#CORE

As the early DeFi reliance on bubble-incentivized models becomes unsustainable, the market sentiment has completely shifted, with investors now pursuing more sustainable "real yields."

BTCFi is a highly imaginative narrative within the DeFi sector. As the largest and most consensus-driven core asset in the crypto world, Bitcoin's massive liquidity potential has long been suppressed. Due to a lack of native infrastructure, Bitcoin's DeFi potential has not been truly activated for a long time, making it the largest "sleeping capital" in the crypto market.

Core DAO, with its unique "Satoshi Plus" consensus mechanism and non-custodial staking technology, has successfully opened a breakthrough in the BTCFI field. Not only did it enable Bitcoin to achieve native staking and yield generation in 2025 under the premise of "HODLing," but it also validated its institutional-grade security standards by listing on the London Stock Exchange.

Standing at the new milestone of 2026, Core is no longer content to be just a passive "yield tool." With the release of its latest roadmap, Core is building a vast ecosystem that includes smart asset management (AMP), liquid staking tokens (LST), and a new Bitcoin banking system (Bitcoin Neobank). This new strategic direction also signifies that BTCFi is entering the next phase of competition, shifting from simple staking yields to leveraging real business scenarios to enable Bitcoin to generate sustainable cash flow.

Activating sleeping capital and evolving Bitcoin into a yield-generating asset

Looking back at Core in 2025, it was a year dedicated to building trust among highly risk-averse Bitcoin holders and institutional players. It proved to the market that Core is a safe and reliable "native Bitcoin yield infrastructure layer."

From a technical perspective, the SatoshiPlus hybrid consensus mechanism is the core foundation for Core to achieve this goal. This mechanism innovatively combines proof of work and delegated proof of stake, allowing Bitcoin miners to delegate their hash power to Core's DPoS network for validation without consuming additional computational power.

Data shows that over 90% of global Bitcoin hash power is currently participating in maintaining the security of the Core network. This means that although Core is compatible with the EVM ecosystem at the application layer, its security directly inherits the formidable hash power of the Bitcoin mainnet, creating an independent security fortress outside the Ethereum ecosystem.

In the BTCFi sector, the main security risks often come from cross-chain bridges or centralized custodians. Core's biggest technological breakthrough is achieving true "non-custodial staking." Users can leverage Bitcoin's native time-lock technology to stake BTC without transferring it out of cold wallets or wrapping it as WBTC. Instead, they connect to Core Foundation's staking platform, linking the Core blockchain mainnet with the Bitcoin mainnet wallet, and through the time-lock mechanism, staking rewards are settled every 24 hours. This "no movement of coins, only rights" risk-free yield model completely eliminates third-party custody risks and is recognized by the market as the true "Bitcoin native risk-free rate."

Once non-custodial staking technology has addressed the technical security challenges, Core's introduced "dual staking" mechanism allows users to stake Bitcoin while also staking additional CORE tokens as a "yield amplifier," thereby achieving higher compounded yields than staking Bitcoin alone, greatly enhancing the competitiveness of Bitcoin yield products.

This innovative mechanism has also gained recognition from institutions and the market. In 2025, Core became the largest BTCFi protocol and established deep partnerships with top custodians like BitGo, Cobo, and Ceffu. Most importantly, Bitcoin yield-based ETP products supported by Core's underlying technology have been officially listed on the London Stock Exchange and are open to retail investors in the UK. This marks that Core's security model has passed the most stringent compliance audits in traditional financial markets.

It can be said that the launch of Core's solution has opened new channels for yield generation, allowing massive Bitcoin assets, previously dormant in cold storage and only used as defensive assets, to smoothly transform into financial assets capable of generating continuous income. For traditional institutions limited by regulatory policies and unable to participate in ordinary DeFi products, the Core platform offers a very safe, compliant, and attractive solution.

Making Bitcoin "move" with three engines to build a cash-generating machine

If Core in 2025 solved the trust issue of whether Bitcoin "dare to move," then its 2026 roadmap's core mission is to demonstrate the value-added logic of how Bitcoin "moves."

In this strategic upgrade, the Core team did not stop at simple protocol optimization but officially launched three core engines—AMP (Asset Management Protocol), LST (Liquid Staking Token), and Bitcoin Neobank - SatPay—through strategic partnerships. These three pillars together form a complete business cycle from asset appreciation to liquidity release and real-world consumption, aiming to provide Bitcoin holders with a completely new profit pathway different from traditional models.

AMP: Democratizing institutional-level strategies

First, is the democratization brought by AMP, an institutional-level strategy encapsulated for the masses. For most Bitcoin holders, DeFi still has high barriers—complex strategies, cumbersome operations, and potential slippage risks. The emergence of the AMP asset management protocol essentially introduces a smart "fund manager" into the Core ecosystem.

By integrating with Core's underlying infrastructure, AMP directly accesses basic staking yields and relies on Core's existing user network and composable DeFi modules to establish initial asset scale and strategy execution foundation.

On top of these base yields, AMP layers advanced hedging and arbitrage strategies such as basis trading and delta-neutral strategies to build an enhanced yield layer. The protocol's compounded returns, after deducting a portion as sustainable protocol revenue (fees), are distributed to participating users.

This distribution mechanism not only improves the overall yield of user assets but also enhances the protocol's attractiveness and capital stickiness. Crucially, the protocol systematically reinvests retained fee income into CORE tokens. Under this development, ordinary retail investors can enjoy stable alpha returns previously accessible only to quant funds. AMP simplifies operational procedures and, through strategic combinations, achieves risk diversification, turning "passive earning" into stable income based on real market dynamics rather than mere token subsidies.

LST: Unlocking trillions of liquidity

Additionally, in traditional staking models, security and liquidity are often mutually exclusive—staking yields usually require locking assets. Core's LST (Liquid Staking Token) engine aims to break this deadlock, liberating trillions of Bitcoin liquidity from cold wallets.

Its yield model is as follows: after staking BTC on Core, users receive LST tokens representing their staked share. These LSTs automatically carry the underlying staking rewards, and users can also deposit LSTs into Core's lending protocols as collateral or provide liquidity on DEXs (Decentralized Exchanges) to earn additional DeFi yields.

Supported by the London Stock Exchange's ETP foundation, LST also has the potential to become the underlying asset for yield-based BTC ETFs, structured products, and BTC savings accounts within Core's roadmap. As the market matures, these yield-generating LSTs are expected to become the foundational DeFi building blocks for Bitcoin, similar to stETH in the Ethereum ecosystem, maximizing capital efficiency.

SatPay: Bitcoin's new bank and self-repay loans

If the first two engines are still on-chain financial operations, SatPay is a groundbreaking application connecting to the physical world. Built on Core chain, this new Bitcoin bank differs fundamentally from traditional digital banks like Revolut.

In traditional banking, spending usually means decreasing principal, but in SatPay, spending can be seen as asset preservation because users can stake their Bitcoin or LST tokens to lend out stablecoins for daily expenses via a debit card. Since the collateralized assets continue to generate yields, the system automatically uses these interest payments or even principal to repay previous loans without selling appreciated assets (interest).

This innovative "spend while earning" model enables asset preservation, allowing Bitcoin holders to meet daily expenses without selling assets, perfectly resolving the long-standing conflict between HODLing and improving living standards.

Moving beyond bubble subsidies, building a real income-driven value flywheel

Once Bitcoin achieves security through non-custodial staking and is enriched with applications like AMP and SatPay, the final piece of Core's new roadmap is how to precisely capture and feedback the value of these large-scale commercial activities to CORE token holders.

Core's answer is a self-sustaining economic flywheel model driven by business income, rejecting reliance on inflation: first, shifting from simple yields supported by high token inflation to business revenue; second, creating a flywheel effect of economic growth and establishing a buyback force driven by commercial income.

In the early stages of crypto market development, most projects' yields heavily depended on high inflation subsidies of their tokens, which attracted hot money in the short term but were fundamentally unsustainable.

The Core team chose a more challenging but correct path—building a financial system with active cash flow. With support from top institutional partners and exponential growth in assets under management (AUM), the fees, management charges, and lending interest generated within the ecosystem will translate into substantial real business income. These profits are not just digital bubbles but real cash generated from authentic financial interactions.

To address the specific flow of these real incomes, Core designed a highly sophisticated capital return mechanism, converting ecosystem profits into token value support. Currently, strategy management fees from the AMP protocol, transaction fees from the SatPay system, and minting fees for LST assets all flow into the overall ecosystem fund pool. The Core team has also proposed using these real profits to buy back CORE tokens on the secondary market.

Unlike common "buyback and burn" approaches, Core re-injects these repurchased CORE tokens back into the community. This cycle, where useful products attract capital, generate income, and strengthen buybacks, truly forms an upward economic flywheel.

Re-examining this evolutionary path reveals that the Core team has successfully outlined a progression from foundational infrastructure to commercial operation. In this newly recognized Bitcoin grid model, Bitcoin will no longer be just dormant digital gold but will evolve into a freely flowing bloodline across the entire financial market. Meanwhile, Core is no longer merely a yield-generating tool but has transformed into a proactive financial ecosystem capable of generating its own cash flow.

While other Bitcoin Layer2 protocols on the market are still immersed in accumulating TVL data or issuing reward points to fill valuation gaps, Core has clearly taken the lead, breaking out of the industry trap and pioneering a new BTCFi path driven by real commercial value.