Starknet’s BTC staking on mainnet goes live on Sept. 30

Starknet, the zero-knowledge-proof layer-2 solution for Ethereum, plans to roll out its Bitcoin staking feature on its mainnet by the end of this month.

The Starknet team says it will introduce Bitcoin staking on the Ethereum layer-2 network’s mainnet on September 30, 2025. Amid the growing traction for decentralized finance on the Bitcoin network, Starknet sees the launch of BTC staking as “the last missing piece of the BTCfi campaign.”

This update follows an earlier one announced in August.

Stake BTC and earn STRK 

Starknet supports BTCfi growth on its platform with parameters such as Bitcoin staking set at a power weight of 0.25. This means Bitcoin will have a consensus dominance of up to 25%, while the remaining 75% of consensus power will be in STRK.

Validators and builders can deploy Bitcoin (BTC) delegation pools when the upgrade goes live. Once integration with the protocol is done, holders will be able to start earning rewards on Sept. 30. 

To make staking and unstaking more flexible, the platform has cut the unstaking period from 21 days to 7 days.

Bitcoin’s DeFi market

The rollout follows a governance proposal that the community recently passed in a vote with over 93% approval. Unveiling the staking feature puts into place a mechanism by which Bitcoin holders will stake their Bitcoin on the Starknet (STRK) network, helping with network security as they earn rewards.

While the upgrade brings novel Bitcoin staking on Starknet, it comes as part of the protocol’s support for various tokenized BTC assets, or wrapped Bitcoin representations. That means direct staking on Starknet will go live with wrapped assets such as WBTC, LBTC, and SolvBTC.

Starknet’s BTC staking adds to initiatives by protocol such as Babylon and Stacks that look to allow market participants tap into their idle BTC for rewards across the decentralized finance ecosystem.

According to DeFiLlama, the total value locked in DeFi protocols on Bitcoin has surged to a new all-time high above $8.4 billion. The TVL is up more than 8% in the past 24 hours, with most of the upside on restaking protocol Babylon.

Lombard Finance, Threshold Network, Lightning Network, and Solv Protocol are the other top BTCfi protocols.