBTC was already integrated and wBTC TVL was a characteristic that was added, however, this was removed as it didn't encompass protocols that had a high standard for decentralisation.
Find the status of protocols we’ve contacted here: https://thresholdnetwork.notion.site/Protocol-Profiles-7e5f7c0534a54c458459bc22e41d8a26
During this first stage, we have identified that oracles are definitely the main blocker when it comes to integrating into different protocols. When redemptions go live and tBTC sees a larger amount of trading volume we expect this blocker to quickly dissipate.
After this, I believe that the main issue will be time. At this stage, the integrations team has a wealth of contacts and potential integrations to pursue, once the Oracle blocker is alleviated it going to be very much go, go, go! Many of the more tenured protocols within the ecosystem ask for the whitelisting process to go through governance, meaning that drafting proposals, asking questions from and interacting with the community, making amendments and drumming up a positive hype around the integration of tBTC will take priority. All of this is very time intensive. I believe through proper planning and delegation, these efforts can be properly managed.