Zest Protocol, a Bitcoin lending protocol, has received $3.5 million in investment. The creators of the project claim that their platform is made to let people who own the main digital currency, Bitcoin (BTC), to invest in the network and earn more money. They think that the growth of Bitcoin’s decentralized finance (DeFi) sector is crucial to the global adoption of cryptocurrencies.
Billionaire investor Tim Draper spearheaded the seed campaign. Furthermore, other prominent players in the industry, including Binance Labs, Flow Traders, Trust Machines, and others, were also involved. Users can access decentralized lending on the biggest blockchain network in the world through the Zest protocol, which employs the Nakamoto upgrade with Layer 2 Bitcoin stacks and the sBTC bonding asset.
The Zest protocol, which is part of the Stacks mainnet, will be utilized by users to send and receive Bitcoin and to fund their balances through sBTC. According to the founders of this startup, once this is done, people will have the ability to engage in lending and other income-generating financial activities.
“The DeFi sector is going to be revolutionized by Bitcoin scaling protocols like Stacks,” remarked Tycho Onnasch, founder of Zest Protocol. On the Bitcoin network, basic DeFi primitives like liquidity pools cannot be created, in contrast to Ethereum. What the project was always intended for—the decentralized finance sector—should see its inflection point with the Stacks sBTC update.
Just to refresh your memory, the analytical service Drop Stab reports that VCs put over $146 million into cryptocurrency startups between May 6, 2024, and May 12, 2024. As a result, 34 rounds of funding were necessary.