Earn FAQ

How does Zest Protocol Earn differ from Borrow?

Zest Protocol Earn is focused on providing the best user experience for earning yield on Bitcoin. Zest Protocol Borrow is the ultimate platform for earning yield and borrowing against your Stacks assets. In the future, BTC Earn assets will be listed on Borrow, allowing users to borrow against their Bitcoin.

How does Zest Protocol Earn differ from other BTC yield products?

We are building a platform for Bitcoiners first. This means making the most secure, permissionless platform for yield ever created. We're accomplishing this through a unique combination of Stacks' ability to read Bitcoin state and multiple audits on everything we build.

Is there a minimum deposit?

Yes. The minimum deposit is 0.0015 BTC.

Why wouldn't I just deposit BTC on Babylon over Zest?

Depositing BTC on Babylon locks your capital up for an indeterminate amount of time. BTCz is a liquid asset that can be traded, staked, leveraged, etc. Babylon's staking caps fill up almost instantly every time they open, depositing for BTCz is a way to "skip the line" and not have to worry about fitting into the cap.

How long does a BTCz withdrawal take?

It can take up to 21 days for your BTC to return to your Bitcoin wallet. This depends on a couple of factors including Babylon's mechanisms and the Stacks cycles that we operate on. Your withdrawal applet will tell you the approximate date and time your BTC will be fully withdrawn on.

What can I do with BTCz?

Once liquidity is deployed on DEXes, you can swap it for any on-chain Stacks token. More functionality will be added over time as DeFi protocols adopt BTCz.

"Please consolidate your UTXOs before trying again." error when trying to deposit BTC

Zest Protocol currently supports a max of 8 UTXOs for the BTCz deposit transaction type.

Once you reach the max amount of UTXO's, you need to send all of your BTC to yourself in order to consolidate. Simply copy your bitcoin address and paste it in your wallet to send to yourself.

What are the risks of earning BTC yield through BTCz?

Yield is generated by taking risk. It's important to understand the risks before engaging in a particular yield generating activity. Earning BTC yield through BTCz relies on:

a) The Stacks L2. BTCz is a SIP-10 token on Stacks.

b) The Babylon Protocol. The BTC that backs BTCz is staked through the Babylon protocol.

c) Staking risk. Staked BTC can be slashed (i.e. destroyed) if the validator that the BTC is delegated to produces malicious blocks. Slashing is currently not active on Babylon, yet when it will be activated Zest Protocol will work with institutional grade validators who provide slashing insurance (Figment, Blockdaemon, etc) to protect user funds.

d) BTC Custody. The BTC that backs BTCz goes through Zest Protocol before being staked in the Babylon protocol. Currently a Cobo MPC wallet is used to hold BTC and stake in Babylon, ahead of upgrading the system to a permissionless peg using the same Treshold Signature Scheme that sBTC on Stacks follows.

We're very happy with the risk reward setup that Zest Protocol Earn is able to offer to users. The Stacks L2 is anchored to Bitcoin state through Bitcoin finality, the Babylon protocol functions entirely on Bitcoin L1 with limited scripting, and sBTC is the most secure decentralised BTC peg system ever designed. Zest Protocol Earn offers unparalleled security benefits over similar protocols that run on Ethereum with a fully custodial setup. However, it's critical that potential users get fully comfortable with the risks associated of using BTCz to generate a BTC yield.

What if I have a question not listed here?

Please join the Zest Protocol Discord and ask one of our helpful community managers! We are available to answer questions 24/7.