🍿 Zest Protocol Raises $3.5M & Q2 Critical Bounties Revealed

Venture Capital firms are choosing Bitcoin L2s. After Bitflow’s Pre-seed $1.3M and Velar’s $3.5M seed raise, Zest launches on Mainnet and announces $3.5M raise led by Draper Associates. This, all while Stackers earned their first post-Nakamoto instantiation BTC yield.

🍿 Stacks Snacks

• Zest Protocol raises $3.5M led by Draper Associates with participation from Binance Labs, Trust Machines, and others.

• The Stacks Foundation releases a list of Critical Bounties, aimed at funding infrastructure development, tools, research, and other initiatives.

• Uphold integrates with Stacks, bringing native STX.

• Cycle 84 pays out 11.55% APR in BTC for STX Stackers.

• Builders watch: Stacks Pitch competition is happening during NFC Lisbon in Portugal. Sign up now.

• Axelar launches Stacks Quests as part of Axelar’s Axelarator Program series.

😋 Other tasty content

• Stacks Foundation Product Lead Andre Serrano shares sBTC Rollout.

• Stacks Co-Creator Muneeb Ali joined Figment for a Stacks Deep Dive.

• DeSpread shares project report on Stacks.

• Check out the monthly Stacks Data Snapshot brought to you by Signal21.

• Hermetica shares the idea of USDh and staked sUSDh for their protocol.