Does TBTC have any competitors? And who are they?
Disclaimer: Although I'm participating in the "Playing for Keeps" competition organized by TBTC Founders, I will do my best to be as much unbiased as I can.
To start with, TBTC is the tokenized Bitcoin on the Ethereum chain. It is produced by locking BTC coins on the original chain and issuing the corresponding amount of tokens on the Ethereum chain. No magic happens here, both chains are not-interoperable. TBTC does not create tokens out of thin air - the number of locked coins should be strictly the same as the sum of issued ERC-20 tokens.
Locking Bitcoins happening with the help of so-called "Signers". Signers are the special type of nodes who are responsible for holding and securing users' deposits. And they are paid a fee for their service. Signers are grouped by the smart-contract by the group of 3 and they collectively taking care of the BTC wallet they generated.
Signers are not saints or Santa Clauses and they could have bad motives. To intervene them from doing something bad the project put the obligatory rule for them - to stake ETH as the bond for their good behaviour. To have the ability to hold 100 BTC of deposits and to have good fees, Signers should freeze the 150 of Bitcoins in Ethereum tokens ETH.
So the system is secured by design.
Who are the competitors of Keep?
In my opinion, there are 2 projects considered as competitors of Keep's TBTC: REN's renBTC and WBTC. There is a good chance that you know about them already, so I will not waste your time and will try to highlight only their strength and weaknesses.
The first one: WBTC
Strength - the support of the major players of the industry, they are directly involved in the project and govern it with the help of DAO.
Weakness - the type of governance is the total centralization. All the BTCs are held within the only custodian.
Strength - the transparency of the project, everything is shown on the dashboard (balances, last issues, and redemptions)
Weakness - KYC is obligatory.
Strength - no upper limit of the minting/redemption.
Strength - undoubtedly, WBTC is the market leader.
The second one: renBTC
Strength - the support of the major DeFi platforms, ecosystem players
Strength - the type of governance is decentralization, money is held by randomly selected Darknodes who are signing all the transactions collectively on behalf of the project
Strength - no KYC, permissionless network
Weakness - Darknodes are obligated to use REN token as collateral. This is unavoidable pushing the price of the token making synthetic bubbles. And this is preventing new Darknodes from entering the club.
Strength - the system selects 100 Darknodes and they are signing the wallet together.
Weakness - over-collateralization, Darknodes are 300% collateralized. So in order to hold 100 BTC, Darknode should have 300BTC worth of REN, which is unaffordable, especially, when the price is driven up.
Weakness - platform is still not used by the major players, only 50 Bitcoins are locked now.
Strength - no upper limit of issuance/redemption.
We explored the projects, all the major pros and cons and what can we say? What is the conclusion? Now it the time for me to stay objective.
First - WBTC is not the direct competitor for the TBTC. Why? Because this is the project of a different kind. Nothing special here, no new developments, technologies - only the working schema marketed by big players. Also, the project has a clear institutional orientation, while TBTC is the choice for retail (at least for now).
Second - renBTC is the real competitor to tBTC. The projects are quite similar from the technical perspective (well, almost similar), and considering that the REN's project already has the user-base, it has the first-mover advantage over the TBTC.