Zest Protocol raises $3.5m Seed round to redefine Bitcoin lending Led by @drapervc, with participation from @BinanceLabs, @FlowTraders, @trustmachinesco, @goasymmetric and more 🤝

Spent a while looking at the institutional side of Bitcoin, and the thing that keeps coming up isn't the buying. Anyone can buy $BTC. It's everything after: custody, staying compliant, moving it between teams without breaking the processes these institutions already run on. That's the gap @FireblocksHQ fills. It's the security and ops layer a lot of institutions already trust to hold and move their assets What caught my attention is that Stacks is now integrated into Fireblocks. So instead of asking institutions to learn an entirely new setup, they can access Bitcoin DeFi through infrastructure they’re already familiar with. That means things like borrowing against BTC on @ZestProtocol, trading on @bitflow, or using products like @HermeticaFi become much easier to access from the same environment. The other interesting part is where this is heading. Stacks is working toward self-custodial Bitcoin staking, so institutions could eventually earn BTC-denominated yield on the Bitcoin they already hold, without touching the custody model they're comfortable with. Feels like a small integration on the surface, but it’s another step toward making Bitcoin more institutions friendly. Pleased to partner with @Stacks to highlight how institutional access to Bitcoin-native finance is evolving.

Sell BTC? Zester prefers earning 1.36% BTC on BTC yield instead.

We built the largest lending market on Bitcoin L2s. Now we're building one where BTC collateral stays on L1. Heads down, watch this space 🟧

Use Zest Protocol Stacks market directly from @FireblocksHQ. 1.3% BTC on BTC yield today 🟠

The next phase of adoption is making the asset 100M+ people already hold productive. @TychoOnnasch on why Bitcoin is the bridge, live later today on X.

The flywheel in @Stacks Bitcoin Staking is elegant, and it gets stronger as the network earns fees from Bitcoin DeFi. Users stake BTC to secure the chain, earn BTC yield, and lock STX supply in the process. This new STX utility as staking capacity results in increased demand, which in return drives up the BTC yield from miner spend. This pulls more demand for STX as staking capacity. What will give the flywheel real momentum is network fees, and fees come from capital being used on-chain. Securing the chain lays the foundation. Putting that secured capital to work is what builds the activity on top of it. This is where an stBTC comes in. The BTC staked to secure the chain would otherwise sit still, and stBTC keeps it productive the whole time it stakes. That liquid BTC becomes collateral on @ZestProtocol, gets looped for leverage, and trades on DExes, and the underlying yield is BTC-on-BTC. The deeper effect is that this sets a floor for BTC yield across the entire Stacks chain. Any BTC posted as collateral on Stacks can be looped back into staking, so the staking yield becomes the baseline every other strategy builds on top of. That floor is why Stacks Bitcoin DeFi can offer BTC-on-BTC yields no other ecosystem can match. Every time that stBTC moves through Stacks DeFi it generates fees, and those fees are what keep the wheel accelerating. So the staking design secures the chain, and stBTC is what makes it compound.