Borrowing against Bitcoin on-chain involves a decision most guides skip past. Before you pick a protocol you have already picked a blockchain, and that choice sets your transaction costs, your wrapper, your contract risk, and a good deal of your rate.
We track Bitcoin-collateral lending markets across seven networks. They are not interchangeable.
The landscape
The deepest liquidity and the longest-audited contracts, at the highest transaction cost. Topping up collateral during a fast drawdown costs the most here.
An Ethereum layer 2. Near-identical contracts to mainnet at a fraction of the gas, which matters when you need to add collateral quickly.
A Bitcoin layer. Uses sBTC, which is redeemable for actual Bitcoin rather than issued by a company, so the wrapper risk is different in kind.
A separate chain with its own bridged Bitcoin representation, BTC.b.
An Ethereum layer 2 with mature lending markets and lower fees than mainnet.
High throughput and low fees, with a separate contract ecosystem and its own history of network outages to weigh.
High throughput and low fees, with a more concentrated validator set than Ethereum.
Lender facts on this page render live from our comparison database, last verified August 4, 2026. Figures refresh weekly; for the current set and your own loan size, see the comparison tool.
Ethereum carries the most markets. Stacks carries the cheapest rates. Base offers close to Ethereum's contracts at a fraction of the cost. Those three facts drive most of the decision.
What actually changes across chains
The wrapper, and therefore who you trust
This is the difference that matters most and gets discussed least. Native Bitcoin cannot interact with smart contracts, so on every chain except Stacks your collateral is a token that represents Bitcoin held somewhere else.
Issued by Coinbase, redeemable one-to-one with Coinbase for real Bitcoin. Your wrapper risk is Coinbase custody risk.
The original wrapped Bitcoin. Backed by a custodial reserve with a merchant and custodian network behind it.
A multi-chain Bitcoin representation issued by Solv, with reserves across several venues.
Lombard staked Bitcoin. Carries its own staking and validator assumptions on top of the wrapper.
A Bitcoin layer asset on Stacks, redeemable for Bitcoin through a decentralised signer set rather than a single company.
Avalanche bridged Bitcoin, issued through the Avalanche Bridge.
A threshold-signature Bitcoin representation, minted through a decentralised signer group rather than one custodian.
BNB Chain pegged Bitcoin, issued and custodied by Binance.
On Ethereum and Base you are mostly pledging cbBTC, issued by Coinbase and redeemable with Coinbase. Your wrapper risk is Coinbase custody risk, stacked on top of the protocol risk. On Stacks you pledge sBTC, redeemable through a decentralised signer set rather than a single company, which is a different trust model rather than no trust at all. The full breakdown is in wrapped Bitcoin explained.
Transaction cost, which is really liquidation defence
Gas looks like an accounting detail until Bitcoin falls 12% in a day and you need to add collateral immediately. On Ethereum mainnet that transaction is expensive at exactly the moment the whole network is congested with other people doing the same thing. On Base, Solana or Stacks it is cheap.
Because on-chain liquidation has no cure period and no margin call, your ability to act quickly and cheaply is your protection. A chain with low fees is not just more convenient, it is structurally safer for a leveraged position. See what happens in a DeFi liquidation for why speed is the whole game.
Contract maturity
Aave v3 and Compound v3 have been running on Ethereum for years across multiple market cycles. Granite and Zest Protocol on Stacks are far newer. Newer does not mean unsafe, and older does not mean safe, but audit history and time-in-market are real information and they are not evenly distributed across chains.
Liquidity depth
A large pool absorbs a large borrow without moving the rate much. A small pool does not. Thin markets also mean utilisation swings harder, and utilisation is what sets your variable rate, as covered in what moves the DeFi borrow rate. The cheapest rate in a shallow pool can become the most expensive one after a few large borrowers arrive.
Why the cheapest rates sit on Stacks
At our most recent snapshot the two lowest variable rates in the entire set are on Stacks. That is not a property of the chain being better. It reflects supply and demand in young markets: relatively plentiful supplied capital against relatively modest borrowing demand, which pushes utilisation and therefore rates down.
Two things follow. The rate is not locked, and thin markets re-price faster than deep ones, so it can move sharply. And the lower rate comes attached to a lower max LTV, 50% at Granite and 60% at Zest against 85% at Fluid, which is a genuinely more conservative product rather than a bargain on the same terms.
Choosing, honestly
If your priority is the deepest, longest-audited markets, that is Ethereum, and you should budget for the gas cost of defending the position.
If your priority is being able to react during a drawdown, a low-fee chain wins, and Base gives you close to Ethereum's contracts at a fraction of the transaction cost.
If your priority is minimising reliance on a company issuing your wrapper, Stacks and sBTC is the closest available answer, at the cost of newer contracts and smaller markets.
If you want none of these trade-offs, you want a custodial lender, where you pledge real Bitcoin with no wrapper, get dollars instead of stablecoins, and receive a cure window. You pay several percentage points for that, quantified in the custody premium, and the two models are compared directly in CeFi vs DeFi.
Where to compare
Every market we track, sortable by rate, LTV and network, is on DeFi Bitcoin loans, with per-protocol detail on the protocol index and the daily on-chain index inside the BoB Rate Index. For the custodial alternative, start at the comparison tool or lender reviews.
This is not financial advice
borrow/on/bitcoin is a comparison publisher, not a lender, broker, or financial advisor. On-chain borrow rates are variable, are captured at our daily snapshot, and change continuously. Nothing here endorses any chain, wrapper, or protocol. Bridging, wrapping, and borrowing each carry risk including the total loss of your Bitcoin, and smart-contract risk cannot be diversified away by choosing a different network.