Hashi Launches Bitcoin Lending Testnet on Sui With Institutional Focus

Hashi, a Bitcoin finance infrastructure built on the Sui blockchain, said Thursday it has officially launched its public testnet—an early milestone it says will accelerate the buildout of an institution-grade onchain credit and lending market for native Bitcoin (BTC).

The testnet release gives builders, financial institutions, and infrastructure providers a live environment to develop, integrate, and stress-test BTC-backed financial applications under conditions that more closely resemble production. The project is positioning the rollout as a step toward making Bitcoin usable beyond passive holding and spot trading, targeting use cases such as institutional lending, borrowing, credit markets, and yield strategies.

Hashi’s announcement arrives as institutional adoption of Bitcoin continues to broaden—supported by spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs), corporate treasury allocations, and increasing regulatory clarity in major jurisdictions. Yet much of Bitcoin’s more than $1 trillion market value remains effectively idle, in part because transparent, programmable, and institution-compatible infrastructure for deploying native BTC in onchain credit markets has been limited.

To address institutional risk constraints, Hashi said its testnet introduces a new multi-layer risk management system called the ‘Guardian Layer’, designed to strengthen collateral safety for BTC-backed activity. The architecture adds an additional monitoring and capital-protection mechanism aimed at reducing operational and adversarial risks during collateral movement and large transactions—concerns that have historically kept many institutions cautious about onchain lending markets.

According to Hashi, the ‘Guardian Layer’ can be configured to delay or block suspected malicious transactions before collateral leaves the system, giving institutions more control while preserving onchain transparency and ‘programmability’. All BTC collateral—represented through UTXOs—requires a ‘2-of-2’ signing scheme, combining Hashi validator multi-party computation (MPC) signatures with a Guardian signature, creating a dual-authorization workflow intended to add a second line of defense.

The team framed the new layer as a complement to prior design features disclosed earlier this year, including automated collateral management, verifiable loan terms, and full onchain visibility into collateral health—capabilities aimed at meeting institutional requirements for auditability and operational assurance.

Hashi also highlighted tax uncertainty as a recurring barrier to institutional deployment of native BTC in onchain markets. The project said Fenwick & West, a major U.S. digital asset law firm, assessed that Hashi’s deposit and redemption mechanism would likely not be treated as a taxable transaction under U.S. tax law—an interpretation that, if broadly accepted, could reduce friction for institutions concerned about triggering tax events through routine collateral operations.

The testnet launch is accompanied by a widening set of ecosystem partnerships spanning custody, wallets, liquidity venues, DeFi lending applications, insurance providers, data and oracle services, and security auditors. Hashi said Wave Digital Assets LLC—an early partner—plans to deepen its collaboration and explore tokenizing Bitcoin yield-bearing bond products on Sui over the next three years, signaling growing institutional interest in ‘programmable’ fixed-income-style BTC products.

Hashi’s partner roster includes custody and wallet infrastructure providers such as BitGo, Blockdaemon, Cobo, Fordefi by Paxos, Cubist, Ledger, and SwissBorg; liquidity and market participants including Bullish, Cumberland, Erebor, and FalconX; Sui-native DeFi and lending protocols such as Alphafi, Bluefin, Current, Scallop, Suilend, Navi, and Fluid; and ancillary services including CF Benchmarks, Sorter Insure, and security firms Asymptotic, Certora, and OtterSec.

Adeniyi Abiodun, co-founder and chief product officer at Mysten Labs, a key contributor to Sui’s early development, said the initiative reflects a broader pattern in financial market maturation. “All major asset classes ultimately form mature credit, lending, and liquidity markets,” he said, adding that Bitcoin is no exception and that Hashi is designed to provide the safety, transparency, and ‘programmability’ institutions have long demanded.

Developers can begin building immediately using documentation, integration guides, and technical resources available at sui.io/hashi. Hashi said the testnet phase will be used to validate operational procedures and integrations ahead of a mainnet release, with the goal of turning Bitcoin into a more productive collateral asset and accelerating the emergence of BTC-backed financial markets on Sui.