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

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. 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...