727 FinancePANews October 16 news: The Bitcoin Layer 2 platform Stacks has released its third-quarter ecosystem report. Data shows that during the first two lockup cycles, a total of 735 BTC entered the Bitcoin staking system. Since the PoX-5 hard fork, the amount of STX participating in staking has increased by more than 25%, from 392 million to 493 million. The first lockup cycle (Bond 1) deposited a total of 230 BTC, with participants including 21shares, HashKey Cloud, UTXO Management, and Sypher Capital, among others. Deposits in the second lockup cycle doubled, reaching 505 BTC. Zest Protocol's locked value exceeds $80 million, with deposits exceeding $122 million, total borrowings exceeding $42 million, and 800 bitcoins deployed as collateral.
Stacks plans to launch a self-custodial lending feature collateralized by staked Bitcoin in the fourth quarter, and will also launch Earn vaults and further integrate stBTC with platforms such as Zest, Bitflow, and Hermetica. In addition, Stacks also plans to launch the Epoch 4.1 network upgrade in early December, which includes improvements to the smart contract language Clarity.