Keep Network

Keep Network is a privacy-focused infrastructure protocol for public blockchains. Its core primitive is the "keep": an off-chain container that holds private data and lets smart contracts interact with that data without publishing it on-chain, so applications can preserve confidentiality while retaining transparency and auditability. The network is secured by KEEP, a work token with a staking, dividend and slashing model that provides Sybil resistance and allows the network to run permissionlessly and censorship-resistantly. KEEP stakers secure the network, operate the Keep random beacon and ECDSA nodes, and earn fees for work performed; stakers can also act as tBTC signers by bonding ETH.

The first application built on Keep is tBTC, described as the first decentralized Bitcoin-to-Ethereum bridge. tBTC is an ERC-20 token fully backed by at least 1 BTC per token held in reserve, allowing Bitcoin holders to use their assets in Ethereum DeFi without centralized intermediaries; redemption in either direction requires no intermediary sign-off, and signers are selected by the Keep random beacon. tBTC is an open-source effort supported by groups including Keep, Summa and the Cross-Chain Group. Other tools in the ecosystem include the Keep Token Dashboard for staking, Keep Stats, All the Keeps for monitoring tBTC deposits, and coverage pools, a governable fee-earning asset pool designed to cover low-likelihood on-chain events.

In 2021 the Keep and NuCypher teams proposed an on-chain "hard merge" (codenamed Keanu) of their two Ethereum protocols — a merger of protocol functions and communities rather than of the companies — which produced the Threshold Network. Keep's GitHub organization now states that Keep merged with NuCypher in 2022 to form Threshold, that active development lives in the threshold-network organization, and that tBTC v1 is deprecated and superseded by tBTC v2. The KEEP token has migrated to the T token at a rate of 4.78 T per 1 KEEP.

Founding story

Keep Network was founded in 2017 by Matt Luongo and Corbin Pon, crypto industry veterans who previously founded the Bitcoin rewards app Fold.

Business model

Keep operates as an open-source, token-incentivized protocol rather than a conventional software vendor. Network participants stake the KEEP work token to run random beacon and ECDSA nodes and to sign for tBTC deposits, and earn fees for the work they provide; a slashing model penalizes misbehavior. Token supply was distributed through private sales, staker sales, public distribution and network incentives.

Value accrues to network participants through fees earned for providing work on the network (staking, running nodes and acting as tBTC signers), plus fee-earning coverage pools; no company-level revenue figures are disclosed in the sources.

Traction

Keep launched its mainnet on April 27, 2020 with a fixed supply of 1 billion KEEP tokens; trading began May 9, 2020, and KEEP was listed on Coinbase and Binance as of June 17, 2021. Recent market data show roughly 965-968M KEEP circulating out of a 999.8M total supply, a market capitalization near $17M, about $844K TVL, roughly 11.9K holders and thin 24-hour volume (about $1.2-1.5K). The GitHub organization hosts 107 repositories, most now archived. In November 2021 the mStable community voted unanimously to support tBTC v2.

Latest developments

Keep's GitHub organization now states the project merged with NuCypher in 2022 to form the Threshold Network; active development, tBTC v2, staking and T token contracts, and security audits live under the threshold-network organization, while most Keep repositories are archived and retained for reference. tBTC v1 is deprecated in favor of tBTC v2, and the KEEP token has migrated to T at 4.78 T per KEEP. The keep.network site now directs users to mint tBTC on Threshold and to a legacy Keep dashboard. Repository activity continues in a small number of repos, with the org-wide .github repo updated in August 2026.