Sovryn Zero vs Money Protocol: Two 0%-Interest Bitcoin Borrowing Protocols on Rootstock, Compared
They share a bloodline. Both descend from Liquity, both live on Rootstock, both let you borrow a dollar stablecoin against Bitcoin at 0% interest with no fixed repayment date. So where do they actually diverge — and how do you tell which one fits the way you think about Bitcoin?
Most "vs" posts in crypto pit a good product against a strawman. This isn't that. Sovryn Zero is a serious, battle-tested protocol built by people who were doing Bitcoin DeFi before most of the current field existed. If you are choosing between it and Money Protocol, you are choosing between two credible answers to the same question — how do I get dollars out of my Bitcoin without selling it, and without handing my coins to a company? — that happen to be built on the same foundation.
That shared foundation is worth naming up front, because it explains why the two feel so similar before they diverge.
The shared bloodline: Liquity on Rootstock
Both protocols are descendants of Liquity, the Ethereum protocol that introduced a genuinely new borrowing model in 2021: deposit volatile collateral, mint a dollar-pegged stablecoin against it, pay no ongoing interest — just a one-time fee at borrow — and repay whenever you like, with no term and no renewal. Liquity replaced the idea of a rate with the idea of a fee, and replaced human risk management with a stability pool and a fixed liquidation threshold.
Both Sovryn Zero and Money Protocol take that model and point it at Bitcoin, on Rootstock, a Bitcoin sidechain where Bitcoin exists as RBTC. So the core loop is nearly identical on both:
- You lock RBTC into a smart contract.
- You mint a USD-pegged stablecoin against it, up to a minimum collateral ratio.
- You pay a one-time borrowing fee instead of interest — 0% ongoing.
- You repay on your own schedule and your Bitcoin is released.
Both are non-custodial. Both use a stability pool to absorb liquidations. Both enforce their rules in code rather than in a risk committee. If you only read the top-line pitch, you cannot tell them apart. The differences are one layer down.
Divergence one: what you mint, and how focused the protocol is
Sovryn Zero issues ZUSD, its native stablecoin, and feeds into DLLR — an aggregated Bitcoin-backed dollar that Sovryn built to be a broader unit of account across its platform. And that word platform is the key. Zero is one sub-protocol inside Sovryn, which is a full Bitcoin DeFi suite: spot trading, lending pools, perpetuals, and more. Zero is the 0%-borrowing room inside a much larger building.
Money Protocol issues BPD, a single US-dollar-pegged stablecoin, and that is essentially the whole surface area. Money Protocol is not a suite. It does one thing — self-custodial, 0%-interest borrowing against Bitcoin, with a stability pool on the other side of it — and the MP token to align incentives around that single function.
Neither approach is automatically better, and it is worth being honest about the trade. A full platform means more you can do without leaving: borrow, then trade or deploy in the same place. A single-purpose protocol means a smaller surface to understand and a smaller surface to go wrong — fewer moving parts touching your collateral. If your instinct is "I want the fewest possible things standing between my Bitcoin and a dollar," the focused design is the one that matches that instinct. If your instinct is "I want a whole Bitcoin-native financial toolkit," the suite does more.
Divergence two: who is allowed to change the rules
This is the difference that matters most, and it is easy to miss because both protocols are non-custodial. Non-custodial answers who holds your Bitcoin (a contract, not a company). It does not answer who can change the terms of the contract. Those are separate questions.
Sovryn Zero is governed by SOV stakers through Sovryn's on-chain governance. That is a legitimate, transparent DAO model — parameter changes go through a public process, not a boardroom. But it does mean the protocol's parameters are, by design, changeable by a governance body. You are trusting a decentralized process, and processes have politics.
Money Protocol is built to minimize that surface. The MP token is not a governance token that can reach into your vault — it exists for staking, fees, and rewards, not for voting on the rules that govern your collateral. The design intent is that the core borrowing rules are fixed and apply identically to everyone, with no vote that can move your liquidation threshold or your fee after the fact. "Governed by nobody" is not a slogan here; it is a deliberate structural choice, and for a certain kind of Bitcoin holder it is the choice. If you want to borrow against Bitcoin at 0% interest inside rules that a governance vote can't rewrite on you, that is the specific thing Money Protocol is trying to be.
Reasonable people weigh this differently. Governance can be a feature — it lets a protocol adapt, patch, and respond to new conditions. The counter-view, and the one Money Protocol is built around, is that the whole reason you hold Bitcoin is to opt out of systems where someone else can change the terms, so a borrowing protocol should carry that same property all the way down. Pick the philosophy you actually believe.
Divergence three: the terminology and the mental model
A small but real one. Liquity called each collateral position a "trove." Money Protocol deliberately renamed it a vault — a plainer word for the same thing: an isolated, self-custodial position holding your RBTC, against which your BPD is minted, that only you control. It is a cosmetic difference on the surface and a deliberate one underneath: the protocol is trying to describe itself in words a Bitcoiner who has never touched DeFi can parse on the first read.
Side by side
| Sovryn Zero | Money Protocol | |
|---|---|---|
| Lineage | Liquity-based | Liquity-based |
| Chain | Rootstock | Rootstock |
| Collateral | RBTC | RBTC |
| Stablecoin minted | ZUSD / DLLR | BPD |
| Interest | 0% + one-time fee | 0% + one-time fee |
| Fixed term | None | None |
| Custody | Non-custodial | Non-custodial |
| Liquidation | Stability pool, code-enforced | Stability pool, code-enforced |
| Governance over rules | SOV stakers (DAO) | Governance-minimized; MP token is not a vote on your vault |
| Scope | Sub-protocol inside a full DeFi suite | Single-purpose borrowing protocol |
Look at that table honestly and you'll see the point: the two are mechanically almost the same product, because they inherit the same excellent design. The real decision is about scope and governance, not about the borrowing mechanics.
So which one fits you?
If you want a broad, established Bitcoin DeFi platform where 0% borrowing sits alongside trading and lending, and you're comfortable with DAO governance tuning the parameters over time, Sovryn's suite is a strong, credible home and Zero is a well-proven room inside it.
If you want the opposite — the smallest possible protocol that does exactly one thing, mints a single Bitcoin-backed dollar, and is built so that no governance vote can change the rules of your position after you've opened it — that is the specific niche Money Protocol is built to occupy. Same 0% borrowing, same self-custody, deliberately less surface and deliberately less discretion.
The honest closing note is the one that applies to both: you take on smart-contract risk and the responsibility of managing your own collateral ratio through Bitcoin's volatility. Neither protocol has a support desk that can reverse a liquidation, because neither has one that can cause one either. That symmetry — nobody can hurt you, nobody can save you — is the deal in self-custodial borrowing, and it's the same deal on both.
If the focused, governance-minimized version is what you've been looking for, the mechanics are documented at docs.moneyprotocol.co and you can open a vault at moneyprotocol.co. And if you land on Sovryn instead, you'll still be borrowing on the same 0% model — which tells you the model itself is the thing worth having.