Tim Draper leads $3.5 million raise for Bitcoin liquidity protocol Zest

• Tim Draper’s VC firm Draper Associates led the $3.5 million seed round for Zest Protocol.
• Binance Labs, Trust Machines and Bitcoin Frontier Fund among key participants.

Billionaire Tim Draper has led a $3.5 million seed round investment in the on-chain Bitcoin lending platform Zest Protocol.

Other than the billionaire’s venture capital firm Draper Associates, the round also attracted the participation of Binance Labs, Trust Machines and Flow Traders.

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

Per details published in a blog post on Monday, Zest will use the funds to expand its decentralised, peer-to-peer lending business.

On the platform, users can lend their Bitcoin (BTC) or borrow against it. With this, users have an opportunity to generate yield or passive income without having to sell their Bitcoin.

Growing the Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem

To bring the product to the community, Zest Protocol has tapped into Bitcoin layer 2 network Stacks. The project leverages Stacks’ Nakamoto upgrade to allow for asset bridging asset, unlocking access to DeFi on Bitcoin.

Tycho Onnasch, founder of Zest Protocol, commented:

“Unlike on Ethereum, the creation of basic DeFi primitives such as liquidity pools isn’t possible on Bitcoin L1. The Stacks sBTC upgrade is set to be a watershed moment for Bitcoin DeFi, which is what it was designed for from the beginning.”

Users with sBTC can fund their Zest Protocol balances with sBTC to gain access to lending or other yield-generating features.