Zest Protocol is an on-chain lending protocol built specifically for Bitcoin, enabling Bitcoin liquidity providers to earn Bitcoin yields through professionally managed lending pools that lend to the most reputable borrowers in crypto. For borrower on-chain Bitcoin loans directly against its balance sheet. In simple terms, earn more BTC with idle #BTC, or borrow with idle BTC.

🟣Financing background:

On May 13, the Bitcoin lending protocol Zest Protocol announced the completion of a $3.5 million seed round of financing, led by Tim Draper, with participation from #BinanceLabs, Flow Traders, Trust Machines and others.

🟣Technical highlights:

◾Zest Protocol is a decentralized lending market written in the Clarity smart contract language on #Stacks. The contract is open source and audited, but it was attacked earlier this year, but the team later stated that funds are safe.

◾Stacks is about to undergo the#Nakamotoupgrade, which solves the centralization and transparency issues in lending, and the block time will be reduced to about 5 seconds after the update (pre-upgrade is consistent with Bitcoin, about 10 minutes or more). In addition, this upgrade will also introduce sBTC, a secure and efficient packaged version of Bitcoin that is naturally integrated with the Stacks consensus mechanism.

◾The upgraded sBTC achieves a decentralized, trustless two-way anchor, which is equivalent to BTC being able to freely cross-chain between the Bitcoin mainnet and Stacks. Stacks has obtained a high degree of BTC liquidity and network performance, and Zest will use this liquidity to carry out lending business. Users cross-chain native Bitcoin to obtain sBTC and enter Zest's pool to obtain income.

Zest Protocol has two types of pools:

▪Yield pool, where users can earn income through their BTC

▪Lending pool, users can use their own BTC for lending

Principle: Using the Stacks L2 architecture, BTC can be moved non-custodially from Bitcoin L1 to Stacks L2 in the form of sBTC. At the same time, Zest protocol users only interact with native BTC on Bitcoin L1. (The Bitcoin market is not open yet)

🟣Project Planning:

Founded in 2021, Zest released the Zest Protocol prototype in the second quarter of 2023, completed the audit in the fourth quarter, and will follow Stacks' Nakamoto to upgrade its native Bitcoin lending service.

🟣Token Economics: Undisclosed

✨Opportunities to participate:

Currently, the official points activity is underway, and users can earn 1 point for every $1 they provide on Zest Protocol every day. Referral users can receive 10% of their points as referral points. Points represent contributions to the Zest protocol and are linked to future airdrops. Interested users can participate.

💎 Rating: ★★★★

With Binance's investment, the project has gained further exposure. Zest Protocol technology meets the needs of Bitcoin holders and borrowers, and releases the potential of Bitcoin programmability and interoperability. The previous staking market of the project only opened the stack market. In the future, we will focus on the opening of the btc ecosystem and the development of Token planning. Zest's business model is relatively traditional, although there is not much innovation, but the bound Stacks ecosystem is not fully developed but has high attention, and has great market potential. Coupled with the investment support of Binance Labs, it is still worth looking forward to. In summary, it is given a 4-star rating.
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