Sui’s Hashi bitcoin lending protocol has processed more than 1.1 million deposits and 165,000 withdrawals in the three weeks since its July 22 testnet launch, per onchain data.
Key Takeaways
Sui’s Hashi testnet processed 1.1 million bitcoin deposits and 165,000 withdrawals as of last week.Over 25 institutions, including Bitgo and Cumberland, are stress-testing Hashi’s BTC collateral system.Hashi’s Guardian Layer must clear security reviews before any 2026 mainnet transition begins.Hashi was first introduced by the Sui Foundation in March 2026 as a decentralized primitive built to let bitcoin (BTC) function as collateral in onchain lending and credit markets. The project moved through a private devnet phase before opening the current public testnet, giving developers access to software development kits (SDKs) and integration guides ahead of an eventual mainnet rollout.
How Hashi Keeps Bitcoin NativeUnlike conventional wrapped-asset bridges, Hashi does not move bitcoin off the Bitcoin network. Instead, users deposit native BTC, Sui validators confirm the transaction, and the protocol mints hBTC, a representative token that can be used as programmable collateral for institutional lending and stablecoin borrowing while the underlying bitcoin stays put on its own chain.
Security rests on a layered design where deposits are secured by a 2-of-2 multisig requiring signatures from the protocol’s multi-party computation (MPC) validators, a cryptographic setup in which no single party ever holds a complete private key.
Lastly, withdrawals pass through a Guardian Layer, a configurable risk-management system that functions as a circuit breaker, reviewing large withdrawal requests against preset thresholds before they clear. In sum, the design structure attempts to avoid the single points of failure that left older cross-chain bridges vulnerable to exploits.
The protocol’s revenue model leans on interest-rate spreads between what depositors earn and what borrowers pay for bitcoin-backed loans, rather than relying on inflationary token emissions to bootstrap activity.
That structure mirrors how traditional lending desks price credit, an approach Sui’s backers argue will hold up better once testnet incentives disappear and real capital is on the line.
If Hashi can eventually capture even a small share of the $1.4 trillion bitcoin market for onchain lending, it would represent one of the more significant crossovers between Bitcoin’s balance sheet and a non-Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem so far.
