• Tim Draper’s VC agency Draper Associates led Zest Protocol’s $3.5 million seed spherical.
• Key individuals embrace Binance Labs, Belief Machines, and Bitcoin Frontier Fund.

Billionaire Tim Draper led a $3.5 million seed spherical funding in Zest Protocol, an on-chain Bitcoin lending platform.

The spherical additionally attracted participation from billionaire enterprise capital agency Draper Associates, in addition to Binance Labs, Belief Machines, and Circulate Merchants.

Bitcoin Frontier Fund, Gravity Fund, Primal Capital, Hyperithm, Miton Crypto, Tykhe Block Ventures, and Elixir Capital additionally participated.

Zest plans to make use of the funds to develop its decentralized peer-to-peer lending enterprise, in response to particulars revealed in a weblog submit on Monday.

The platform permits customers to lend Bitcoin (BTC) and borrow in opposition to it. This offers customers the chance to generate yield and passive revenue with out having to promote their Bitcoins.

Progress of the Bitcoin DeFi Ecosystem

To deliver this product to the neighborhood, Zest Protocol leveraged the Bitcoin Layer 2 community stack. This mission leverages Stax's Nakamoto improve to allow asset bridging property and unlock entry to DeFi with Bitcoin.

Tycho Onnasch, founding father of Zest Protocol, commented:

“Not like Ethereum, the creation of fundamental DeFi primitives comparable to liquidity swimming pools shouldn’t be doable with Bitcoin L1. The Stacks sBTC improve might be a watershed second for Bitcoin DeFi, because it was designed for from the start. It was executed.”

Customers with sBTC can deposit sBTC into their Zest protocol stability to entry loans and different income-generating options.