Babylon & Chakra Staking Tutorial: Two Ways to Stake One Asset

Author: Crush, Core Contributor of Biteye

Editor: Crush, Core Contributor of Biteye

*Approximately 2200 words, estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Babylon is currently the largest staking project in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Users can perform decentralized BTC staking via Babylon and unlock staking yields from their BTC holdings.

Innovatively, Babylon extracts security directly from the Bitcoin chain and extends this security to other PoS chains such as Cosmos, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, and other public blockchains—this is the source of its staking yields.

Babylon’s funding has steadily increased—from an initial $8 million raise to a recent $70 million round last month—indicating growing institutional confidence in the project. Major investors include Paradigm, Polychain, IDG, and Binance Labs.

To ensure safety and stability during the staking process, Babylon launched testnet staking activities prior to its official mainnet launch.

So far, two rounds of Testnet-4 staking have been completed, but due to high participation, quotas were quickly exhausted.

Last night, the team announced updates regarding Testnet-3. This test will begin at approximately 5 PM Beijing Time on May 19th and end at 5 PM on June 24th. The event is time-limited but unlimited in quota. Users are advised to prepare by claiming testnet tokens in advance.

In this guide, we’ll demonstrate how to achieve "two birds with one stone" by combining Babylon staking with Chakra, another re-staking project built on Babylon.

Chakra is an officially partnered project of Babylon. Leveraging ZK-STARK-based staking proofs and ZK light clients, it securely and efficiently maps BTC staked through Babylon into any ecosystem, empowering numerous BTC Layer 2 solutions and decentralized applications (DApps).

With the launch of Babylon's third testnet phase, Chakra has simultaneously opened Phase 3 of its own testnet campaign—perfectly aligning with Babylon’s activities for dual participation.

1. Claim Testnet Tokens

1. Official Discord Faucet

To claim testnet tokens, you need to use the BTC Signet network. Open your OKX Wallet, switch the network to BTC Signet, then add the BTC token as shown below.

Next, copy your wallet address (starting with “tb1p”), join the official Babylon Discord server, and head to the #faucet-signet-btc channel to claim test BTC.

Due to high demand, the official Discord faucet may occasionally fail to send tokens. Below are two alternative methods.

2. Tomo Wallet Faucet

Install the Tomo Wallet, enter your wallet address, and wait about 10 minutes to receive 0.0007 BTC in test tokens. During peak times, claims may still fail.

3. Mini Bridge Direct Purchase

If the above methods fail, you can directly purchase testnet BTC.

Select Swap to exchange ETH on Arbitrum for BTC on the BTC Signet network.

Enter your wallet address to receive test tokens instantly—no need to wait for the Discord faucet to recover.

Note: Due to current congestion on the Signet network, both claiming and purchasing may result in slow transactions. Direct purchases may take up to 30 minutes—please be patient.

2. Stake Tokens

You can stake Signet Bitcoin on the testnet in two ways:

• Directly stake via the Chakra Staking dApp

• Stake via the Babylon Staking dApp and select Chakra as the Finality Provider

Either method allows you to interact with both projects simultaneously. Below, we demonstrate using the official Babylon interface.

Open the staking link above, select Chakra as the Finality Provider, enter your staking amount (between 0.0005 and 0.05 sBTC), and proceed to stake.

After successful staking, open the staking history to view your details.

Once the transaction status changes to “locked”, staking is confirmed. The confirmation process may take up to one hour—please wait patiently.

If you see the error screen above, gas fees are likely too high relative to your balance, preventing payment of both gas and staking amount.

Solution: Wait for gas fees to drop or claim additional test tokens.

3. Complete Babylon Galxe Quests

Before completing Galxe quests, if you haven’t bound your Signet address, do so first.

Visit the link above, click Bitcoin Signet, sign the message, and complete the binding.

After binding, your Signet address will appear on the page.

Currently, two quests are available. In Chapter 0, the faucet task requires submitting a transaction hash. If you purchased tokens directly, use the purchase transaction hash.

In Chapter 1, the BTC testnet staking task may be temporarily unavailable if quotas are full. Wait for future allocations.

The second task involves liking and quoting the latest tweet and submitting the link—this can be the same link used in Chapter 0.

For the feedback task, simply leave a message in the feedback channel on the official Discord and paste the message link into Galxe.

Chapter 2 tasks are similar—submit tweet and Discord message links, then wait for staking confirmation to complete all tasks.

4. Complete Chakra Galxe Quests

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Phase 1 of Chakra’s Galxe campaign has ended. Proceed directly to Phase 2.

In Phase 2, the BTC staking task will be automatically completed as long as you selected Chakra as the Finality Provider during staking. If quotas are full, wait for the next test phase.

Summary

Above is the complete walkthrough for maximizing participation in the Babylon + Chakra staking campaigns. However, due to limited testnet quotas from Babylon—such as Testnet-4’s second round, where 50 BTC was fully staked within five hours—availability is extremely competitive.

If you plan to participate, we recommend reviewing this guide early, claiming test tokens in advance, and being ready to stake immediately when new testing phases open.