Draper Associates, the VC firm led by the legendary investor Tim Draper, has led the $3.5 million seed round of Zest Protocol, a Stacks-based Bitcoin lending market. The round, which also had the participation of Binance Labs, Flow Traders, Trust Machines, and others, seeks to allow bitcoin holders to put their capital to use using on-chain liquidity markets.
Legendary Investor Tim Draper Leads Bitcoin Lending Protocol Zest's $3.5 Million Seed Round
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Zest Protocol Raises $3.5 Million in Seed Funding Round Led by Draper Associates
Zest Protocol, a Bitcoin lending-focused Stacks-based protocol, has raised $3.5 million in a seed round led by Draper Associates, the venture capital (VC) firm founded by legendary bitcoin investor Tim Draper. Binance Labs, Flow Traders, Trust Machines, and others followed Draper’s bet on the significance and impact Zest will have on bitcoin’s usability.
Zest Protocol’s objective is to bring an almost native experience for bitcoin holders seeking to put their bitcoin to use in markets, using it for lending or yield-generating activities like in smart contracts-enabled blockchains. Users will fund their accounts using a simple BTC transaction, benefiting from the upcoming SBTC upgrade, which enables more secure and trustless movement of the base asset across layers.
Tycho Onnasch, the founder of Zest Protocol, remarked on the enabling capabilities of layer 2 initiatives for expanding decentralized finance to Bitcoin. He stressed that the upcoming wave of innovation would be powered by second-layer protocols, given that “the creation of basic defi primitives such as liquidity pools isn’t possible on Bitcoin L1.”
Draper commented on the current limitations of the Bitcoin protocol, disclosing he had attempted several experiments to deploy BTC productively with no easy outcome. “I don’t want to just hold BTC – I want to use it!” he declared, looking forward to experiencing the solution that Zest protocol has proposed for solving bitcoin’s usability problem.
Zest Protocol’s lending infrastructure is already available on the Stacks mainnet and will adapt to the upcoming SBTC upgrade when available.
What do you think about Zest Protocol’s bitcoin lending proposal and its $3.5 million seed round? Tell us in the comments section below.
