Yes, really. Jeff is singing in this one.

This week’s Midweek with Max featured an in-depth look at a new partner coming to the Hemi ecosystem: Relend. Root, co-founder of Relend, joined the stage to break down what the team is building, how it solves a longstanding issue in on-chain credit markets, and why it’s a strong fit for Hemi’s modular architecture.

Relend is addressing the cold-start problem in decentralized lending: liquidity won’t arrive unless there are borrowers, and borrowers won’t show up without liquidity. Their solution is a “liquidity maker” approach that supplies capital directly into money markets, jumpstarting activity and unlocking the flow of assets across DeFi protocols. In Hemi’s case, that means freeing idle BTC for use in DEXs, derivatives, and stablecoin strategies.

The integration is simple in concept, but powerful in execution. Relend wraps USDC into RUSDC, a 1:1-backed, fully redeemable stablecoin that’s designed to stay within a given ecosystem. Users can earn up to 40%+ APY with zero impermanent loss on select pools — real yield backed by lending markets, not emissions.

This kind of infrastructure is key to Hemi’s role as a liquidity and programmability layer for Bitcoin. As Max and Jeff outlined during the broader session, Hemi is not just another rollup or fork of Optimism. It extends the EVM directly with Bitcoin-aware opcodes — a virtual machine called HVM that allows Ethereum-style smart contracts to interact with Bitcoin data natively, without relays or custodians.

Hemi’s progress continues on multiple fronts. Mainnet has passed $1 billion in TVL, the team is shipping Pectra upgrades to improve Ethereum L2 compatibility, and community participation is high. Weekly updates, point systems, and testnet stress tests are all contributing to a maturing platform that’s moving steadily toward full decentralization.

The core idea remains unchanged: bring the programmability of Ethereum and the security of Bitcoin into one unified system. With Relend providing native credit primitives and new applications deploying weekly, the ecosystem is setting the foundation for Bitcoin-native DeFi that doesn’t require wrapping, bridges, or trust.

More integrations are coming. As Jeff said in closing, “We’re not just building tools. We’re building the infrastructure to last 10 years.”