Bitcoin has always been the elephant in the DeFi room. It holds the most value of any crypto asset, yet most of it just sits there, doing nothing, while the rest of DeFi runs on Ethereum and its cousins. Hashi, a new Bitcoin collateralization protocol built on Sui, is trying to fix that, and its testnet is now live at devnet.hashi.sui.io.
The core pitch is straightforward: deposit native Bitcoin, mint hBTC on Sui, and use it as programmable collateral for institutional lending and stablecoin borrowing, all while the actual BTC never leaves the Bitcoin blockchain.
What the Guardian Layer actually does
The protocol uses multi-party computation (MPC) threshold signatures, requiring consensus of one-third of validators, which reduces the risk of collusion or any one player getting compromised.
On top of that sits the Guardian Layer. Think of it as a circuit breaker. Before any significant BTC withdrawal clears, the Guardian Layer steps in to verify it against predefined thresholds. In plain terms: if someone tries to pull an unusually large amount of Bitcoin out of the system, an additional layer of verification kicks in before anything moves.
