Hashi, Sui’s native Bitcoin finance primitive, has expanded its institutional ecosystem by adding Cumberland, Fluid, and SwissBorg ahead of its planned global testnet launch in July 2026. The three companies will explore different roles across liquidity provision, decentralized lending, and Bitcoin-backed financial services.
The expansion strengthens Hashi’s effort to make native Bitcoin more useful within decentralized finance without requiring holders to rely on wrapped assets or opaque centralized credit providers. Bitcoin remains secured on its original blockchain, while smart contracts on Sui manage the cryptographic and programmatic rights needed to use the asset as collateral.
Cumberland, Fluid, and SwissBorg Join the Hashi Ecosystem
Each of the new participants brings a different part of the institutional digital asset market to Hashi.
Cumberland, one of the crypto industry’s largest institutional liquidity providers and market makers, is evaluating Hashi’s framework for future on-chain liquidity provisioning. Its participation could help create deeper and more efficient markets for Bitcoin-backed lending products once the protocol reaches mainnet.
SwissBorg adds a European wealth management platform serving more than one million users. The company is exploring ways to offer Bitcoin-backed borrowing opportunities to eligible clients, including high-net-worth users seeking liquidity without selling their BTC holdings.
Fluid, meanwhile, is preparing a technical integration with Hashi. The DeFi protocol is expected to contribute its lending and liquidity infrastructure to support more efficient credit markets and institutional financial products on the future mainnet.
Hashi Targets Bitcoin’s Capital Efficiency Problem
Although Bitcoin represents one of the largest pools of value in the digital asset market, only a small percentage of its supply is actively used in DeFi. Many Bitcoin holders either leave their assets idle or rely on centralized companies to access loans and yield opportunities.
Hashi is designed to provide another option. The protocol aims to make native BTC programmable while keeping the underlying Bitcoin on the Bitcoin network. Sui-based smart contracts coordinate collateral rights, loan conditions, repayments, and other financial operations.
This structure is intended to avoid some of the risks associated with wrapped Bitcoin tokens and centralized lending platforms. Instead of moving BTC into a synthetic representation controlled by a separate issuer, Hashi separates custody of the original asset from the smart-contract logic governing its financial use.
Building Institutional Bitcoin Finance on Sui
The latest additions join an existing group of more than 20 companies supporting the Hashi ecosystem. Earlier participants include BitGo, Bullish, FalconX, Ledger, Fordefi, Cobo, Blockdaemon, and several Sui-based lending protocols.
These organizations cover important areas such as custody, wallets, liquidity, brokerage services, security, insurance, pricing data, and decentralized lending. Bringing these services together is a central part of Hashi’s plan to support Bitcoin-backed credit products for both institutional and retail markets.
Lending is expected to be one of the protocol’s first major use cases. Bitcoin holders could use their BTC as collateral to borrow stablecoins, while lenders could allocate capital to transparent credit markets with loan terms and risk parameters recorded on-chain.
Developers may also use Hashi as a foundation for creating customized Bitcoin-backed financial products. These could include structured loans, institutional credit facilities, yield strategies, and other applications that require verifiable collateral management.
Replacing Balance-Sheet Trust With Verifiable Code
Hashi’s institutional strategy reflects lessons from previous crypto market cycles. The failures of centralized lenders showed how difficult it can be for customers and counterparties to evaluate hidden leverage, collateral quality, and balance-sheet exposure.
Hashi seeks to replace that model with auditable smart-contract logic. Loan terms, collateral requirements, and risk controls can be defined programmatically and inspected on-chain rather than being managed through private internal records.
The protocol also uses formal verification, a process that applies mathematical methods to test whether smart contracts operate according to their intended specifications. This approach is particularly important for institutional products, where software failures could put substantial amounts of collateral at risk.
Formal verification cannot remove every financial or market risk. However, it can provide stronger assurance that the underlying code follows predefined rules and does not contain certain classes of technical errors.
July Testnet Will Open Hashi to Global Testing
Hashi’s global testnet is scheduled to launch in July 2026. The testing environment will allow institutions, developers, custodians, and wallet providers to examine the infrastructure before the mainnet becomes available.
Participants will be able to test Bitcoin-backed lending workflows, collateral management systems, smart-contract behavior, and integrations with external infrastructure. Engineers can also evaluate how the protocol responds to simulated price movements, loan repayments, liquidations, and periods of market volatility.
The testnet represents an important step between Hashi’s current development phase and its eventual mainnet deployment. Feedback collected during testing could help the team identify technical issues, refine risk controls, and improve the experience for institutional users.
What the Expansion Means for Bitcoin DeFi
The participation of Cumberland, Fluid, and SwissBorg gives Hashi broader exposure across market making, DeFi lending, and digital wealth management. It also demonstrates growing institutional interest in financial products that use native Bitcoin as collateral without depending entirely on centralized lenders.
Hashi will still need to prove that its model can operate securely and attract meaningful liquidity. Institutional adoption will depend on factors including custody arrangements, regulatory requirements, smart-contract security, market depth, and the reliability of liquidation systems.
However, the expanding coalition gives the project access to companies with experience in several of these areas. A successful July testnet could move Hashi closer to its objective of turning dormant Bitcoin capital into verifiable, productive collateral across the Sui DeFi ecosystem.
