Zest Protocol introduces DeFi incentives on Stacks market with monthly STX rewards

TECHNOLOGY

Zest Protocol introduces DeFi incentives on Stacks market with monthly STX rewards

The lending protocol is distributing 3 BTC worth of STX over 90 days to attract liquidity ahead of Bitcoin staking product launches

by
Editorial Team

Sep. 14, 2026

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Photo: Tima Miroshnichenko / Pexels

Zest Protocol is putting real money on the table to juice activity on its Stacks lending market. The platform just launched a rewards program that will distribute the equivalent of 0.5 BTC per month, roughly $116K at current prices, in STX tokens to users who supply sBTC or borrow USDCx.

The program, which kicked off on September 10, runs for 90 days through December 10, 2026, with a total pot of 3 BTC spread across participants.

How the rewards actually work

The monthly STX rewards are split evenly between two groups: sBTC suppliers and USDCx borrowers. To earn a share, USDCx borrowers need to maintain a minimum 20% time-weighted loan-to-value ratio throughout the period.

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On the supply side, sBTC depositors don’t even need to enroll. Their participation is tracked automatically through daily pro-rata snapshots taken on-chain, meaning rewards scale proportionally with how much you deposit and for how long.

For sBTC suppliers specifically, the incentives translate to an additional 0.6% APY layered on top of whatever organic borrow interest they’re already earning, paid in STX and verified through transparent on-chain data.

Zest’s track record and the bigger picture

Zest Protocol has been operating on the Stacks blockchain since its launch in March 2024. In that time, the platform hit a peak total value locked north of $100 million, and notably hasn’t reported any bad debt.

The platform’s Stacks Market V2 includes pair-specific risk parameters, which means each collateral-debt combination gets its own risk profile, and partial liquidations, a mechanism that lets the protocol sell only enough collateral to bring a position back to health. Supported assets on the platform include sBTC, STX, stSTX, and USDCx.

The incentive program is part of a broader initiative called the Stack Sats program, which Stacks itself is backing to drive DeFi engagement across its ecosystem.

What this means for Stacks DeFi

Zest Protocol is positioning itself ahead of upcoming product releases, including leveraged Bitcoin staking vaults. By building liquidity and user engagement now, the protocol is essentially pre-loading its balance sheet before new features go live.

Rewards based on verifiable on-chain snapshots remove the trust assumptions that plague centralized reward programs. Users can independently verify that distributions match their participation.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.