Stacks Led Bitcoin-Linked Networks With $88.9 Million Locked in Q3 2026

Stacks ended the third quarter of 2026 with $88.9 million in decentralized finance (DeFi) total value locked (TVL), leading networks built around Bitcoin (BTC) as lending made up most of its balance.

That figure put Stacks ahead of Rootstock, at $83.2 million, and Mezo, at $77.3 million. Apps on Stacks generated $448,000 in user fees during the quarter, compared with $208,000 on Hemi and $181,000 on Merlin. Weekly trading volume on Stacks decentralized exchanges reached a $16.7 million peak in late September.

Bitcoin Staking went live on Stacks mainnet in July through the PoX-5 hard fork. The upgrade introduced miner-funded yields distributed through set bonding periods. Roughly 735 BTC was staked during the first two post-launch bonding periods. Staking of Stacks (STX), the network’s token, reached 493 million STX following the upgrade.

In early September, StackingDAO introduced stBTC, a token representing staked Bitcoin that can be transferred and used elsewhere. It gave the ecosystem a liquid-staking option alongside its Bitcoin staking product.

At the end of the quarter, lending accounted for $81.9 million, or 92.1%, of Stacks’ DeFi TVL. Zest Protocol held the largest share of locked value, leaving the quarter-end total concentrated in lending and one protocol.

Stacks operates its own consensus mechanism while anchoring to Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s base layer has a narrower role than applications for lending or token swaps, and Stacks competes with Rootstock, Mezo, Hemi and Merlin for activity in Bitcoin-linked finance. A broader third-quarter DeFi TVL snapshot put total DeFi TVL at $95.42 billion on Sept. 26.

By early November 2026, a chain-level measure for Stacks was about $57 million. A broader ecosystem measure that included liquid staking was about $123 million. Those November figures describe different scopes from each other and from the $88.9 million quarter-end DeFi TVL figure.