ICYMI 👀

This week, Keep and tBTC was featured in Paul Veradittakit’s Newsletter 🗞. Paul breaks down the issue of privacy on public blockchains ⛓, how the Keep network enables private data interaction with public chains 🏰, and outlines some of the possible use cases this unlocks 🔓- a solid piece to check out if you’re considering building something that requires private data, or if you are interested in general privacy tooling for public blockchains.

👉You can read the post in full at the VeradiVerdict Substack 👈

🎉The winners from the Festival hackathon are now in! 🏆

🥁🥁🥁
We chose Ple-BTC as the top winner of 75k KEEP. Read more about all the projects that came together in the Keep blog 👈

There’s a strong chance that if you’re reading this, you’re a Millennial 👀 💅

That’s for good reason - you’re tuned into channels where we’re redesigning financial tools in the shadow of a financial system that has largely disenfranchised our peers. 🙅‍♂️🙅‍♀️

Matt explores how Millennials are reshaping the future of finance 🤑 in the International Business Times - you can read it here!

🚨Panel Alert!🚨

Join Matt as he discusses the state of #BTC pegs and how #tBTC functions as a supply pegged #ERC20. Matt will be joined by Summa’s James Prestwich, Chjango Unchained, and Nomic’s Matt Bell on the Cosmos YouTube channel. The panel is live at 5PM EDT!

⏰ It’s tiiiiiiime ⏰

We are ready to start making noise 🎉 about the tBTC mainnet contracts being live on the Ethereum mainnet! 🙌

If you’re as excited as we are to be announcing the mainnet contracts today, help us spread the word!
- The new blog post is here: https://blog.keep.network/tbtc-the-safe-way-to-use-bitcoin-in-defi-is-live-on-tbtc-network-de2bb8b6eaf7
- The tBTC twitter announcement is here:
The tBTC Discord is here: https://discord.gg/TytRYBe
- You can mint tBTC (!!!) at https://dapp.tbtc.network

📣👀💪🏰⛓

IOSG VC put out a blog post on tBTC 👀

We’re so happy to have them on board 💪 and are looking forward to developing a stronger Asian community presence in the future! 🙌

⚔️

Check out what they had to say about our system!

Today at 1:20 EST our founder Matt Luongo is speaking on an ETHDenver panel called "War & Peace: The Multi-chain Reality" 🎙 👏

https://twitter.com/keep_project/status/1359151979298185222

Watch the full panel live👇

twitch.tv/ethereumdenver

Many of you asked for it so we shipped it 👨‍🚀!! The KEEP-only stake pool is now live. This is super exciting for a few reasons:

🙅‍♂️There is no min stake amount so it increases staking accessibility
⏳There is a rewards multiplier of up to 3x based on time locked
💰The initial rewards are 100k KEEP per month
🔑In the future our community will be able to govern the pool with control over some of the key parameters

Full details are available in the blog post below 👇
https://twitter.com/keep_project/status/1359604707090522112

The KEEP-only pool launch has been extremely successful. We appreciate the continued community support 😎

Our friend Chandru built this quality step by step guide on how to use the new KEEP-only staking pool 👏

https://twitter.com/keep_project/status/1360022201374806020

Keep v1 community governance is underway 🙏

We transferred ownership of the tBTC v1 contracts to our community multisig. This is a huge step towards empowering our community for the long-run through our progressive decentralized community governance plan.

In addition to the discussions that have been occurring on Discord (chat.keep.network) we now have community governance forums to chat about Keep Improvement Proposals or KIPs.

https://forum.keep.network/

Check out the full details on our v1 governance system so far and learn how to get involved👇

https://twitter.com/keep_project/status/1362150994482663425

Rewards update. The following liquidity rewards were distributed today 👏

☑️ 25k KEEP to Uniswap TBTC/ETH LP
☑️ 85k KEEP to Uniswap KEEP/ETH LP
☑️ 100k KEEP to Uniswap KEEP/TBTC LP
☑️ 250k KEEP to Saddle

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x8875c97632b9ade20b7498f2cbde94cb28c19b9e2af59862f7796853f2da3939

Claim your gains on the Keep Token Dashboard 🙏

The Keep Community and Multisig acted swiftly to update tBTC through the new Keep governance system 👏 . The following changes have been made:

1️⃣ The collateralization ratio is now 200%
2️⃣ The courtesy call threshold for new deposits is now 115%

https://twitter.com/keep_project/status/1363903915050360835

Major news for our community 💪

Introducing the Keep Community Fellowship and Developer Grants Program. Quick details:

🏎 Continue to accelerate adoption of the Keep and tBTC ecosystem
👷 More building with our community
🌊 2M KEEP allocated for Wave 1

We will use the #development channel on our Discord as hub to discuss community grant proposals and maybe you'll even form project teams with other community builders there. Keep and eye on the channel because we will post grant proposal suggestions there.

Check out the full program details and find out more on how to apply👇

https://twitter.com/keep_project/status/1363929087677464577

The Keep Community has proposed to reduce current staking emissions to increase future allocation for tBTC v2 📣

1️⃣ Cut rewards by 30% for March, April, May, June, July and August vs current schedule
2️⃣ Rewards set at 4.35M KEEP per month for September, October, November and December
3️⃣ Cut all rewards after 2022 to zero
4️⃣ Retain 50M KEEP in stakedrop funds for launching tBTC v2

Check out the full proposal 👇

https://twitter.com/keep_project/status/1364367081244868619

Keep was added to the DeFiPulse community leaderboard, with the placement accounting for the value locked in BTC and ETH. We also have KEEP locked, but that’s some alpha 🤫

We look forward to increasing our leaderboard placement alongside our community!

https://twitter.com/keep_project/status/1365010921014263808

Rewards update. The following liquidity rewards were distributed today 💪

☑️ 25k KEEP to Uniswap TBTC/ETH LP
☑️ 170k KEEP to Uniswap KEEP/ETH LP
☑️ 100k KEEP to Uniswap KEEP/TBTC LP
☑️ 250k KEEP to Saddle

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x8c932a39dcb46ef954f696427fdd10f25530352056fa4b9d9c9028b2b8478e98

Claim your gains on the Keep Token Dashboard 🙏

📣 KIP-003

TLDR: remove rewards for the Uniswap KEEP / TBTC liquidity pool. The current allocation is 100K KEEP per week.

KIP-003 will remain on the forums for the next 3 days after which it will be up for a Keep Community Multisig vote where it requires 5-of-8 to pass.

Interested in this KIP? Hit the Keep governance forums to be heard 👇

https://forum.keep.network/t/proposal-remove-incentives-for-the-keep-tbtc-pool/56

The latest round of staking rewards has been distributed to our users 👏

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xb6a36b277162de9fec67b4a3c8dc1e47aeb157c7f227836a55e99bf5c4120157

Claim gains in the Keep Token Dashboard ➡️ https://dashboard.keep.network/overview

KIP-003 update

🕔 The 24hr vote period is over
✅ The Keep Community Multisig voted YES to pass the proposal
🛑 As a result this is the last week for incentives on the Uniswap KEEP / TBTC liquidity pool

Final rewards for this pool will be distributed on Friday, March 5th

https://twitter.com/keep_project/status/1366855902272368640

Keep liquidity rewards have been topped-up👏

The distribution this week is:

☑️ 25K KEEP to Uniswap TBTC / ETH
☑️ 170K KEEP to Uniswap KEEP / ETH
☑️ 250K KEEP to Saddle

Quick reminder that our community voted to remove Uniswap KEEP / TBTC incentives which goes into effect as of today.

🚨 BIG NEWS INCOMING🚨

Hey @everyone !

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been discussing a major collaboration with...

... NuCypher!

We’ve gotten to know the team and community over the years, and have huge respect for what they’ve built. A couple weeks ago, a few shared Keep and NuCypher community members reached out. We all got on a call, and realized we have a lot in common.

We have shared goals: driving the adoption of threshold cryptography, privacy-preserving technology, and decentralized Bitcoin on Ethereum. And we have aligned communities: stakers who want to realize a vision for a freedom-preserving world built on cryptography, and developers who refuse to compromise end-user security.

This conversation led to an interesting idea, and since then we’ve pulled in stakers, community members, and developers from both networks to get early feedback. And now, together, we would like to propose something new... the first decentralized, on-chain protocol hard merge.

We believe that teaming up is the best way forward. As we see every day in Ethereum, cooperation and composability often trump competition. The Keep and NuCypher teams have built similar technology with similar goals. Rather than continuing to split the market, we think we can achieve significantly more together. And while both dev teams will remain independent, we’ll all be focused on a single protocol.

If both communities agree, the product of this collaboration will be a new, combined network to serve as the foundation for the next release of tBTC. Together, we believe the Keep and NuCypher communities can deliver a scaleable, censorship-resistant threshold cryptography network, and end the dominance of centralized Bitcoin on 'Ethereum.
Background

Over the years, we’ve come to know and respect the NuCypher team’s work. NuCypher, like Keep, is a threshold cryptography network. In NuCypher today, there is one application that stakers operate — proxy re-encryption. In Keep, there are three — the random beacon (threshold BLS), threshold ECDSA, and the rest of tBTC.

The idea is to combine the apps from NyCypher and Keep together to run on a new network, jointly owned and governed by KEEP and NU stakers. Stakers will be able to power proxy re-encryption, the beacon, and tBTC, offering more opportunities to earn fees and grow revenue.

Initially, the combined network will move forward as dual deployments, with stakers running separate clients. Over time, the teams will ship a shared network specification and release plan, with the goal of shipping two compatible clients.

Keep and NuCypher combining forces to bring more useful services, and more fees, into a joint network is the surest path to long term sustainability and success of the work-token model for threshold cryptography.
tBTC v2

tBTC v1 is the only decentralized Bitcoin on Ethereum in the market today.

However, our market share is currently limited by economic scalability and high minting costs. The tBTC v2 specification is on a path to addressing these concerns, while also retaining high security guarantees. We believe the NuCypher team can contribute both development and protocol design expertise to assist in this effort, and they have already given critical feedback and peer review to drafts.

Additionally, tBTC v2 requires a significantly higher number of signers than v1 to maintain security under the new architecture. Today, the Keep network has ~200 nodes staked, and the NuCypher network currently has ~2,000 nodes staked. A combined network will provide an extremely robust signer set for tBTC v2.

Finally, combining forces means more bandwidth to drives plans for tBTC v2 forward, including support on L2s like Optimism, Arbitrum, and zkSync.
Now what?

Now the work begins! I’ve posted a more detailed proposal on the forum. We need to discuss this proposal within our community, as well as with our friends in the NuCypher community.