Zest Protocol Announces Stacks Vaults, Bringing Automated Yield Strategies to Bitcoin-Native Finance

George Town, Cayman Islands, July 28th, 2026, Chainwire

Zest Protocol today announces Stacks Vaults, a new vault layer built on top of its lending markets. Stacks Vaults will let users deposit a single asset into an automated strategy that manages yield on their behalf. The first Stacks Vault will be built around stBTC, the liquid staking Bitcoin token Stacking DAO introduced recently.

Stacks Vaults marks the evolution of Zest Protocol from a lending market into yield infrastructure. Until now, earning optimized yield on Stacks required actively managing positions across markets. Stacks Vaults change that: a holder deposits once, selects a strategy, and the vault handles the mechanics in the background.

The first vault will be an stBTC looping vault. A holder will deposit stBTC, and the vault will use it as collateral to borrow sBTC, stake the borrowed Bitcoin into stBTC, and repeat the process to compound yield on top of the base Bitcoin Staking rewards. The holder maintains a single position while Zest Protocol manages the strategy automatically.

> "Lending markets were the foundation. Vaults are what gets built on top," said Tycho Onnasch, Founder, Zest Protocol. "With Stacks Vaults, a holder deposits a single asset and the strategy runs itself. The stBTC looping vault is the first, and it won't be the last. Every yield source on Stacks becomes a strategy we can automate."