☝️GTM non-custodial BTC Working Group

[renashah]

☝️GTM non-custodial BTC Working Group Charter (Read Me)

Objective

Launch Native non-custodial Bitcoin asset successfully to market with validated feedback loops from customers

• Gather product/sales/market requirements to guide the technical working group
• Identify adoption dependencies
• Ideate Apps needed in Bitcoin & Stacks ecosystem to leverage non-custodial BTC

Deliverables

Deliver a comprehensive business plan for Native non-custodial Bitcoin asset with a detailed go-to-market launch plan including these high-priority needs:

• Validate product feedback loops with real users for parameters to guide technical design
• More to come ✨

Proposed outputs

Competitive analysis of tokenized & wrapped Bitcoin alternatives in the market today

• Users, growth, developers, customers, top apps it’s deployed in, etc.

Initial Business Case Scoped for non-custodial BTC working in conjunction with the Whitepaper lead

• Inclusive of regulatory considerations, security requirements, ecosystem & customer feedback, and operations

Extensive user personas for non-custodial BTC

• Examples: LPs, Miners, Long value investors

GTM launch plan for non-custodial BTC & Execution

• Partnerships, Sales funnel, market, user-tested Narratives
• Public Pitch Deck for the community

Lead

Rena (Trust Machines)

Participants

All builders are welcome to join our group!

• Mitchell (Stacks Foundation)
• Jonas (Hiro Systems)
• @orlandobtc (StackerDAO Labs)

Timeline

We’re forming sub-groups for each initiative right now.
We hope to have the Competitive Analysis and Initial Business Case deliverables completed by the first week of November 2022.

Get Involved

• Join us on Discord (link)
• Our working group meets weekly on Wednesday at 12:00 pm ET / 9:00 am PT (Join the server for the Zoom links or ping Rena@trustmachines.co)

[orlandobtc]

I'd like to join this working group.

My background: I'm the co-founder/CEO of StackerDAO Labs, which is building infrastructure and tools to create and manage web3 native orgs, like DAOs, powered by Bitcoin. I'm also a lawyer by background and have experience in startup corporate/VC financing work, as well as securities and government enforcement litigation. Before law school, I did expansion for WeWork in Europe and NY (way before they imploded lol) and bond trading at Citigroup.

[blocks8]

Added you to the list, I'll have @renashah add you to the next meeting.

[renashah]

Hi @orlandobtc - happy to add you! Drop me your email and discord handle, please!

[orlandobtc]

Thanks @renashah. It's orlando@stackerdaos.com and orlando.btc#1991

[mefrem]

Hi team,

I think this is the working group I'd most like to join. I head up developer advocacy at Hiro, am in frequent conversation with Stacks founders, can get early feedback about their needs and what a native non-custodial BTC asset would enable for them functionally, as well as naturally continue learning the technical implementation that the other working group is detailing.

Max Efremov
Hiro
maximefremov@hiro.so
mefrem#5884

[renashah]

Adding you to the meeting! Looking forward to it!

[renashah]

Update - October 26, 2022

The GTM working group is fully established. Here are the items that we're working on over the course of 1 month.

• Customer Personas -- we've collectively identified 20 initial personas of target groups for sales + feedback loops. The goal of this is to establish a high signal from groups who'd be early adopters of the non-custodial BTC product. The interviews are underway.
• Community Overview -- we hope to put a community overview introducing the proposed technology in simple terms to seek community feedback
• Ideation -- necessary partners and dApps to successfully launch sBTC.

As always - feel free to join us on Wednesdays (rena@trustmachines.co and discord rena#2974)

[elenananana]

Update - December 7, 2022

The GTM working group has met regularly in the last two months. This update summarizes our findings on the competitive landscape for tokenized Bitcoin assets.

Competitive Landscape for Tokenized Bitcoin Assets

While there are several possible uses for Bitcoin in today's market, we found that today, Bitcoin is primarily held as an inflationary asset where most retail and institutions prefer long-value holding. Some dabble in Bitcoin-related activity like centralized lending, decentralized lending, other yield activities, or Bitcoin-based projects. While the market is still early for Bitcoin applications, current indications show that the opportunity is ripe.

Many projects early on saw the need to tokenize Bitcoin into a different form to deploy Bitcoin into smart contracts. The predominant form used is wBTC (wrapped BTC). Bridged over to Ethereum, wBTC represents a 1:1 backed asset where each bridged Bitcoin is held in custody with Bitgo. Users can deploy wBTC into Ethereum applications. Roughly 1% of the entire Bitcoin supply has been bridged to wBTC. wBTC lives in DeFi platforms (Maker, Curve, Aave, etc). Maker holds ~13% of all circulated wBTC circulating. It’s important to understand that wBTC is a custodial asset that is being deployed into non-custodial products. Folks will typically need to undergo KYC in order to obtain wBTC and redeem back for Bitcoin.

Other projects that tried to achieve something similar are RenBTC, Rootstock BTC (RBTC), tBTC, and Synthetix BTC. Each project has distinct advantages and drawbacks, yet none have achieved mass market saturation.

[renashah]

Amazing summary!

[renashah]

Update - December 14, 2022

Introducing sBTC: A trustless two-way peg mechanism for Bitcoin

We're pleased to share an introduction to sBTC, a non-custodial Bitcoin for Web3.

Learn more here and read our explainer overview deck!

[will-corcoran]

@renashah I would love to listen in to these calls, if there are any (for grants / bounties visibility). Would you mind adding me? Thanks, Will

[renashah]

Hi @will-at-stacks - Absolutely! We'll be restarting back in ~2 weeks, and I'll add you now to the invite. Many thanks for wanting to participate

[renashah]

Update - January 24, 2023

The Working Group is busy ideating multiple use cases for sBTC for the mainnet launch. We're exploring DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, GameFi, Privacy, Identity, and Stacking categories. We'd love to hear from the community about what would be impactful as an app/product.

If you're a builder, we want your feedback!

[diegomey]

Hello Rena, love to join the next working group call and share our vision for building BitFlow.finance, and how sBTC will impact our Dex protocol. diego@bitflow.finance

[renashah]

You got it - we'd love to have you! CC @andrerserrano

[renashah]

added!

[andrerserrano]

Update - January 27, 2023

Hi all, sBTC development is moving full steam ahead. Here are the major updates from this week:

• I published a proposal for sBTC residency, focusing on business development and project management of the GTM WG. Link here.
• Go-To-Market
  • The team created an action plan and started identifying dependencies. We aim to publish a public facing roadmap in the next few weeks.
  • The WG has been focused on the use cases to prioritize at launch and creating RFPs for builders.
  • Began drafting sales materials for key partnerships.
• Engineering (h/t @igorsyl)
  • sBTC bridge front end development started
  • Threshold signature network protocol finishing testing
  • sBTC Stacks contract under review

[andrerserrano]

The weekly update is moving to a newsletter format. View and subscribe here.

[andrerserrano]

February 22, 2022

Thanks to everyone who joined the call today!

Recording of today’s meeting: (here)
Passcode: RVB.+u34

Action items:

• Review sBTC Mini design and provide feedback by Fri 2/24 at eng meeting, Proposal here.

• Add feedback to Tycho’s post on the sBTC Hard Cap: (Link)

• Feedback on sBTC Use Cases + Ordinals (Link TBD)

We continue to scope the use cases, requirements and best practices for a successful go-to-market launch. Please share any thoughts or features for consideration!

[andrerserrano]

Update - June 29, 2023

The GTM working group has completed user and market research to identify user personas, understand user needs/pain points, and improve the UX of sBTC bridge and related applications. We shared direct feedback on the Bridge UI with the engineering working group and a summary of the findings can be found here.

Takeaways:

1. Social Proof and Good UX were the two most frequently mentioned decision factors when choosing a DeFi project. When researching new protocols, users rely heavily on Twitter activity, check team background, and project backers. This is how they decide if they can trust a project.

2. There is a clear desire to use Bitcoin in DeFi without counter-party risk. Ordinals has reignited interest in "using" Bitcoin. There are still some user behavior patterns to consider, such as people have a strong attachment to their Bitcoin and it is often sitting in cold storage. People are tend to be more risk averse when using their Bitcoin, and prioritize safety and trust in the protocols they choose.

3. We asked people about their unmet needs: answers varied, but the most mentioned answer was around lending/ borrowing (3), earning yield like BlockFi, staking.

This research is an iterative process and we'll continue to test our assumptions and talk to users as we head into Q3.