Bitcoin Liquidity Comes to Monad

In March 2026, Coinbase Wrapped Bitcoin became available on Monad through Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP). Chainlink CCIP enables cbBTC to be bridged directly from Base into Monad's DeFi ecosystem, giving developers building on Monad access to Bitcoin-backed liquidity for the first time. Within weeks, the asset crossed $20 million in TVL across protocols on Monad, distributed across lending markets, DEX liquidity, and structured products.

cbBTC is now live on Monad, bridged through the same infrastructure that governs its deployment on Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, and Solana.

The Asset

cbBTC is Coinbase's wrapped Bitcoin token, backed 1:1 by native BTC held in Coinbase custody. It was first deployed on Ethereum and Base in September 2024 and has since expanded to Solana, Arbitrum, and now Monad via CCIP. As of March 2026, approximately 89,000 cbBTC are in circulation, representing a market capitalization of roughly $6.1 billion.

When cbBTC is deposited to a Coinbase address, it is burned and the underlying BTC is released to the user's Bitcoin account. The smart contract code is open source and was audited by OpenZeppelin, the same contract framework used for Coinbase's cbETH. BTC reserves backing cbBTC are held 1:1 at Coinbase and are publicly verifiable through the token's onchain total supply.

For DeFi protocols, cbBTC offers a direct line to Bitcoin's liquidity without requiring Bitcoin-native infrastructure. It behaves like any ERC-20 token while retaining a verifiable claim on actual Bitcoin.

The Infrastructure

Coinbase selected Chainlink CCIP as the exclusive bridging infrastructure for its wrapped asset expansion. CCIP provides a single, secure, compliance-enabled way to connect any public or private blockchain, allowing for cross-chain token transfers, messaging, and programmable transfers. By leveraging CCIP, Chainlink's Cross-Chain Token (CCT) standard governs cbBTC's movement across chains, ensuring that issuance and redemption mechanics remain consistent regardless of where the token is deployed.

CCIP employs multiple layers of decentralized validation to manage cross-chain risk. Transfers are verified independently from the source chain, reducing the attack surface that has historically made bridges a vulnerability in DeFi infrastructure. As of the March 2026 announcement, the Chainlink platform has facilitated over $28.6 trillion in onchain transaction volume across its supported networks, with zero protocol-level exploits.

"With Coinbase already leveraging Chainlink CCIP as the exclusive bridging infrastructure for its wrapped asset expansion, $5+ billion in cbBTC can move into Monad while maintaining the institutional-grade security required to manage billions in cross-chain flows." — Johann Eid, Chief Business Officer, Chainlink Labs

Performance Requirements

Bitcoin-backed liquidity places specific demands on execution infrastructure. Lending markets require reliable liquidation mechanics, which depend on deterministic settlement and consistent oracle pricing under load. DEX routing around a Bitcoin-denominated unit of account requires throughput that does not degrade as participation scales. Structured products and automated strategies require low-latency execution to function as designed.

Monad is designed to process up to 10,000 transactions per second with sub-second finality and near-zero, predictable transaction fees. Its full EVM compatibility means protocols can deploy without rewriting existing smart contract logic. Neverland, for example, runs on an Aave V3 framework and uses Chainlink Data Feeds for oracle-secured asset pricing. Wrapped Bitcoin products generate volume through lending, borrowing, collateralized trading, and capital allocation strategies, each of which is transaction-intensive. Transaction costs on Monad are designed to be low and stable.

Early Adoption

"cbBTC adds a major new asset primitive for DeFi builders to design around. Through Chainlink CCIP, developers building on Monad can now bring Bitcoin-backed liquidity into fast, composable applications while maintaining cross-chain security as the ecosystem scales." — Keone Hon, Co-Founder and GM, Monad Foundation

Curvance, which is a multi-chain lending protocol focused on high capital efficiency, went live with cbBTC markets at launch. Its core design allows users to convert interest-bearing assets into leveraged positions in a single transaction, eliminating the manual cycling steps common with other lending platforms. Curvance supports a range of collateral types including liquid staking tokens, interest-bearing stablecoins, and yield derivatives. The protocol offers market-leading loan-to-value ratios and is designed for protocols and users running capital-intensive strategies.

Curvance represents the first wave of Bitcoin-backed financial products on Monad. Across lending markets, DEX liquidity, and additional emerging use cases, cbBTC TVL on Monad has reached $20 million in less than a month since the integration went live.

Bitcoin-Backed DeFi: Broader Context

Bitcoin-denominated financial products have grown steadily across DeFi since wrapped BTC formats became standard. wBTC accumulated billions in TVL across Ethereum lending markets before concerns about custodial governance prompted a shift toward alternatives. cbBTC, issued by a publicly traded company under U.S. regulatory oversight, with open-source contracts and verifiable reserves, addressed several of those concerns directly.

The current cbBTC circulating supply of approximately 89,000 tokens is distributed across Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Solana, and now Monad. Lending platforms supporting cbBTC currently offer returns on deposits depending on market conditions. The primary use cases driving activity include collateralized borrowing, spot liquidity provision, automated routing strategies, and structured products tied to BTC price exposure.

"The bridged expansion of cbBTC to the Monad ecosystem through Chainlink CCIP brings a premier wrapped asset to a high-performance landscape. We're eager to see how developers leverage cbBTC as a foundational building block to drive innovation across new networks." — Josh Leavitt, Senior Director, Product Management, Coinbase

About Monad

Monad is a high-performance, EVM-compatible Layer-1 blockchain designed for high-frequency finance. It delivers up to 10,000 transactions per second, sub-second finality, and low transaction fees, operating on a decentralized network of 170+ validators across 30+ countries. Since mainnet launch in November 2025, the chain has processed over 200 million transactions and attracted 2.3 million active users across 125+ live applications.

About Coinbase

Crypto creates economic freedom by ensuring that people can participate fairly in the economy, and Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) is on a mission to increase economic freedom for more than 1 billion people. Coinbase is updating the century-old financial system by providing a trusted platform that makes it easy for people and institutions to engage with crypto assets, including trading, staking, safekeeping, spending, and fast, free global transfers. Coinbase also provides critical infrastructure for onchain activity and supports builders who share their vision that onchain is the new online. And together with the crypto community, Coinbase advocates for responsible rules to make the benefits of crypto available around the world.

About Chainlink

Chainlink is the industry-standard oracle platform bringing the capital markets onchain and the market leader powering the majority of decentralized finance (DeFi). The Chainlink stack provides the essential data, interoperability, compliance, and privacy standards needed to power advanced blockchain use cases for institutional tokenized assets, lending, payments, stablecoins, and more. Since inventing decentralized oracle networks, Chainlink has enabled tens of trillions in transaction value and now secures the vast majority of DeFi.

Many of the world's largest financial services institutions have also adopted Chainlink's standards and infrastructure, including Swift, Euroclear, Mastercard, Fidelity International, UBS, S&P Dow Jones Indices, FTSE Russell, WisdomTree, ANZ, and top protocols such as Aave, Lido, GMX, and many others. Chainlink leverages a novel fee model where offchain and onchain revenue from enterprise adoption is converted to LINK tokens and stored in a strategic Chainlink Reserve. Learn more at chain.link.