Solana-based MonkeDAO acquires zBTC as a Bitcoin reserve

MonkeDAO, a community-owned non-fungible token project on Solana, has announced it’s become the first decentralized autonomous organization to adopt a Bitcoin reserve.

Solana (SOL)-based MonkeDAO announced on March 28 that it had adopted a Bitcoin (BTC) reserve in its strategy by acquiring the APOLLO on Solana token zBTC.

The newly-launched zBTC is a token pegged 1:1 to Bitcoin and native to Solana. MonkeDAO is the first DAO to adopt the token for its treasury reserve.

According to the APOLLO team, the token offers BTC on-chain – not bridged or wrapped but permissionless. Holders can tap into this token to participate in decentralized finance on Solana, earning on-chain yield.

MonkeDAO says it’s adding this zBTC to its treasury.

The 1 zBTC purchased goes into the Strategic Monke Reserve. SMR is the NFT DAO project’s treasury reserve strategy that will help the community foster financial sustainability. 

It’s also MonkeDAO’s commitment to a permissionless ecosystem for Bitcoin DeFi, or BTCFi. zBTC allows Bitcoin holders the opportunity to participate in DeFi on Solana via lending, borrowing, and yield farming activities.

“The SMR is our commitment to long term growth and the addition of zBTC diversifies [and] strengthens our current pool of native assets,” MonkeDAO posted on X.

This strategy is nonetheless not the Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, level of play, but it does illustrate the growing confidence in Bitcoin. 

As well as the 1:1 peg with Bitcoin, APOLLO says zBTC leverages the trustless two-way peg  for security, which it actually achieves via a simple payment verification sidechain. The token also taps into a decentralized validator set on the Zeus Network.

For its role in BTCFi, Apollo and Zeus Network target the “trillions in value” on the Bitcoin network.

Opening up BTC from its underutilized liquidity, with hodlers’ coins idle in wallets, is a big opportunity for growth and use case strengthening. Zeus Network validated its first Bitcoin transaction on Solana in December 2024.