Guide on how to mint tBTC and start yield farming on Balancer WBTC/tBTC pool

5 min readOct 17, 2020

This is a step-by-step tutorial for newcomers to mint their first tBTC and how to use it to farm tokens through the available Defi contract.

On 9.22.2020 on Keep project sources was announced that KEEP tBTC mainnet officially launched now. So, now the question arises on how to mint tBTC on mainnet?

Short summary on what is tBTC from defirate source:

tBTC — a trustless Bitcoin bridge built by Keep Network, Summa, and the Cross-Chain Group — is now live following an official blog post. tBTC is an ERC-20 token that allows Bitcoin to be securely on Ethereum as as tBTC. Each tBTC token is backed by at least 1 BTC in the reserve pool.

That is how the idea to create this step-by-step guide happened. In this guide, I will describe my experience on how to begin with Ethereum and start to provide liquidity using tBTC at Balancer.

For this guide you will need:

Browser Google Chrome
Wallet MetaMask
15–20 minutes
Some amount of ETH for gas, and at least 0.01 mainnet BTC and the fee sum.
Some amount of WBTC to provide liquidity to the WBTC/tBTC at Balancer.

STEP 1: Get a Metamask wallet

Go to Metamask.io and download the Metamask browser extension and create your first Ethereum address. You will need about 80–100$ in Eth, as the fee is quite high at this moment.(check current gas prices here). Also, make sure that you use Main Ethereum Network on metamask wallet.

Step 2. To create a contract at tbtc.network

First of all, we need to mint some amount of tBTC. tBTC is representation of BTC on Ethereum, fully backed by Ethereum.

Using the browser with the metamask extension, go to the official tbtc.network website.

Then click on “ Start minting”

Then click on “ Deposit”

Then you will need to connect your metamask wallet with the website.(In this guide we use metamask, however, you can also do it for ledger and trezor)

Then select the lot size you want to mint. In our case, we will use just 0.01 B to test. I advise you to start with the minimum amount in the beginning.

Then you will need to click on “ Create Address”

At this point, you will need to confirm your contract. The fee is quite sufficient, so it can be wise to check the gas rate.

After you will confirm the first transaction, you will see the second one. The second transaction requires much less gas fee to execute. So you will need to confirm it for the second time.

After some time(5–10 seconds) you will be able to see your unique BTC deposit address. You will need to send the exact amount that you see at your display. Never use an exchange wallet to fund this address!

Step 3. Funding and contract confirming

This step can take some time to execute. It will take from 30 to 90 minutes for BTC to arrive.

Step 4. Minting tBTC

At this step just wait till the operation ends and confirm all the contracts in metamask wallet. Also, copy the “TDT ID” and store it in some safe place, it will require for future redemption.

Step 5. Complete

After you will finish all the operations, you will see “ You are now the proud beneficiary of 0.009995 TBTC”. If you see it, congratulations, you made everything correct! So you already minted your first tBTC that you can use further for farming.

Step 5. Provide liquidity for WBTC/tBTC pool at Balancer

Go to the Balancer pool. You will need to connect your metamask wallet where you have tbtc and wbtc tokens with the Balancer. You will be able to see that your wallet is connected correctly at the upper right corner.

Then click on Add liquidity button. You will need to set up the proxy ( if you use the balancer for the first time). So just confirm it with your metamask. It will take a few minutes. It will charge a one-time cost of about 3–6$ (depends on the gas price). For multi-asset, you have to deposit the proper weight of each asset based on the pool’s parameters.

As WBTC/tBTC pool is multi-asset, you will need to add 50% of WBTC and 50% of tBTC to add liquidity to this pool.