Hey Stackers,

Thank you for an incredible 2024 capped by the successful launches of Nakamoto and sBTC. Last year was all about the tech, while 2025 is already being defined by traction. As we step into 2025, we look forward to keeping the momentum of this past year going and taking more giant steps toward activating the Bitcoin economy.

To the many represented in this newsletter:
Thank you and congratulations,

Rick and Claire | Stacks Foundation

PS: For a Stacks Foundation-focused recap of 2024 and an overview of Stacks in 2025, please check out this post from our Interim Executive Director.

🟧 Core Development: Nakamoto, sBTC, and Beyond

The Nakamoto Upgrade

In October, Stacks core engineers released the Stacks Nakamoto upgrade. The release represents a monumental step forward for Stacks, cementing its position as a true Bitcoin Layer 2. Transactions on Stacks are now as irreversible as Bitcoin's, leveraging the security of Bitcoin’s hash power. Since then, the network has seen further optimizations, while sBTC continues to grow, in many ways thanks to the incredible foundation Nakamoto provides.

Programable Bitcoin: sBTC

sBTC deposits are now live, marking a pivotal moment for Bitcoin-powered DeFi on Stacks. Over 1,000 BTC has already been moved to Stacks via sBTC, with 40-50% deployed in DeFi protocols—an encouraging sign of its growing utility and potential.

As per the sBTC Rollout, the next steps focus on improving the user experience (UX), increasing the deposit cap beyond the current 1,000 BTC, and enabling withdrawals. Additionally, business development efforts are underway to integrate sBTC with centralized exchanges (CEXs), further expanding its accessibility and adoption.

Big moves highlighting Stacks’ core decentralization

• Bitcoin L2 Labs is a new organization focused on core product development of Stacks, the leading Bitcoin L2.

• Stacks Asia Foundation introduced itself to the world to activate the Bitcoin economy with Stacks in Asia.

🟧 Industry Leaders Embracing sBTC

Painting the world orange 🟧🖌️

Creating A Decentralized Signer Network

Chorus One, Degen Lab, Stacking DAO, Planbetter Pool, Despread, Chorus One, Restake, Kiln, Luganodes, Alum Labs, Blockdaemon, Xverse, and Fast Pool all became part of the Signer network for the Stacks L2.

New entities like Near, Asymmetric Research, Aptos, Figment, Sensei Node, Staking Defense League, Luxor, and many others pledged to become a Signer for Stacks and sBTC as well, making sBTC the strongest institutional graded Bitcoin L2 BTC asset on the market.

Partnership momentum to the very end of the year!

Elsewhere, other leading Bitcoin organisations announced plans to embrace sBTC via the Best & Brightest campaign that closed the year:

• Ankr, the #1 provider of Bitcoin-secured infrastructure, has joined the Stacks ecosystem as a Signer, bolstering the network's security and decentralization just as sBTC goes live.

• CoinFlip ATMs enable customers to easily convert cash to crypto and vice versa, serving over 400,000 customers globally. The company also has a rapidly growing presence in the Australasia region, Mexico, and Italy, among others.

• Travala, the leading crypto-native travel booking platform, will roll out bookings with sBTC and STX for their users in January 2025.

• Fordefi, the first MPC wallet to fully support Bitcoin DeFi, has announced it will enable support for all SIP-010 assets, including sBTC, Stacks’ long-awaited 1:1 programmable asset for Bitcoin.

• LearnWeb3, the largest Web3 education platform, is rolling out new content to increase the adoption of sBTC, Stacks' Bitcoin-native programmable asset.

• Xverse, the leading Bitcoin ecosystem wallet, has been at the forefront of Bitcoin ecosystem innovations, providig the first mobile experience for the Stacks L2, Ordinals, and Runes.

• Portal Ventures, the Leading Pre-seed VC Firm and the First to Call the Bitcoin Thesis, to Back sBTC

• Immunefi, the leading onchain crowdsourced security platform protecting over $190 billion in assets, is bringing its security expertise and elite community of researchers to sBTC with an upcoming "Attackathon" event.

• Bitcoin Frontier Fund, Home of the Top Bitcoin Accelerator, To Invest in Teams Built on sBTC.

Hints of More Key Partnerships To Come:

• Stacks Engineers are bringing sBTC to Solana, as published by the official Solana X account.

• Stacks developers bring Bitcoin to the Aptos Network via sBTC.

📊 Stacks Stats

Industry Highlights

• Grayscale adds STX to Grayscale’s Research Top 20 based on high potential.

• Coinbase adds STX as #22 for its institutional COIN INDEX.

• Electric Capital ranks Stacks as #7 for fastest fastest-growing developer ecosystem.

🏗️ Builders

Zest Protocol

• Launched its first programmable Bitcoin lending pool with sBTC (more).

• Saw nearly 400 BTC via sBTC supplied, nearly 40% of the first sBTC cap (more).

• Launched the Stacks Markets, with stSTX, USDh, and other tokens (more).

• Raised $3.5M in seed round funding to redefine Bitcoin lending (more).

Bitflow

• Launches the highly anticipated Runes AMM based on sBTC (more).

• Integrates sBTC to create STX/sBTC trading pair and more with 60% APY (more).

• Releases their DEX aggregator and Multi-Hop Swaps (more).

• Raises $1.3 Million in Pre-Seed Funding (more).

ALEX

• Reaches $2.5+ Billion Total Transaction Volume (TTV) and $140 Million Total Value Locked (TVL) (more).

• Launched ALEX Launchpad V3, a multi-chain launchpad poised to support project tokens on 18+ networks (more).

• Integrated Runes & sBTC (more).

• Launched the 12,000,000 ALEX token incentive program called Surge (more).

StackingDAO

• After launching in late December 2024, StackingDAO released its points system (more).

• Announced its partnership with Xverse to allow liquid stacking directly from the wallet interface (more).

• Reached over 90,000,000 in TVL (more).

• Rebranded to align further with the goal of unlocking Bitcoin DeFi (more).

Velar

• Launched its Automated Market Maker on Stacks (more).

• Raised $3.5M to build the world’s first PerpDEX on Bitcoin (more).

• Launched its VELAR token via ByBit (more).

• Integrated sBTC into its platform (more).

Hermetica

• Launches Bitcoin-backed Stablecoin USDh on Stacks (more).

• Reports on consistent 20-30% APY on staking USDh (more).

• USDh borrowing on Zest had a cap doing to $200K (more).

• Closed a $1.7M Seed round to expand USDh (more).

Stacks / Bitcoin Wallets

• Xverse reintegrated Stacks native token swaps (more).

• Xverse integrated sBTC to its mobile wallet (more).

• Leather integrates sBTC (more).

• Leather introduces Leather earn, a native way to hold sBTC and earn BTC yield (more).

🧡 Community & Governance

Several significant SIP (Stacks Improvement Proposal) votes took place in 2024 that drove important outcomes for the Stacks ecosystem:

1. SIP-029 Approval: In December, the Stacks community unanimously approved SIP-029, which focused on preserving economic incentives during major network upgrades. The proposal aimed to align Stacks halvings with Bitcoin halvings and maintain adequate incentives for miners and validators/signers following the Nakamoto upgrade and sBTC launch.

2. SIP-025 Approval: In August 2024, Signers unanimously approved SIP-025, which proposed a temporary simplification of the threshold signature scheme for Signers under the Nakamoto upgrade. 

3. SIP-027 Voting: A voting period for SIP-027, which aimed to enhance wallet support for multisig transactions, took place in August 2024. The outcome of this vote was significant for improving the Stacks ecosystem's functionality.

4. SIP-021 Nakamoto Release: The voting period for the crucial SIP-021 Nakamoto Release concluded in March 2024. This vote was pivotal for the implementation of the upgrade.

👨‍💻 Developers

1. Stacks is the 7th Fastest growing Developer Ecosystem according to Electric Capital

2. Stacks Hackathon at Harvard with hundreds attending 

3. Stacks hits 100,000 builders learning about Stacks' smart contract language Clarity on largest Web3 Developer community app EasyA

4. Largest Developer Education Platform LearnWeb3 becomes part of the leading Orgs supporting sBTC

5. LearnWeb3 Introduces full Stack App course for DEXs and other apps on Stacks, working with sBTC and other SIP10 tokens

6. Over $60K in STX has been awarded to developers submitting code to Code for STX, the Stacks developer incentive program for builders.

7. Immunefi launches Attackathon to help strengthen the security of Stacks and sBTC, with a second one scheduled in February 2025.

8. Q4 saw the most smart contracts getting deployed on Stacks in 2024.

9. New Stacks Documentation launches, with the goal to better onboard more developers to Stacks.

Can’t miss in this edition:

• The Stacks Nakamoto Release is code complete. More.

• SEC concludes the investigation into the Stacks blockchain and Hiro with no recommended enforcement action. More.

• Grayscale, the world’s largest crypto asset manager, announces single-asset crypto investment Stacks Trust. More. More.

Happy Bitcoin summer, Stackers! 🧡

The Bitcoin Builders Conference is set to take place this week in Nashville, featuring the brightest minds and top projects in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

All around, the temperature is rising within the Bitcoin builders ecosystem and things are no different in Stacks land as the community prepares for the Nakamoto Activation. Core developers celebrated code completion in early July, while the ecosystem has been bustling with activity hitting an all-time high for active accounts on the network.

Earlier this quarter, Grayscale, the largest institutional crypto asset manager, introduced its Stacks Trust, marking a significant step forward for Stacks as an institutional-grade Bitcoin layer. As the quarter concluded, so did the SEC’s investigation into Stacks with no recommended enforcement action. This outcome underscores and confirms the Stacks ecosystem’s unique longstanding pursuit of compliance. This decision is seen as a positive development for STX and the Stacks ecosystem, which continually strives for decentralization and regulatory compliance. BitGo's decision to become a Signer for the Stacks network reinforces this vision and adds yet another industry leader to its ranks ahead of the eagerly anticipated Nakamoto upgrade.

In all, this only scratches the surface of another quarter of Stacks ascending as the world embraces building on Bitcoin. As always, we’ve collected some of the highlights of the quarter below, but be sure to check out the following channels for more regular updates:

• Stacks Snacks

• @Stacks on X

• Stacks.co blog

To the many represented in this newsletter:
Thank you and congratulations,
Mitchell, Rick, and Claire | Stacks Foundation

PS: See you on these Stacks Streets?

🟧 Nakamoto & sBTC

Nakamoto

The community got to feel their Naka-mojo, celebrating the first step of Stacks’ Nakamoto release rollout: Instantiation. Stacks Foundation released a surprise commemorative NFT collection named Mojo, to celebrate the Nakamoto rollout and Bitcoin halving. As a result, the community took to Twitter, with Ignas, Louise, Roman K, Yanshu, Jack Binswitch, DeKaDub, Bitflow, Blockdaemon, George Grant, Defi.btc, Walpek, Reubs, House of Chimera, Jake Pahor, and many others sharing their excitement for the Nakamoto upgrade.

with the quarter already closing down, core developers brought more Nakamoto news. The full Nakamoto codebase, including the new code to increase Signer resiliency that was scoped after Step 1 in Nakamoto’s launch (Instantiation) is written & ready for auditing, testnet deployment, and robust continued testing ahead of the final launch step late August, Activation. Learn more.

sBTC

sBTC Product Lead Andre Serrano shared a detailed sBTC Rollout, bootstrapping to programmable Bitcoin. The sBTC Release Candidate will be ready at the end of August. From there, core developers want to observe 3-4 weeks of stable Nakamoto behavior on mainnet, and then the release of sBTC can begin. Given the extra time between now and Nakamoto Activation that was added for Signer resiliency features, sBTC can now follow Nakamoto by roughly a month instead of two. Learn more.

Industry Leaders Join Stacks

Industry leaders are going orange and joining forces with Stacks, including prominent names such as BitGo, Grayscale, Axelar, and Hypernative, among many others. Here’s a quick look at a few announcements from this past quarter alone:

• BitGo integrates Stacks for Bitcoin rewards, following institutional Bitcoin demand

• Axelar Integrates With Stacks To Bridge Bitcoin Across Over 65 Blockchains

• Portal Finance announces support for Stacks and sBTC

• Stacks and Uphold Partner Up to Boost Bitcoin Adoption

• Yala announces a strategic partnership with the Stacks Foundation

• Haruko to enhance digital asset management with Stacks integration

• Kiln announces integration of Stacks, becoming a Stacks Signer

• Hypernative Bolsters Bitcoin L2 Security as Stacks Ecosystem Gets Real-Time Protection

👀 Stacks Commentary & Reports

Grayscale goes Stacks

• Grayscale introduces Grayscale Research Top 20, including Stacks (STX).

• Grayscale publishes Building Block: Stacks report by Michael Zhao.

• Followed by a Grayscale Deeper Dive on STX, live with Stacks Creator Muneeb Ali.

More

• Blockworks features Trust Machines’ Rena Shah about what the Bitcoin halving means for Bitcoin L2s like Stacks.

• StackingDAO was featured on the Defiant DeFi Alpha letter.

• Stacks gets featured on Cointelegraph with Stacks Foundation product lead Andre Serrano.

• Muneeb speaks to CoinDesk about the Stacks Nakamoto Release and building on Bitcoin.

• Blockworks releases article about the Stacks Nakamoto Upgrade unfolding a new era for the Bitcoin L2.

• Stacks hits record high in active users as interest in Bitcoin DeFi grows, reported by Cointelegraph.

• DeSpread shares project report on Stacks.

• Stacks Creator Muneeb Ali joins CoinDesk Live to talk about the bull case for Stacks versus other Bitcoin L2 projects.

📊 Stacks Stats

⭐️ Stacks sees an all time high in active accounts (June: 135,000), transaction volume (May: 950,000,000 STX), and TVL (100,000,000 STX) reported by Signal21.

• Stacks takes a 1.25% of all social activity across all cryptocurrencies.

• Arkadiko reports 170% growth in Total Value Locked, as published by Signal21.

• StackingDAO rebranded, celebrating over $100M in total value locked.

• Research group House of Chimera celebrates record breaking ATH in TVL for Stacks.

• Active wallets and transaction volume for Stacks hit a new all-time-high, according to Sakemate based on Signal21’s data.

• Zest reaches 6,000 users in the first month after launching.

• Stacks sees all time high in active accounts in June, reported by Signal21. This, as well as peaking in active users for the top decentralized finance applications.

🏗️ Builders

Zest Protocol

• Introduces the first money market on Stacks, launches to the public.

• Relaunches on Stacks Mainnet with a new points system.

• Announces Arkadiko’s DIKO deposits into Zest Protocol.

• Releases stSTX borrowing for their DeFi protocol.

• Raises $3.5M led by Draper Associates with participation from Binance Labs, Trust Machines, and others.

Bitflow

• Successfully rebranded into the orange wave.

• Launches an upgraded pool for the USDA<>USDC trading pair with enhanced AMM logic.

• Opens up Rune AMM Waitlist.

• Launches new trading routes, of which one considers new pairs including STX to WELSH, ODIN, LEO, PEPE, and more.

• Announces their protocol emerging as the Liquidity Hub on Stacks, featuring their Aggregator, Deep Liquidity Curve style stable swaps, Uniswap-style liquidity pools and multiple trading routes.

ALEX

• Shares 1.5 Billion in trading volume milestone.

• Reopens recovered pools for trading.

• After sharing 40 Million USD trading volume since reopening, ALEX releases Platform Roadmap, enhancing ecosystem Value and Utility.

More

• DIA Cross Chain Oracle introduces Bitcoin L2 in Focus: Stacks.

• StackingDAO announces partnership with Hermetica, where the stSTX earn vault by Hermetica means new yield sources and point opportunities.

• Identity Protocol Galxe integrates Bitcoin L2 Stacks.

• Hermetica introduces their USDh Bitcoin-backed, yield-bearing synthetic dollar.

• LunarCrush moves to Stacks, launches first of its kind platform for the creator economy.

• Bitcoin DEX Velar announces Farming Rewards starting June 17th for the top 5 TVL Pools.

• Axelar announces they will be integrating with Stacks.

• StackingDAO announces partnership with Blockdaemon, the number one infra solution for staking.

• StackingDAO announces partnership with Wintermute.

• Velar introduces Multi Hop Swaps for their Bitcoin L2 Stacks DEX.

• Liquid Stacking asset stSTX (Stacking DAO) becomes the most accessible Stacks based token in the ecosystem, community leaders say.

🧡 Community & Governance

• Muneeb joined the stage in Korea to talk about activating Bitcoin season 2.

• The Stacks Foundation announces the approval of eleven Critical Bounties that drive Stacks development forward.

• EasyA is hosting a Stacks hackathon this weekend, listed as one of Harvard’s top career advancement opportunities for students.

• Bitcoin builders all over the world celebrate the Bitcoin halving, with Cusco, Lisbon, Santiago, Nairobi, and many other countries!

• The Stacks Latin America Community hosted multiple events in Buenos Aires, San Salvador, Santiago, and other cities!

• Stacks Australia held a Bitcoin builders meetup in Brisbane.

• EasyA wraps up the Stacks Harvard Hackathon with tens of projects launched and 200+ attendees.

• The Stacks Foundation introduces the Bitcoin L2 Lisbon Pitch Competition in partnership with Pizza Ninjas, Ordinals Lisbon, and NFC.

• Building on Bitcoin took oer BTC Asia Week, with the Bitcoin Odyssey being the largest side event.

• EasyA came to UT Austin leading up to the EasyA Consensus Hackathon with Stacks.

• Bitcoin Wallet Orange Crypto HQ announces Stacks support.

• The Stacks ecosystem met up in Bangkok to discuss building on Bitcoin.

• The Stacks Latin American community wraps up multiple meetups focused on onboarding more people to Bitcoin layers.

• Stacks builders are attending Coindesk's Consensus in Austin, come say hello at booth 1317.

• BitcoinL2 Labs announces $1M Orange Hats security resources for the Clarity WG.

• LearnWeb3 releases Stacks Bitcoin Developer Degree.

Q4 2023:Can’t miss in this edition:

• Earlier today, the Nakamoto upgrade began rolling out! 🟧

• Leading voices, VC, and media have all written about Stacks this quarter, offering compelling insights on Bitcoin L2s and more.

• The Stacks network achieved several new usage highs in Q1.

• Builders are on a roll, fundraising, partnering, and building new use cases that will bring billions to Bitcoin.

Happy Naka●monday, Stackers!

If you’re reading this, now is your sign to take a moment to celebrate the official start of the Nakamoto upgrade rollout. Earlier today, the first of two hard forks went live thanks to miners, node operators, exchanges, Signers, and more. This means there’s only one step (Activation) left before Nakamoto’s fast blocks, Bitcoin finality, and other improvements are available to everyone!

Let’s pause for a minute and give a major 👏👏 to the Core Developers who have worked tirelessly toward this milestone. Nakamoto represents years of vision and hard work and sets the stage for an even more exciting future for the Bitcoin economy.

Chances are, you’re sensing and seeing the growing buzz around Stacks. Layered launch plans have been in full effect as we ramp up events, press, speaking engagements, partnership announcements, team and builder highlights, and developer education.

The TL;DR: The leading Bitcoin L2 is getting better for builders.

Take action // Keep the naka·mojo:

The Stacks ecosystem continues to lead the broader conversation around Bitcoin L2s and the Bitcoin economy and that means April and May are exciting opportunities to grow the community. Here are a few things you can do to help welcome newcomers to the world of Stacks:

• Like, RT, and share content and stories (use #nakamoto on X)

• Join an event near you, there are 50+!

• Get on the list for the Mojo mint, a special PFP collection to celebrate Nakamoto.

Twitter tweet

There’s more:

As exciting as all of this is, Nakamoto is far from the only thing going on in the ecosystem. This newsletter is your one-stop shop for catching up on everything you may have missed the past few months or a hearty welcome to the community if you’re new here.

Keep the Naka•mojo, Stackers!

Mitchell & the Stacks Foundation Team

🟧 Nakamojo (Launch Reads)

• Decrypt: Stacks, Bitcoin Layers, and the Nakamoto Upgrade

• Coindesk: OG Bitcoin L2 Stacks Is Getting a Major Overhaul

• Bankless: The Bitcoin Halving’s Degen Bets

• Blockworks: What will the Bitcoin halving mean for Bitcoin L2s? 

• Charlie Shrem Show: Bitcoin L2 with Muneeb Ali of Stacks and Andy Fajar Handika of Loka Mining

• Cointelegraph: BTCFi is an ‘enormous opportunity’ to make Bitcoin a productive asset

• Restake: Stacks is Propelling the Bitcoin Renaissance

• CoinTelegraph: Stacks expands with Blockdaemon, Near Foundation amid Bitcoin surge

Find Nakamoto press from all the top publications in this newsletter and indexed here.

Twitter tweet

👀 Stacks Commentary & Reports

• Signal21 releases its Q1 Stacks report, boasting active Stacks user dominance, record TVL, soaring token prices, and more.

• CoinDesk announces the release of The Spartan Group’s Bitcoin Layers report.

• Coinbase Newsletter Bytes shares Bitcoin could gain new smart-contract superpowers with the Lightning Network and Stacks.

• Bob Bodily lists why Stacks might be the world’s first sovereign-validium L2 on Bitcoin.

• DeFi Researcher Ignas publishes his “Degen Playbook for Stacks”, shares by tech newsletter TLDR.

• Ledger shares Bitcoin L2s, what they are and how they work, with Stacks.

• Binance Research lists Stacks as notable Bitcoin project with their upcoming sBTC solution to create a decentralized, non-custodial, Bitcoin L2.

• OKX shares Bitcoin 2024 Outlook, featuring Stacks as scaling solution and ALEX as finance layer for Bitcoin.

• Tang Chan shares his latest report on why he believes Stacks could present a $90 Billion opportunity.

• ABCDE Labs publishes its ABCDE 2024 BTC Recap including Stacks.

• Sora Ventures publishes Q1 2024 Bitcoin ecosystem map with an overwhelming amount of Stacks entities.

• Binance academy publishes deep dive on Bitcoin L2s.

• House of Chimera releases Bitcoin L2 protocol overview.

VCs and Investors on Stacks, Bitcoin

• Digital assets investment firm Franklin Templeton gives a March 2024 update on Stacks: The Nakamoto Upgrade.

• Paul Veradittakit lists Stacks within “the resurgence of Bitcoin” and “DeFi Summer 2.0” as prediction for 2024 on CoinDesk.

• Pantera Capital releases letter named “The Year Ahead” with the resurgence of Bitcoin due to the rise of L2s as prediction for 2024.

• Grayscale publishes 2024 Bitcoin report listing Stacks as laying the groundwork for L2s.

• MT Capital shares research report: Stacks Nakamoto is about to be upgraded to inject new impetus into the Bitcoin ecosystem.

• PM at Pantera Capital Cosmo Jiang shares excitement for the Nakamoto Launch.

Twitter tweet

📊 Stacks Stats

DeFillama reports highest TVL ever for Stacks (and that doesn’t include the over $1b locked for Stacking!)

Source: Defillama

Stacks transactions see close to 800,000 monthly transactions for 4 months straight.

Leading up to 2023, Bitcoin L2s took over as a key narrative in crypto, with Stacks' monthly users skyrocketing from 16,000 in November to over 64,000 in December and not dropping below 50,000 ever since, reported by OurNetwork via Signal21.

Source: app.signal21.io

Meanwhile:

• Bitflow ($40M), Zest Protocol ($10M), Velar ($5M), all got added to DeFi Llama after going to Mainnet.

• Blockchain Research Group House of Chimera reports rapid growth in daily transactions on Stacks.

• Electric Capital publishes the yearly crypto developers report with Stacks established developers being up 51%.

• 40% of Bitcoin developers are working on Bitcoin L2s, Mohamed Fouda reports.

• Messari shares Q4 2023 State of Stacks report with daily active addresses up 85.6% QoQ.

• Stacks reaches 1,000,000 unique wallets according to Signal21.

• DeFi protocol ALEX sees trading volume on its decentralized exchange skyrocket to one Billion dollars.

• StackingDAO breaks another milestone with over 25,000 unique active wallets.

• StackingDAO crossed $90M TVL, now over $100M the largest amount locked in a protocol for Stacks.

🏗️ Builders

• ALEX closed a $10m funding round led by the Spartan Group.

• Liquid Stacking protocol Papaya is now on testnet with sBTC.

• MEXC exchange lists first Bitcoin-secured meme coin.

• Asigna Founder Vlad / Fess-v introduces sOrdinals protocol, with the website now live.

• STX20 launches a significant enhancement to the STX20 ecosystem, involving smart contract transfers, airdrops, wrapping, and more!

• Ortege: A new era of data access for the Stacks Community

• STX20 celebrates one million transactions on STX20 since launch, with sOrdinals closing in on 200,000 inscriptions.

• Ryder announces it will operate Fast Pool, the largest stacking pool on Stacks, and with that will become a signer for the upcoming Stacks upgrade.

• Liquid Staking protocol StackingDAO:

  • Announces integration with Xverse.

  • Announces Stacking DAO V2.

• ALEX DeFi reveals Liquid Stacking on Stacks with LISA, in partnership with Xverse and Ryder.

• Portal DeFi Announces Support for Stacks & sBTC on Cross-Chain DEX

• Bitcoin Frontier Fund shares its partnership with ALEX and Bitcoin Labs to launch a Bitcoin Launchpad Advisory board.

• Megapont announces the MegaDAO, a fully on-chain DAO built on Stacks.

• Leather integrates native SIP10 token swaps in the app

• Xverse integrates Mutisig wallet Asigna.

• Xverse celebrates $100,000,000+ Stacked in STX with the Xverse pool.

• Coindesk reports Stacks L2 DeFi protocol Velar raises $3.5M and releases their token to exchanges.

• Stacks team Leo introduces STX Tools for SIP10 tracking tools.

• Officially announces Arkadiko 2.0, introducing a complete vault overhaul, liquid stacking collateral, redemption mechanism, and more.

• MEXC announces Arkadiko’s DIKO to be listed on their exchange

• Bitcoin Layer 2 Bridge XLink announces $50,000,000 in bridging volume leading up to XLink airdrop.

• New Bitcoin economy data platform named Signal21 announced, featuring the leading Bitcoin L2 and multiple Stacks protocols.

• EasyA hosted a Stacks workshop at Harvard University.

• Trust Machines introduces Orange Domains, a new protocol in partnership with Hiro Systems and Tucows.

• Bifrost announces pledge to support sBTC for their protocol.

• Velar launches its AMM, now live with STX<>aeUSDC, STX<>sBTC, and more!

• Xlink partners with Bifrost Network to bring cross-chain capabilities to the Stacks ecosystem.

• Liquid Staking Protocol Lisa reports on a $1.5M TVL within just 60 minutes of launch.

🧡 Community

Twitter tweet

• Stacks Community Resident introduces the Pilot Cohort of De-Grants Program.

• The Stacks Foundation creates a Stacks Working Group with $500K allocations to work on Bitcoin layers with BitVM.

• EasyA announces 25 Stacks developer workshops and a developer challenge focused on building a DeFi app on Stacks

• Watch back the Building on Bitcoin live event with Muneeb Ali, Alexei Zamyatin, Laura Shin, Daniel Fogg, Trevor Owens, and more.

• Meet the Stacks community in real life. Introducing the Nakamoto Launch Series: 30+ places you can join during the halving.

• Hundreds of developers kicked off the Ready Layer 2 hackathon. You still have a few days to join late and participate in one of the hackathon or pitch tracks.

• 70,000 people started Stacks developer challenges in the EasyA app.

• Seoul colors orange! Fid out where you can meet the Stacks community in Seoul during Build Asia.

• Stacks Creator Muneeb spoke in Seoul about Bitcoin L2s.

The theme this past quarter, and seemingly the foreseeable future?

Bitcoin L2s. But let’s go a layer deeper, shall we? There was no shortage of interesting perspectives offered on the, dare I say, suddenly trendy topic of scaling and building on Bitcoin.

• Venture Capitalist Tim Draper says he’s excited about Stacks and explains his Bitcoin thesis.

• a16z lists Babylon chain and the Stacks layer as Big Ideas for 2024 and expands on the breakdown in this piece.

• Web3 Venture Studio “Thesis” shares thesis on Bitcoin & Bitcoin layers.

• Portal Ventures shares Bitcoin thesis including Stacks as leading L2.

• Digital Asset Investment Firm North Rock Digital releases thesis on Stacks.

• Foundation Capital lists Stacks as an effort to give Bitcoin additional scalability and functionality.

• Messari publishes the latest edition of the Crypto Theses for 2024, including thoughts on Stacks & Bitcoin L2s.

• Coinbase releases 2024 Crypto Market Outlook predicting elevated activity for Bitcoin on secondary via L2s like Stacks.

• Investment Firm VanEck publishes 15 Crypto Predictions for 2024, including Stacks. 

Degens deliver

It wasn’t just the VCs getting deeper into Bitcoin L2s, either. Builders kept right at it as you’ll see below, but I have to take a moment to celebrate those degen legends that launched STX20 as a holiday treat for the community. The Stacks layer sure felt the congestion, but we made it through and were even treated to a huge Nakamoto update.

Bitcoin Magazine covered STX20 here and I offered some perspective on the Stacks Foundation blog. They asked for proof we need great Bitcoin L2s and the STX20 folks delivered it. 👏

Nakamojo: Fly your Bitcoin flag

Safe to say, the ‘secret’ is out: The world is coming to build in Bitcoin. We want to celebrate this momentum and fly the Bitcoin flag high as we head toward halving. To join us, ‘show your Naka•mojo•’ and maybe even win something neat along the way. At worst, you’ll have fun, so throw up those 🟧's and 🧡's.

Reviewing the rest of Q4 2023

Below, we’ve collected the biggest news from the past quarter, but don’t forget, you can keep up every week with Stacks Snacks too.

To keeping your Naka·mojo·,
Mitchell & the Stacks Foundation Team

🟧 Upgrades Ahead: Nakamoto & sBTC

In early October, the sBTC working group officially announced the sBTC Developer Release live on stage at Bitcoin Unleashed 2023. In parallel to hundreds of developers immediately starting to build with the sBTC testnet release in London, over 150 developers and users officially started testing sBTC via the incentivized testnet program. Builders were eager to start trying out sBTC and have since brought multiple sBTC apps to testnet.

 🚀 Nakamoto

The Stacks community is gearing up for the Nakamoto release, aiming to deliver fast blocks and transactions secured by 100% Bitcoin finality. In late November, the Stacks Governance group published the Ultimate Stacks Nakamoto Guide to educate the Stacks community and prepare every stacker for the SIP voting process, and before the end of the year, core engineers officially announced the controlled testnet release of Nakamoto (named Neon).

Twitter tweet

So what’s next? Check out the following helpful resources:

• 👉️ Technical milestones & release strategy for Nakamoto & sBTC

• 👉️ Nakamoto and sBTC launch communications and events

🥇 First Integrations of sBTC

• Hermetica successfully integrated with the sBTC Developer Release and has had over 150 people test the application

• Bitflow reports on sBTC swaps now being live on Bitflow testnet and the Bitcoin Frontier Fund breaks down Bitflow Finance and the benefits of integrating sBTC.

• Velar has successfully rolled out an sBTC Testnet Pool.

• Papaya DAOs Liquid Stacking is now active on testnet with sBTC rewards.

🆙 Other Integrations & Improvements:

• Figment announces that it will enable Bitcoin L2 rewards with upcoming support of the Stacks layer.

• Interim Executive Director of the Stacks Foundation Mitchell Cuevas & Copper Head of Sales, Michael Roberts share Copper’s integration of Stacks and upcoming support for Nakamoto and sBTC.

• Oracle Network Pyth’s Price Feeds are now supported on the Stacks Layer.

👀 Looking at Stacks

In addition to the VCs and thought leaders in the introduction, several others took a deeper look at Stacks this quarter and shared their thoughts:

• Stacks Creator Muneeb Ali shares the Bitcoin Layer 2 trilemma and Trevor Owens picked up from there, publishing a Bitcoin Magazine article on the Bitcoin L2 Trilemma, featuring sBTC & Stacks

• House of Chimera publicizes one-pager on Stacks.

• NewsCrypto lists top 5 Decentralized Finance protocols on Stacks.

• Hiro Systems shares comparison between sBTC and wBTC.

• Figment shares first look research paper on L2 Stacks.

• Investment Firm VanEck publishes 15 Crypto Predictions for 2024, including Stacks.

• Flagship Analyst publishes an article on the top DeFi projects on Stacks.

• CoinDesk highlights Stacks after comments from VC Tim Draper.

Twitter tweet

🏗️ Builders

• The Stacks community votes for their favorite community members and best projects in the ecosystem. Listen back to the 2023 Stackies.

• STX20, an experimental protocol as a version of Bitcoin inscriptions was introduced on the Stacks layer.

• Bitcoin DeFi protocol ALEX has another phenomenal quarter:

  • Rebranding to the Finance Layer on Bitcoin, launching Bitcoin Lab ecosystem fund.

  • Passing 500 million in transaction volume.

  • Tansitioning the ALEX Bridge into XLink, bridging Bitcoin to the EVM finance world.

  • Founder Chiente Hsu brings ALEX' official Bitcoin Lab Ecosystem fund, pledging financial and technical support for builders building on the ALEX Finance Layer for Bitcoin L2 Stacks.

  • Launching the ALEX Launchpad Beta Testing program.

  • Bitget Wallet announces support for Bitcoin Decentralized Finance project ALEX.

  • Ending the quarter with a milestone Monthly Active Users of 20,000.

• StackingDAO launches stSTX on mainnet.

Twitter tweet

• Stacks Multisig Asigna announces Mainnet release, partnering with ALEX and Leather.

  • DeFi protocol Arkadiko reveals Asigna integration to access Arkadiko securely with the Asigna extension.

  • Stacks Multisig Asigna surpasses $100K in TVL.

• Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocol on L2 Stacks Bitflow surpasses 17.5K waitlist milestone for BTC swaps.

• Hiro releases new API toolkit, simplifying API development.

• The Decentralized Grants stewards announced the first six projects getting funded through the new program’s pilot cohort.

• Bitcoin Finance Layer ALEX' AMM DEX is now fully integrated with Leather wallet, including native SIP10 token swaps

• Celebrating its 2nd birthday, Bitcoin DeFi protocol Arkadiko shares the details of Arkadiko 2.0, with sBTC, liquid stacking and more. They also provided a 2023 recap and 2024 roadmap.

• Hermetica launches the Bitcoin Bull Vault on testnet.

• Oracle Network Pyth partners with Arkadiko Finance to ensure that users’ positions as well as the general protocol remain healthy.

• Bitcoin L2 DeFi protocol Velar reveals H1 2024 Roadmap.

👷‍♀️ Working Groups, Critical Bounties & Governance

• Zest Founder Tycho Onnasch publishes forum post on enabling sBTC as a gas asset on Stacks.

• sBTC Resident Andre Serrano shares article about understanding sBTC’s Security Model

• The Stacks Foundation facilitated a community discussion on network emissions.

• Tycho Onnasch, Friends Ferdinand and Kenny Rogers publish an article that explores OP_DROP and its upcoming role in sBTC on Stacks.

• The Stacks Governance group published the Ultimate Stacks Nakamoto Guide and accompanying quiz.

• The Brand working group (WG) is finalizing a refreshed look for Stacks to complement Bitcoin better.

• BD WG had several wins this quarter, including securing Figment, Copper, and others as Signers for sBTC and Nakamoto.

• The Data WG has signed two new partners to make data more accessible for the community and builders.

• The Nakamoto, Testing, and Quality of Life WGs celebrated the successful launch of Nakamoto Neon, the controlled testnet.

• The Clarity Wasm WG finalized the Clarinet pre-release supporting Clarity-Wasm in the console and devnet.

• The Clarity WG shipped Clarity-Bitcoin-v5 to Mainnet and made progress on multiple Nakamoto Public Testnet PRs.

• The sBTC WG released sBTC on Testnet and successfully delivered a testnet version for the sBTC Hackathon.

• The Liquid Stacking Critical Bounty was completed by StackingDAO releasing on Mainnet and Papaya DAO released Liquid Stacking with sBTC rewards on testnet.

• Degen Lab fulfilled their Critical Bounties for Decentralized Stacking & Mining Pools on Stacks, visible on their new website.

• DCL link has completed the implementation for supporting Ordinals in DLCs in the core Rust-DLC library and will integrate these features into the DLC link platform.

• The Critical Bounties for a Stacks library for Rust and Python were both completed.

📆 Events & Builder Initiatives

• Bitcoin Unleashed Live in London: watch back the live stream, Day 1 & Day 2. The separate sessions and Developer Den workshops will be published on October 24th.

• EasyA released their 60 days of Stacks developer challenge, had over 250 developers working with sBTC during the EasyA London Hackathon, and shared that over 2500 developers have completed the Stacks developer challenges.

• The Spartan Group wrapped up an afternoon of incredible afternoon of thought leadership at Bitcoin Builders Thailand, co-hosted with the Stacks Foundation, ALEX Lab and Xverse.

• Gamma organized the Nolcha Shows Ordinal Edition in collaboration with Stacks, Xverse, Trust Machines and others.

• The Stacks Australia community held the Bitcoin Layer 2s “future of the Bitcoin ecosystem” event in Melbourne.

• Community leader Binaya shares collaboration with the National Innovation Center in Nepal to bring the Clarity bootcamp to students.

  • In addition, Binaya Tripathi (SF and Pokhara, Nepal) launches Builders Academy on Oct. 6th. Free program for students in Nepal to learn Clarity, e-ship, and Bitcoin.

• Hiro Systems announces the Hiro Hacks for Bitcoin builders, starting December 1st.

• Stacks Workshop led by Kenny and Dr. Phillip Bradford (U. of Connecticut) to students in University of Geneva’s blockchain program.

• STXLDN Chapter activation at Zebu Live + a Stacks & Coinscrum Happy Hour following the 2 day conference

• Stacks London held its first Developer Breakthrough Program.

🟧 Join us Feb 15th • 10AM ET • Building on Bitcoin Virtual Event 🟧

Building on Bitcoin has truly found its mojo. We’re hot off Bitcoin Unleashed in London, where one of the world’s hottest crypto hubs had a front-row seat to the blossoming world of Bitcoin layers.

The current trend: Projects continue to pop up, offering new takes and tools as developers look to build on Bitcoin. We’ve seen updates from the likes of Babylon, BitVM, Lightning, Chainway, ZeroSync, Ark, RSK, Stacks, and others.

The current vibe: Every layer and scaling solution is a good thing for Bitcoin and the builders trying to unleash the Bitcoin economy.

On the Stacks end of the Bitcoin ecosystem, core contributors have organized around shipping key releases expected to unlock sub-5 second block times and 100% Bitcoin finality (Nakamoto), and a 1:1 Bitcoin-backed asset (sBTC) that can seamlessly move between the L1 and the L2.

Below, we’ve collected the biggest news from the past quarter, but don’t forget you can keep up on a weekly basis with Stacks Snacks too.

To keeping your Naka·mojo·,
Mitchell & the Stacks Foundation Team

PS: Need more convincing about Bitcoin L2s? Read more here and here.

🟧 Upgrades Ahead: Nakamoto & sBTC

The ecosystem continues building toward the release of Nakamoto and sBTC. At Bitcoin Unleashed, the sBTC Developer Release was revealed, allowing the over 200 attendees at the EasyA hackathon and 150 testnet program participants the opportunity to test an initial version of sBTC.

Click to zoom 👀

On the ecosystem side, Copper became the first major player to indicate their intended support for Nakamoto and sBTC. They did so while announcing their integration of Stacks, bringing custody and Stacking services to STX and all Stacks-based tokens.

Twitter tweet

🆙 Other Integrations & Improvements:

• Allbridge releases a Stacks bridge connecting Stacks to 19 chains

• Stacks Joins Ledger Live: Unlock Bitcoin Capabilities Securely

• Hiro: Subnets are Ready for Mainnet

• Ledger Support Comes to Ordinals with Xverse

• Hiro Wallet announces support for DLCs!

• Magic Protocol announces $50K liquidity for BTC to xBTC swaps

• Hiro: Introducing Chainhooks + learn how Chainhooks are a major step forward for Bitcoin DeFi courtesy of Zest

• RocketX + Stacks: unlock the power of the interchain

• Pyth brings devs 300+ price feeds in smart contracts on Stacks

Twitter tweet

👀 Looking at Stacks

Several people, from investors to developers took a deeper look at Stacks this quarter and shared their thoughts.

• CoinGecko’s top Layer 2s to Watch 

• House of Chimera’s episode on all things Stacks

• Messari includes Stacks in its L1 report

• Bitcoin Apostle: Stacks - The Ultimate Savings Account

• CryptoDep celebrates Stacks as coin of the day

• Lunar Crush: “Bitcoin layer 2” trending with Stacks as a solution

• Digital Asset News: Stacks is the layer to scale Bitcoin

• Stacks in Binance: 1 of 3 blockchains racing to be top security provider

• Alex Xela: Stacks' Recipe for Less Hackable, More Transparent, and Ultra-Secure Smart Contracts

• The Coin Republic: STX - Advantages and List of the Popular NFTs

• Paul Veradittakit: A deep dive on Stacks, Bitcoin scalability & more

• Khoa Nguyen: A thread on unlocking Bitcoin capital

• Bitcoin Wallet CEO Ken Liao names Stacks as his favorite scaling option for the Bitcoin economy

• Soberin: Examination of a Promising Bitcoin-Based Ecosystem

• Publius.btc shares ideas for sBTC startups

🏗️ Builders

• ALEX has a quarter for the ages, seeing over $23 million in BRC-20 trading shortly after releasing that functionality, revealed a partnership with Luminex, shared the world’s first on-chain indexer for BRC-20 tokens, integrated with OKX and Xverse for token swaps, and shared updated branding as the Finance Layer on Bitcoin while also launching their Bitcoin Lab ecosystem fund. Plus:

  • LunarCrush introduces $LUNR on Stacks via ALEX

  • Hardware wallet Ryder announces partnership with ALEX

• Bitcoin DeFi is growing and gearing up for sBTC:

  • Arkadiko highlights future integration of sBTC.

  • Velar shares plans to integrate sBTC.

  • Bitflow presents roadmap including sBTC during Bitcoin Frontier Fund Demo Days while their waitlist surpasses 17.5K

  • Papaya DAO, working on a Critical Bounty from the Stacks Foundation shares how they’re building liquid stacking

  • Hermetica Finance announces its beta, shares a thread on how Bitcoin’s Magic Comes to Life with Stacks, and reports on their latest yield

  • Stacking DAO reveals itself to the Stacks community, aiming to deliver liquid stacking

  • Velar launches its beta on Mainnet and integrates Xverse

• Sustainable Bitcoin Protocol announces Copper custody support

• Indexer.xyz launches the Indexer Notification System on Stacks

• Gamma introduces its Partner Program

• Trust Machines apps make moves:

  • Spotlight: LNSwap

  • Hiro Wallet is now called Leather and joins Trust Machines

• Degen Lab, working via Stacks Foundation Critical Bounty, launches Decentralized Stacking Pools on testnet

• Bitcoin wallet Xverse announces official Ledger support for $STX

• Force Prime releases Web3 gaming payments integration w/Stacks.

• Setzeus releases the first beta of Bitscript, a Bitcoin L1 and L2 education course for aspiring Bitcoin developers.

💰Funding

• Xverse announced a $5M seed round led by Jump Crypto

• Ryder Raises $1.2 Million to Build Wallets With No Seed Phrases

• Stacks Foundation Grantee DLC Link announced a $2 Million pre-seed

• OrdinalsBot announces $1M raise with support from Bitcoin Magazine

• ALEX closed a strategic round of $2.5M w/Gossamer and others

👷‍♀️ Working Groups

• The Stacks Foundation upgraded the Working Group area in Github to make them more discoverable and current. You can now find all the active Working Groups in one place and see their latest update.

• Currently, Stacks has (5) Core Engineering Working Groups working on Nakamoto, multi-tiered, massive upgrade including Bitcoin finality and fork awareness.

• Stacks Resident Hero Gamer publishes an application form for De-Grant pilot, a decentralized program designed by the community

• Stacks Improvement Proposal community starts series on sBTC

• Stacks smart contract language Clarity veteran Marvin Janssen highlights the achievements of the Clarity working group.

• On the heels of a high-impact round of Critical Bounties awarded in Q3, Q4 Critical Bounties were awarded to continue support for multiple engineers focused on testing & hardening sBTC and improving the UX/UI of the sBTC experience from end-to-end.

📆 Events & Builder Initiatives

• The first-ever Ready Layer 2 Pitch Competition saw 363 registrants and 107 participants from over 47 countries globally. Recap.

• September 6: “We are Bitcoin Hiros” event, ft. Stacks, Hiro, Trust Machines, DeSpread, ALEX, Xverse, Spartan

• Building on Bitcoin: This Layer-2 focused event was seen by thousands of Bitcoin builders around the globe. Recaps: Twitter and YouTube. 

• Learn Web 3 hosted the Decentralized Intelligence hackathon Season 1 including challenges for building with the Stacks Bitcoin L2 in an AI-focused challenge.

• Stacks Foundation & STX:LDN took part in Zebu Live and a Stacks + Coinscrum event to rally around the local London Bitcoin community. STX:LDN also launched their Community Builders Initiative.

• Bitcoin Unleashed London attracted hundreds at Protein Studios in Shoreditch and thousands watched behind their screens at home! Check out 5 important highlights from the conference here.

• 500,000+ developer community EasyA announced their 60 Days of Stacks challenge for developers and there’s still time to signup.

• The Stacks + EasyA Hackathon saw over 2,500+ developers get to know the basics of Clarity, and become prospects for the next generation of Bitcoin builders!

Twitter tweet

The year began with a flurry of Ordinals driven activity and before we all knew it, added BRC-20’s to the mix. All this activity on the Bitcoin base layer roared right in Q2 and forced everyone to revisit discussions around scalability. Namely, now that builders are flocking back to Bitcoin, how do we make sure they have what they need to be successful without compromising what makes Bitcoin great?

The answer, resoundingly: L2’s.

There was probably no single moment where this was more clear than it was at the Miami Bitcoin Builders conference. This momentum-building conference brought together leading Bitcoin layers and ecosystems including RSK, Lightning, Stacks, and others. Attendees included founders and developers from a wide spectrum, from brand new to building, to experienced builders making the jump from Ethereum or other L1s, to long-time OG Bitcoin builders.

The overarching sentiments…

• Building on Bitcoin is blossoming

• Layers are needed and welcome

• Bitcoiners can and should collaborate and innovate together

Meanwhile, more eyes are on Stacks as a uniquely positioned project to meet the increased demand for Layer 2 solutions for Bitcoin, being recognized as a leader in the space by Binance and Messari (more in highlights!).

Q2 also saw these Stacks milestones:

• The Stacks 2.1 activation in March paved the way for the upcoming Nakamoto and sBTC releases, opening up new possibilities for the ecosystem.

• Stacks crossed the 100,000 block height milestone, highlighting growing usage.

• Bitcoin-secured Clarity smart contracts surpassed the 60,000 milestone, propelling decentralized applications built on the Stacks blockchain to new heights.

• Stacks outperformed the market, securing a position in the top 50 of CMC's ranking, with a market cap that is up 53.3% YTD

Throughout the Stacks ecosystem, builders created more value for Bitcoiners:

• Gamma emerged as one of the most popular inscription tools and Ordinals marketplaces

• Xverse released wallet and PSBT support,

• Hiro launched an Ordinals Explorer/API and wallet support, while

• Neoswap and Satoshibles collaborated on Ordinal swaps, and

• ALEX became the first DEX to support BRC-20s, combining L1 indexing & L2 optimization

Check out plenty more stories below and stay Stacking!

-Stacks Foundation Team

• “Stacks is perfectly positioned to meet the demand for Bitcoin programmability” - from Messari’s Q1 report on Stacks 

• Messari also compared Stacks within top 15 crypto blockchains

• Stacks was featured in Binance as one of 3 blockchains racing to become top security provider

• Velar launched their incentivized testnet for its Decentralized Finance protocol

• Trajan.app launched and is now live!

• Bitflow, decentralized Finance protocol powered by Bitcoin, is now live on mainnet and has released their plans for integrating sBTC 

• Liquidium launched on Beta - Lend and borrow native Bitcoin against your Ordinal (Liquidium also has plans to integrate sBTC)

• Force Prime (previously Stacks Force) launched its gaming platform in Alpha mode. Use $STX in games!

• The ALEX Mainnet Bridge launched!

• A total of 1.6 Million $LUNR were burned re: minting of Nakamoto 1 Android NFTs

• Xverse, Gamma and Bitcoin Magazine joined forces to present "Ordinals Alley," the first-ever fine art gallery for Bitcoin Ordinals showcased at Bitcoin Miami ‘23

• The first-ever Bitcoin Builders event was a success! A major theme of the event was the case for Bitcoin Layers.

• Stacks Foundation participated in ETH Austin and Consensus, and, with DeSpread, Stacks produced an auxiliary event during Build Seoul in early June, which was an incredible opportunity to get in front of the thriving Seoul community. Check out the event here (and lots more in the events section!).

Unlocking Bitcoin’s Full Potential with sBTC

Looking for the latest, weekly roundup of sBTC updates? Subscribe to Bitcoin Writers - Weekly sBTC Updates. This newsletter provides a weekly glimpse into the Stacks Community's effort to unlock Bitcoin write via sBTC and the Stacks blockchain. Check out more on sBTC below.

• Exploring BRC-20s: New Opportunities for sBTC via Bitcoin Writes

• A technical primer thread on sBTC via @KenTheRogers

• sBTC: Bitcoin Summer is Here

• Flagship.FYI - Introducing sBTC: the game changer for Stacks and Bitcoin

Did we see you at these past events?

• Bitcoin Builders in Miami

• Building on Bitcoin Virtual Event

• Coindesk Consensus ‘23 Week 

• ETH Austin, Stacks Austin Chapter & Hiro Pickleball Mixer, Keep Bitcoin Weird: NFT’s, Ordinals...

• NFT.NYC Nolcha Event 

• Build Seoul (auxiliary event)

• Bitcoin Builders Conference 

• Ordinals Conference & Hackathon

Find Stackers at these upcoming events

• Ready Layer 2: the 1st Bitcoin L2 pitch competition

• Bitcoin Unleashed: London! October 19th and 20th

  

  Even with unprecedented regulatory scrutiny in the U.S., Bitcoin’s popularity is surging again. More and more builders are creating new solutions and use cases on top of the original blockchain, catching the attention and growing interest of institutions and investors. Bitcoin Unleashed London will gather the best and brightest entrepreneurs, builders, and investors for engaging conversations, instructive workshops, and high-value networking. Sessions include live demos, technical workshops, keynote speeches, parties, panels, and discussions on everything from DeFi to decentralized gaming, NFTs, and more.

Sneak Peek at the rest of 2023

Find conferences, hackathons, recurring meetings, and more from throughout the Stacks Ecosystem. You can also submit events on behalf of your organization or local community.

• Gamma partners with Bitcoin Magazine for Bitcoin auctions! 🚀

• Gamma is transforming how auctions work on Bitcoin

• Stacks Artist Mary Lai kicks off residency with the W Hotel in L.A.

• Bitcoin secured NFT creator "The Artist" launches free stealth NFT collection

Programs + Governance Updates

• The Foundation’s Lead Like a Gardener series: get a deeper dive on how the Stacks Foundation operations and leads in the broader Stacks ecosystem. This series articulates the strategies and working models leveraged by the Foundation in service of the ecosystem. Check out the 4 posts below for a closer look at the lead like a gardener model as well as the Foundation’s approach to community programs, events, and security.

  • Lead Like A Gardener Pt. 1: Adaptability and ‘Team of Teams’

  • Lead Like A Gardener Pt. 2: Events and the Foundation

  • Lead Like A Gardener Pt. 3: Community Strategy at the Foundation

  • Lead Like A Gardener Pt. 4: Security at the Stacks Foundation

• House of Chimera’s one-pager on Stacks

• 10 Ways sBTC unlocks the power of Bitcoin

• @alexxela_btc goes deep on Stacks (a thread)

• Xverse weighs in on Bitcoin’s impact on the environment 

• Trust Machines: How Bitcoin Layer 2 Creates Incentives for Bitcoin’s Future

• $STX listed as new perpetual on Kraken

• $STX hits the LunarCrush top 10 list again

• Seeking Alpha: Stacks Bitcoin Layer 2 Could Be Huge

• Stacks Foundation: Making BTC Fully Programmable with Layer 2 Technology

• Hiro: From Early Adopters to the Mass Market: Tracking Blockchain Adoption Through the Hype Cycle

• Trust Machines: What is the BRC-20 Standard? 

• Nakamoto_1 was featured in German magazine @btecho

• Gamma: Ordinals on Bitcoin - art that will live on

• Trust Machines: BRC-20 Token Standard vs. ERC-20: What’s the Difference?

• Foundation: The Future of Bitcoin Has Begun - 6 Innovations

• OxResearch with Muneeb Ali: Is Bitcoin DeFi overhyped or just getting started?

• ZestProtocol’s Tycho Onnasch explains key DeFi use cases

• Bitflow - A Real-Yield DEX for Bitcoiners

More ways to get involved

• Bring your expertise to the community through a Stacks Grant or Residency

• Stay up-to-date on the blockchain, and other areas of the ecosystem by joining regular calls

• Join a Stacks Working Group

• Find ways to contribute your skills, including full-time positions

• Reach out to us to be part of a Stacks feedback interview

Can’t miss resources

• Stacks Snacks: A weekly link roundup of all the biggest Stacks news run by the Comms Working Group

• Bitcoin Builders Association Newsletter: A weekly roundup covering the biggest news from Ordinals, Lightning, RSK, and Bitcoin in general

• Bitcoin Writes: A newsletter run by the sBTC Stacks Resident keeping you apprised of all the latest development around sBTC

• When: April 19th, 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. ET

• Where: Virtual

• FREE!

The notion of building on Bitcoin has seen a massive revival over the past couple of months, catalyzed in large part by Ordinals. Brand new builders, investors, and users are recognizing the unique opportunity to activate and enrich the Bitcoin economy. As a result, interest in Bitcoin-based protocols like Lightning, Stacks, Ordinals, and others is growing rapidly. To learn more, join us for in-depth conversations and exciting announcements as Bitcoin evolves beyond just a store of value.

Speakers

• George Kaloudis: Senior Research Analyst and Columnist, CoinDesk

• Rena Shah: Head of OperationsTrust Machines

• Muneeb Ali: CEO, Trust Machines

• Caitlin Long: Founder & CEO, Custodia Bank

• Udi Wertheimer: Co-Founder, Taproot Wizards

• Daniel Fogg: President & Chief Operating Officer, IOV Labs (Rootstock Blockchain)

• Alex Miller: CEO, Hiro Systems

• Jamil Dhanani: Founder and CEO, Gamma.io

• Elizabeth Alice Olson: Head of Growth, Xverse

• John Ennis: CEO & Founder, Neoswap

• Chiente Hsu: CEO and Co-Founder, ALEX

• Andre Serrano: Product & Partnerships Lead, sBTC

• Trevor Owens: Managing Partner, Bitcoin Frontier Fund

• Josie Bellini: Founder and CEO, CyberBrokers

• Tycho Onnasch: Co-Founder at Zest Protocol, General Manager at Trust Machines

• LeonidasNFT HistorianCreator of nfthistory.org

• Will Foxley: Director of Media & StrategyCompass Mining

• Joe Looney: Creator of Rarepepewalletbuilding tokens on bitcoin since 2014

• Mark McKenzie: Founder of Megapont

• Zhuoxun Yin: Co-FounderMagic Eden

• Kyle Ellicott: Partner, Bitcoin Frontier Fund

• John Light: Product, Sovryn

• Zedd Yin: CoFounder / COO, Magic Eden

• Matt Luongo: CEO, Thesis

• Mike in Space: Inventor, Creator of the STAMPS protocol. Currently runs the #Bitcoin Stamps project.

• Mark Hendrickson: Product Lead, Hiro Wallet

• Mike Schmidt: Executive Director, Brink

• Akshat Vaidya: Head of Investments, Maelstrom

• Mark McKenzie: Co-founder, Megapont

Did you know that Bitcoin has been running 24/7 for 10 years with zero downtime? This durability is just one of the many reasons it is the perfect foundation for the Stacks layer and for builders. And the world seems to (finally) be catching on.

Ordinals shook up the Bitcoin world and helped catalyze a shift back toward a culture of innovation and exploration. Lightning, Stacks, RSK, and other Bitcoin-focused projects and layers were happy to welcome new builders and energy. For its part, Stacks was named the #1 Web3 project on Bitcoin for a second year in a row and crossed some important milestones:

• Stacks 2.1 was officially activated in March, paving the way for Nakamoto and sBTC

• Stacks reached the 100,000 block height milestone

• Bitcoin-secured clarity smart contracts crushed the 60,000 milestone

• Stacks outgained the market to solidify a position in the top 50 of CMCs ranking

• Stacks was the top trending cryptocurrency on social platforms for 3 weeks (2 weeks in a row), (LunarCrush)

Elsewhere in the ecosystem, Stacks builders led the charge on Ordinals development: Gamma became one of the most popular inscription tools and Ordinals marketplaces, Xverse released wallet and PSBT support, Hiro released an Ordinals Explorer/API and wallet support, while Neoswap and Satoshibles teamed up on Ordinal swaps!

And much, much, more which you will find below. Before you dive in though, here’s a quick plug for three fantastic resources for keeping up with the blossoming world of Bitcoin building:

• Stacks Snacks: A weekly link roundup of all the biggest Stacks news run by the Comms Working Group

• Bitcoin Builders Association Newsletter: A weekly roundup covering the biggest news from Ordinals, Lightning, RSK, and Bitcoin in general

• Bitcoin Writes: A newsletter run by the sBTC Stacks Resident keeping you apprised of all the latest development around sBTC

Congratulations to all of you on another great quarter of progress and thank you to all the incredible builders and leaders that make Stacks such a great community.

Stay Stacking!

— Mitchell & Claire, Stacks Foundation

• Gamma launched their own Ordinals Marketplace. The Gamma platform now supports Ordinals auctions, allowing users to trade inscribed satoshis peer-to-peer. Read more here.

• The Hiro platform launched! The platform has everything you need to write, test and deploy smart contracts, directly from your browser.

• sBTC Roadmap: The sBTC working group shared the work ahead: Growing the Bitcoin Economy: The Road to sBTC.

• The Stacks 2.1 activation has landed. The cutover for the Stacks 2.1 activation occurred on March 20th. Read more here.

• The Stacks Accelerator rebranded to the Bitcoin Frontier Fund, doubling down on investing in start-ups building on Bitcoin L1 and Bitcoin layers.

• Hiro launched their very own Ordinals Explorer to help people discover and enjoy digital artifacts on Bitcoin.

• Xverse launched SatsConnect, enabling PSBT signing for connecting your wallet to apps.

• Stacks had strong movement in the market, outpacing the growth of every project over $1B in market cap in March.

Did we see you at these past events?

• DeFi Denver: March 1st

• Building on Bitcoin Stacks + Hiro Workshop at ETH Denver: March 2nd

• Building in a Bear Stacks Meetup NYC: March 9th

• Building on Bitcoin Hackathon: Feb 24 - March 7th

• Bitcoin Olympics: March 31

• hack.summit - March 31st - April 1st

Find Stackers at these upcoming events

• Building on Bitcoin Virtual Event - April 19th: Join us for in-depth conversations and announcements about Bitcoin’s evolution to becoming more than just a store of value.

• Coindesk Consensus ‘23 Week - April 25th - 28th: Stacks Foundation and Hiro will be returning to Consensus this year in a shared booth, spots 925 and 926 from Wednesday - Friday that week. Stop by, meet Stacks and Hiro folks, get some free merch, and hear all about the latest updates from us. We’d love to meet you. Use Promo code: Stacks25 for a 25% discount. We’re also taking part in three events that week that you won't want to miss: ETH Austin, Stacks Austin Chapter & Hiro Pickleball Mixer, Keep Bitcoin Weird: NFT’s, Ordinals...

• NFT.NYC Nolcha Event - April 12th: Gamma, Stacks Foundation and Hiro are activating a Bitcoin NFT gallery at Nolcha NFT.NYC’s immersive art exhibition at Art District Live. Attendees will engage with multi-versed artists and creators who boldly mix realities and leverage technology, block-chain based art, web3 native live music, and AI driven installations in a state of the art visually next level 360 degree immersive venue, challenging perceptions of what art can be. Stay tuned for the event registration link on Friday, which can be found on the Stacks events calendar. Learn more here (access code: STACKSNYC).

• Bitcoin Builders Conference - May 17th: Stacks will be participating in the first Bitcoin Builders Conference, which kicks off Bitcoin 2023 Miami week. This ecosystem-agnostic event will offer developers and innovators strong educational content through hands-on workshops, panels with engineering leaders, and insightful industry keynotes, not to mention the space to test drive the latest development tools.

• Ordinals Conference & Hackathon - May 18th: Stacks Foundation will be sponsoring the newly formed Ordinals Conference and Hackathon taking place in Miami during Bitcoin 2023. The event will bring together the top builders, projects and investors pioneering the future of digital artifacts. The hackathon will kick off on April 24th.

Sneak Peek at the rest of 2023

Find conferences, hackathons, recurring meetings, and more from throughout the Stacks Ecosystem. You can also submit events on behalf of your organization or local community.

Ordinals. You've been hearing a lot about them lately.

"Ordinals came out of nowhere and they came out at the right time, with the right angle that is igniting interest in the Bitcoin builders culture. They're more than just NFTs." - Muneeb Ali

Ordinals simultaneously validated the market for things like Bitcoin NFTs and solidified the need and narrative for Bitcoin layers, resulting in new organic interest in Stacks This interest also resulted in STX jumping up into the top 50 slot for tokens. The bigger picture? Ordinals are exciting, and the ecosystem has rallied to create a ton of new capabilities around them, but they're just one great example of how powerful Bitcoin layers are.

New Ordinals products from the Stacks Ecosystem:

• Ordinals Marketplace from Gamma

• API for Bitcoin Ordinals & Inscriptions from Hiro

• Bitcoin Ordinals Explorer from Hiro

• SatsConnect by Xverse

• NoCode Inscriptions by Gamma

• Ordinal News Standard by Freehold

• Silent Auctions from Neoswap and Satoshibles

Ordinals + Stacks Media

• Creator Of $1.4 Billion Bitcoin Layer 2 Gives Backstory on 98% Jump In Price (Forbes)

• Muneeb Ali with Laura Shin (Unchained Crypto’s Podcast) on Bitcoin Ordinals

• Muneeb Ali with Jason Yanowitz (Blockwork’s Empire Podcast) on Bitcoin revival

• Muneeb Ali with Jason Choi (Blockcrunch Podcast) on Bitcoin Ordinals

• Muneeb Ali with Imran & Qiao from Alliance Dao (Good Game Podcast) on Bitcoin application era

Unlocking Bitcoin’s Full Potential with sBTC

Looking for the latest, weekly roundup of sBTC updates? Subscribe to Bitcoin Writers - Weekly sBTC Updates. This newsletter provides a weekly glimpse into the Stacks Community's effort to unlock Bitcoin write via sBTC and the Stacks blockchain. Check out more on sBTC below.

• Stacks Foundation blog: An intro to Bitcoin-Backed DeFi - one of the biggest sBTC unlocks.

• Ryder: The Ultimate Bitcoin Layer is Almost Here

• Chris Burniske on sBTC: “It's finally time, where people are so bearish on building on BTC — that I think it's time to be bullish on it.”

• Stacks: Why Bitcoin Builders Are Excited About sBTC

• Gamma: Jamil Dhanani shares his thoughts and expertise and what sBTC means for collectors and artists alike

• Xverse blog: Introducing sBTC: Non-custodial Native Bitcoin DeFi

• Town Hall: Using Trust-Minimized Native Bitcoin in Applications

• YouTube: How sBTC is an Improvement in Decentralization for Building with Bitcoin

Programs + Governance Updates

• What’s new with the Stacks Grants Program? Critical Bounties, Decentralized Mining Pools & More!

• 2023 Stacks Events Roundup

• Stacks Is the #1 Web3 Project on Bitcoin for Second Year in a Row

• Messari Report: State of Stacks Q4 2022

• Sustainable Bitcoin Protocol: Xverse weighs in on Bitcoin's impact on the environment

• Kyle Ellicot/Medium: Introducing Ordinals - Theory, Protocol, Bitcoin NFTs, and New Possibilities

• Foundation blog: Ordinals + Web3 Startups

• Foundation blog: Industry Lessons Series - Developer Due Diligence Checklist

• Trust Machines: How Bitcoin Ordinals Can Affect the Next Bitcoin Halving

• Trust Machines: What are Bitcoin Ordinals?

• Trust Machines: What are Rollups and How Can They Work on Bitcoin?

• Hiro: Hiro's Focus Areas for Q1

• Hiro: Is Stacks a Layer 1 or a Layer 2?

• Trust Machines: An Introduction to Building on Bitcoin

• Trust Machines: An Introduction to Bitcoin NFTs

• Xverse blog: What are Bitcoin Usernames?

• Hiro: Guide to Starting a Career in Web3

• Trust Machines: What are Bitcoin Layers and Why are They Important?

• Xverse blog: A Complete Guide to Stacks Cryptocurrency (STX)

• Trust Machines: An Introduction to Bitcoin DeFi

• Medium/Albert Liang: 2023 Prediction: The Year of Bitcoin Unicorn Startups

More ways to get involved

• Bring your expertise to the community through a Stacks Grant or Residency

• Stay up-to-date on the blockchain, and other areas of the ecosystem by joining regular calls

• Join a Stacks Working Group

• Find ways to contribute your skills, including full-time positions

• Reach out to us to be part of a Stacks feedback interview

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s…Bitcoin derivatives!

Bitcoin DeFi, DeFi for Bitcoin, #BitFi, whatever you’ve taken to calling it, jumped into the limelight yesterday as Injective Protocol announced they’ll be integrating with Stacks to give users access to new Bitcoin-based derivatives. Dubbed a ‘DeFi Robinhood’ by TechCrunch, Injective is hot off a $10 million fundraise from the likes of Pantera Capital, Mark Cuban, BlockTower, and is also backed by Binance.

Derivatives created on Injective, such as expiry futures, synthetics, and perpetuals, are fully decentralized and accessible to everyone. By integrating Stacks, Injective enables users to create both perpetual contracts and expiry futures markets for unique Bitcoin derivatives that are actually tied to the Bitcoin network itself. Through the Injective ecosystem, traders will be able to freely take part in new forms of market creation such as expiry futures and perpetuals across distinct networks.

In addition to Stacks, the team has begun working on integrations with other top blockchains such as BSC, Polkadot, Avalanche, and NEAR. With Stacks, they will be able to launch derivatives based on the Stacks token (STX) alongside native assets built on the Stacks blockchain, effectively creating a bridge that allows for both market creation and trading for STX, as well as other tokens based on the Bitcoin network.

We’re looking forward to supporting Injective with their integration work and can’t wait to see these products available to users. It’s clear that DeFi’s future is open, collaborative, and includes Bitcoin in a major way.

Twitter tweet

Bitcoin DeFi: Injective Protocol to Leverage Stacks for Fully Decentralized Bitcoin Derivatives

DeFi for Bitcoin takes another step into the limelight today as Injective Protocol announced they’ll be integrating with Stacks to give users access to new Bitcoin-based derivatives. Dubbed a ‘DeFi Robinhood’ by TechCrunch, Injective is hot off a $10 million fundraise from the likes of Pantera Capital, Mark Cuban, Blocktower, and is also backed by Binance. Read more here.

Stacks Accelerator Job Fair!

Twitter tweet

2023: it’s a good time to be building on Bitcoin. To be fair, it’s always a good time to be building on Bitcoin, but we digress.

The Stacks ecosystem closed out 2022 with one of the biggest quarters yet, officially voting in the Stacks 2.1 upgrade while two new whitepapers were published that outlined a vision for an even more complete Stacks Bitcoin layer.

In Q4, we also watched Clarity smart contracts grow over 100%, the network crossed 7 billion in total STX transferred, and we welcomed 84 new members to the talent pool, a growth of 44% from the previous quarter.

As always, read on for stories and announcements from builders and companies, plenty of news and resources around sBTC and Stacks 2.1, videos from community leaders, event recaps, and more.

Buckle up - here’s to a major year of building on Stacks!

— The Stacks Foundation Team

P.S. Didn’t get everything you wanted for Christmas? Check out the new Stacks swag shop!

Unlocking Bitcoin’s Full Potential with sBTC

• sBTC in Coindesk: Step Aside, Ethereum: Blockchain Project Stacks Wants to Bring Smart Contracts to Bitcoin

• Foundation blog: Introducing sBTC and the ‘Nakamoto’ Release of Stacks

• Hiro blog: Unlocking Bitcoin’s Full Potential

• Muneeb on YouTube: Introducing a Trustless 2-Way Peg Mechanism for Bitcoin:

• Foundation Video: Read Bitcoin & Write to Bitcoin: 

• Foundation blog: Stacks 2.1 Upgrade is Official

• Xverse blog: 5 Ways 2.1 Will Unleash Bitcoin

• Bitcoin Unleashed: How Continuous Stacking Will Improve Stacking:

• Bitcoin Unleashed: 2.1 - Why You Should Be Excited:

• Ryder: The World’s First Social Crypto Wallet 

• Zest Protocol launch: Introducing Zest Protocol

• Ryder: Digital Twin Tags

• Xverse blog: XVerse Launches Desktop Extension

• Foundation blog: Builder Spotlight - BlockSurvey

• Xverse blog: A Solution to Apple’s Big Block on NFT Transfers

• Xverse blog: Announcing Xverse x Sigle

• Liquidium, the first NFT lending protocol on Stacks, launches on Mainnet:

Twitter tweet

• ALEX: New ALEX Tokenomics Proposals

• Foundation blog: Developer Spotlight - Brice Dobry

• Foundation blog: Builder Spotlight - Wow Labz

• Gamma blog: “Peer to Peer” NFT Collection, focused on Gender Equity

• Xverse blog: Luxury Brands Bullish on NFTs

Updates from the Foundation

• Stacks, Post FTX Filing

• Community Survey Results

• Foundation Q3 OKR Report

• Foundation Q4 OKR Report

• Cohort 19 Grants Update

• Foundation blog: Security, blockchain status updates

• Hiro blog: September ‘22 release roundup

• New Twitter handle for status updates: @StacksStatus

• Xverse blog: Why Do .bns Domains Matter? 

• Unleashing Bitcoin: Why Use Stacks as a Blockchain:

• Bitcoin Unleashed: $BTC x Ethereum Bridge:

• Web3 Miami

• Stackies 2022:

• Clarity Camp Holiday Hackathon

• Bitcoin Unleashed: Builders Edition

Stay up to date with the Stacks Events calendar

Find conferences, hackathons, recurring meetings, and more from throughout the Stacks Ecosystem. You can also submit events on behalf of your organization or local community.

Last week was a big one for the Stacks ecosystem. On Wednesday, two new whitepapers were released detailing how to solve a longstanding roadblock for Bitcoin builders and an important proposed Stacks upgrade. On Friday, Stacks 2.1 was officially approved by the community after record-breaking voter turnout.

Below is a quick intro for each whitepaper and links to read the full PDFs as well as additional resources and reading.

-The Stacks Foundation team

P.S. Keep scrolling to check out the newly-launched Stacks swag shop!

sBTC: This paper discusses a trustless two-way Bitcoin peg system: sBTC. This peg system can help us fulfill the rest of the original vision of Stacks by enabling trustless writing to Bitcoin. Stacks 2.0 brought Clarity and the ‘read’ access; sBTC is the remaining missing ‘write’ piece for a fully expressive Bitcoin layer that can unlock hundreds of billions in Bitcoin capital.

Stacks Whitepaper: The Nakamoto Release with a Trustless Bitcoin Peg. This paper describes changes to the Stacks Bitcoin layer needed to enable the trustless functioning of the newly proposed sBTC asset described in the first paper as well as faster block times and other improvements.

More reactions and recaps from the community:

Twitter tweet

Twitter tweet

Twitter tweet

In celebration of 2.1 …

…check out the newly launched Stacks Shop and get 21% off everything through midnight on Monday. Stickers, socks, hoodies, backpacks, tees, and more. Stacks has you covered.

Connect and learn more

• Head over to the sBTC landing page

• Check out the sBTC overview deck here

• Read our blog post on the whitepapers here

• Read more from the Hiro team here

• Non-Custodial BTC on Stacks Working Group #469

• GTM non-custodial BTC Working Group #465

It’s beginning to look a lot like Stacksmas.

Once again, the Stacks community is headed toward a big upgrade around this time of year. Stacks 2.1 is nearly here, and the community has already smashed voter turnout numbers from the previous upgrade. If you voted, thank you. If you haven’t yet, check out our guide here for options on how to cast your vote.

If Stacks 2.1 is voted in by the community and adopted by miners, we expect it to go live before the end of the year.

Can devs do something?

Crypto winter is cold enough, so Stacks Core Devs said you know what? Who needs a cooldown cycle? And boom, better BTC yields from Stacking come with 2.1. But they weren’t done. They added a bevvy of Bitcoin layer goodies, including other Stacking improvements, new Clarity functions, better bridge options, opened the door for decentralized mining pools, made it possible for miners to use SegWit and Taproot, bringing fees down by 25%, and last but definitely not least, unlocked the ability to directly send Stacks assets to Bitcoin addresses.

Say no to doomscrolling.

Let’s be real, folks are angsty right now. Between Luna, FTX, and everything else going on in our world over the past year, it's understandable to feel worn out, frustrated, and just a bit grinchy. But, bear markets are where winners build and the Stacks community embodies that approach. We’ll trade you doomscrolling for boomscrolling.

Stacks entities came out unscathed from FTX. Boom. A new cohort of the Web3 Founders Lab is starting up. Boom. New artists are launching via Gamma and the Mintery. Boom. New developers are learning Clarity through the new self-guided option. Boom. The Stackies are back again on December 15th. Boom. And so much more below. Boom. Isn't boomscrolling so much better than doomscrolling?

This newsletter is your sign to take a minute to step back and appreciate wins like these, celebrate progress together, have each other’s back, and gear up for even more improvements and growth in 2023.

--

🚀 Stacks 2.1

🙌 Featured News

🏗️ Stacks Builders

🥳 Events, Conferences, & Parties

✨ Try an app built on Bitcoin today

Try decentralized apps built on Stacks, secured by Bitcoin. There are apps for finance, collectibles, blogging and many more.

🚀 Stacks 2.1 Updates

Stacks 2.1: Your Guide to Voting — stacks.org

The Stacks layer for Bitcoin is about to get stronger. Your vote is the next step and you can cast it in one of a few ways. If Stacks 2.1 is voted in by the community, we expect it to go live before the end of the year as Core Developers are currently already testing!

Twitter tweet

Stacks 2.1 Upgrade is Approaching — Enhanced Connection between Stacks & Bitcoin

Stacks 2.1 is an important network upgrade version that has been prepared for the past two years since the mainnet rollout. This upgrade is prepared to significantly improve connection with Bitcoin, PoX mechanism, and Clarity smart contracts.

5 Ways Stacks 2.1 Will Unleash Bitcoin — www.xverse.app

Here are 5 ways Stacks 2.1 will improve the Xverse user experience and mobilize the Bitcoin economy.

Stacks 2.1 Helpdesk | Stacks Foundation — stacks.org

Need help with something related to Stacks 2.1 or just looking for key docs and resources? Check out the Stacks Foundation's '2.1 Helpdesk' as a great starting point for ALL things Stacks 2.1 and even human help if you need it.

🙌 Featured News

What is BNS and why do .btc domain names matter? — www.xverse.app

During the first week of November 2022, the surge in transaction volume for domain names with .btc reportedly shot up to 260%. Why? Think .com, but for Web3. In the same way that DNS made the Internet more user-friendly, Bitcoin Name System (BNS aka .btc) stands to do the same for the world of Web3.

Moving forward from this week in crypto (11/15/22)

If you’re at all familiar with crypto then you know that this week’s FTX meltdown led to billions of dollars in crypto funds being frozen and drained from millions of retail customer accounts. Some call it the Lehman moment of crypto, others see it as the sign of the times.

Web3 Startup Lab Bootcamp Opens for Cohort 2 — twitter.com

“Super Excited to see Web3 Startup Lab Cohort 2 Bootcamp open and cannot wait to see the amazing things built by founders on @Stacks!”

NEW Clarity Camp Self-Guided Option — clarity-lang.org

Clarity Camp is a 6-week guided cohort where you'll learn smart contract fundamentals and the skills you need to work with Clarity, the native smart contract language of the Stacks blockchain that enables smart contracts on Bitcoin

Smart Contract Security Can’t Afford to Fail—and With the Clarity Programming Language, It Won’t — www.hiro.so

Hiro’s Diwaker Gupta explains how the complexities of smart contracts create novel problems and why Clarity, a new programming language, excels at solving them.

🏗️ Stacks Builders

Mark your calendars: Ryder goes on pre-sale on December 10! — www.ryder.id

Get access to one of the first-ever Ryder devices: mint a Ryder digital collectible on December 10th 2022, at 2 PM EST.

Experience NFTs IRL: Ryder Digital Twin Tags — www.ryder.id

Ryder Digital Twin Tags merge digital collectables with physical items through a scan-to-own feature.

Liquidium (Stacks Startup Lab team) Launches on Testnet — twitter.com

We are happy to announce, that we are giving away 300 STX collectively to 3 testers 🤟 To participate, take out a loan on Liquidium's Testnet version.

Developer Spotlight: Brice Dobry, Hiro — stacks.org

Brice Dobry is a Senior Software Engineer at Hiro Systems. Today, he's 1 year in with the team at Hiro and at the forefront of building on Stacks. In our discussion, he talks about how he got started and how you can too.

ALEX: Procedure for New Tokenomics Vote and Implementation

An update on ALEX's vote around a new staking system which will implement the changes discussed in their new tokenomics proposal. For the full proposal description please see here.

🥳 Events, Conferences, & Parties

The '22 Stackies - Mark Your Calendars for December 15th! — www.crowdcast.io

Tune in to The 2022 Stackies to honor and celebrate your fellow Stacks community members! We'll be presenting awards to folks nominated by the community. Winners will receive awards in the form of Stacks NFTs, swag, and more. If you haven't already, submit your Stackie nominations here: https://stx.is/P4yvIu 

Clarity Holiday Hackathon — clarity-holiday-hackathon.devpost.com

Join us for a Smart Contract Challenge that lets you experiment and get familiar with Clarity's developer environment.

Stacks Community Updates - December 8th — www.crowdcast.io

Tune in to this monthly call to hear updates from:

• Stacks Foundation team

• Stacks Grantees

• Stacks Residents

• Stacks Chapter Leads

Building in a Bear - December 15th Meetup — lu.ma

Join us as we discuss why building in a bear market is the best time to build - from strategy, to building on bitcoin, hiring, job opps, and what builders are focused on next.

MiamiWeb3 Summit - November 29th and 30th — www.miamiweb3.com

During the three-day in-person event, industry leaders in venture capital, digital assets, financial services, and government will gather to discuss "Going Beyond Crypto to Embrace Web3" and associated emerging trends driving the industry forward.

Stacks Foundation’s Brittany Laughlin spoke on ‘Unlocking Bitcoin Layers with Gina Abrams (Trust Machines) and Sean Butterfield (Messari) as well as a panel on ‘Can Crypto Save The World? Crypto For Good’ on Nov 30th. Trevor Owens (Stacks Ventures), Rena Shah (Trust Machines) and David Leiberman (Console) also spoke at this conference Co-hosted by Kyle Ellicott (Stacks Ventures & Fundamental Labs).

Stacks Foundation also hosted a series of events in Miami, recapped below.

🌴 Stacks in Miami

Art Basel Brunch - The Girls Table

Miami web3 Conference hosted a sit-down brunch with an amazing group of female investors, creators, builders and founders. Brittany Laughlin and Shannon Voight (Stacks Foundation) along with Rena Shah and Gina Abrams (Trust Machines) attended.

Venture Miami Tech Hiring Fair

Stacks Foundation activated a booth at Venture Miami’s Tech Career Fair to connect with local tech talent and inform them of the amazing opportunities that exist in the Stacks ecosystem, seen here.

Miami Art Basel Nolcha Shows NFT Edition with Crash Punks

Connecting the Web3, Crypto & Art community through festive programming and entertainment. Join Stacks and CrashPunks at Nolche! If you cant be there, pick up a CrashPunks NFT on Gamma using STX tokens and the Xverse Bitcoin wallet.

NFT Basel / Disrupt3rs

Gamma + Stacks sponsored an NFT gallery at Disrupt3rs - a digital and IRL mixed-media event that will bring together trailblazing creatives in the entertainment, sports and media industries.

Artemis Event: Gamma NFT Gallery Activation

Gamma + Stacks activated an NFT gallery at Artemis.

Stay up to date with the Stacks Events calendar

Find conferences, hackathons, recurring meetings, and more from throughout the Stacks Ecosystem. You can also submit events on behalf of your organization or local community!

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Disclaimer: The information shared in this email is strictly for informational purposes. You should not take its content, opinions, and/or descriptions provided as technical advice, legal advice, financial advice, or investment advice. See full disclaimer at stacks.org/terms.

When they go low, we go build. While the bear market is bullying the industry, good projects everywhere are putting in the hard work that will look like overnight success in the next bull run. October only further highlighted the Stacks community’s resolve, as captured by some of the top takeaways in Messari’s new report.

While “overall network usage was down, consistent with the broader market [,] Stacks continued to show strong signs of development, with smart contracts deployed growing by 60% QoQ.”

A special shout out is owed to the Clarity Residents from Whitelabel that are now opening their fifth Clarity Camp cohort and were key in the 30% growth in developers we noted last quarter. It’s great to see the developer growth numbers that we’re working toward manifest in these reports.

📰 Check out the full report 📰

Up next

Stacks 2.1 is just around the corner. We’re keeping the timeline updated and there are plenty of places to jump into the latest updates via a meeting or working group. Take a peek at the community event calendar to get involved.

Let's dive in and review all the exciting work from October!

--

🚀 Stacks 2.1

🙌 Featured News

⚖️ Governance + Security Updates

🏗️ Stacks Builders

🙌 Quick Hits

🥳 Events, Conferences, & Parties

✨ Try an app built on Bitcoin today

Try decentralized apps built on Stacks, secured by Bitcoin. There are apps for finance, collectibles, blogging and many more.

🚀 Stacks 2.1 is Coming

Updated Timeline and Dates for Stacks 2.1 — stacks.org

As we gear up for Stacks 2.1, we know more questions will come up in anticipation of the coming upgrades. We've put together an updated timeline around code complete, testnet status, and the voting period for Stacks 2.1. Note: The dates provided are estimates and are subject to change as testing and other implementation efforts begin. This post will remain updated as we collect new information from core developers.

How Stacks 2.1 Will Strengthen Stacks’ Connection to Bitcoin — www.youtube.com

In the unending quest for utility, investors are looking for the best ways to put their bitcoin to work. A bevy of new upgrades, from Subnets to Continuous Stacking, brings richer functionality to the world's oldest cryptocurrency.

🙌 Featured News

Web3 Startup Lab: Cohort 2 Applications Live — stacks.org

Web3 Startup Lab's second cohort is now accepting applications. Join the Web3 Startup Lab community and accelerate your startup with guidance from industry experts and access to top investors in the space.

⚠️ Application deadline is November 7th - apply by November 5th for access to perks (even if you don't join the program!).

$STX Now Available on the Kraken Exchange

Twitter tweet

Xverse Partners with Binance to Drive Crypto Adoption — medium.com

Xverse, the most advanced Web3 Bitcoin wallet, is pleased to announce integrations with Binance Connect, a leading global payment infrastructure provider backed by Binance. In addition to growing the…

Hiro Systems Release Roundup — www.hiro.so

Stay up to date with the latest Hiro product releases. In September we shipped a number of updates, including BNS updates for the Stacks API. Our team also continued to work toward code completion of Stacks 2.1.

⚖️ Governance + Security Updates

Stacks Foundation OKR Report | Q3 2022 — stacks.org

Despite the challenges of building in a bear market, the Stacks ecosystem has continued to grow. Below we’ve outlined our performance against the our Q3 Objective and Key Results (OKRs).

Introducing Stacks Foundation OKRs | Q4 2022 — stacks.org

We’re introducing the Stacks Foundation objectives for Q4. The work we did in Q3 in combination with feedback from the community survey helped us set clear priorities for Q4.

Results from the Ecosystem Priorities Survey — stacks.org

We surveyed the most active founders, employees, and developers from over 50 companies building on Stacks. We asked them about everything, from the most pressing technical improvements to their ideas for new resources.

Priorities from the 2022 Ecosystem Offsite — stacks.org

On September 19, 2022 we held the first Stacks Offsite with builders from the ecosystem to talk through technical priorities, share opportunities, and discuss the known challenges within the roadmap. =

Better Stacks Blockchain Status Updates + Post-Mortem Roundup — stacks.org

In light of recent security reports via our Immunefi program, as well as congestion issues related to .BTC registrations, we took the opportunity to revisit our processes around detecting and communicating about the status of the Stacks blockchain.

New Resource: Stacks Status Account on Twitter (@stacksstatus) — twitter.com

Have you followed the new @stacksstatus Twitter handle yet? This new resource provides status updates for the Stacks blockchain layer. This account is managed by the Stacks Foundation with input from other entities and community members.

A Guide to Consideration Advisory Boards (CABs) — stacks.org

Consideration Advisory Boards (CABs) are part of an ongoing effort to further expand and refine the Stacks Improvement Proposal (SIP) process. For every SIP consideration, there is a CAB. The duty of the CAB is to utilize their expertise to judge the merit of a SIP.

Hiro: Takeaways From the H2 2022 Developer Survey — www.hiro.so

55% of developers say that the bear market has increased their desire to build in Web3. Learn more from our latest survey of Stacks developers.

Hiro's Focus for Q4 2022 — www.hiro.so

Let’s celebrate our Q3 successes as we look to the work ahead in Q4.

🏗️ Stacks Builders

Zest Protocol Launches on Testnet - Bitcoin’s First On-Chain Capital Market — www.zestprotocol.com

We’re excited to announce the official launch of Zest Protocol’s testnet! Beginning 20th October 2022, users can start testing for earning a yield on their Bitcoin with Zest.

BlockSurvey Builder Spotlight + New Feature — stacks.org

Built on Stacks, BlockSurveys providers users with a stack of tools and audiences for data collection with ownership, privacy, and security at an affordable cost. BlockSurvey recently launched a new feature called Owl Link, a linktree alternative built on Stacks. Use your .btc to claim a profile today.

Web3 Startup Lab: Team Testimonials — stacks.org

Check out these exciting updates from the Web3 Startup Lab's first cohort!

Builder Spotlight: Pravica — stacks.org

Mohamed Abdou is the founder of Pravica, a Stacks company that provides private, secure, end-to-end encrypted communications tools. All Pravica products are based on decentralized identities that are secure on the Bitcoin network - ensuring that identity is owned and controlled only by the user.

Bridge on ALEX: How to use the Testnet — medium.com

Launching in October, Bridge will enable users to move wrapped USDC between the Stacks and Ethereum networks.

🥳 Events, Conferences, & Parties

Event Recap: Bitcoin Unleashed, Builders Edition — stacks.org

On October 7th, Stacks Foundation hosted Bitcoin Unleashed: Builders Edition, a virtual event bringing together founders and developers to discuss all things building on Bitcoin. Attendees learned form industry leaders, built alongside the best developers in the space, and connected with fellow Bitcoiners form across the globe. All in, over 1,100 attendees tuned in between Hopin and YouTube.

Stacks @ Bitcoin Amsterdam '22 — www.youtube.com

This month, leaders, builders, and brilliant minds in Bitcoin came together for 3 days of learning, teaching, and inspiring the Bitcoin community. Bitcoin Amsterdam brought the Bitcoin community together on a global stage to learn and connect.

Check out the complete playlist of videos from the event here.

Making Sure Crypto Really Does Save the World - A Conversation on ReFi — www.youtube.com

There needs to be a holistic approach to sustainability in the blockchain industry. And, finally, the focus seems to be converging on that cross chain collaboration for bolstering ReFi. In this virtual event, we heard from builders and advocates across blockchain communities all working towards a better future on blockchain.

Each quarter, we make a point to celebrate projects, builders, and innovations across the Bitcoin ecosystem - and there are always plenty of stories to go around. But as building on Bitcoin grows more popular, it’s also worth recognizing some of the struggles along the way (and remembering there are likely more still to come).

Building on Bitcoin…meet growing pains. We saw some of this pain manifest on the Stacks layer for Bitcoin this quarter as the network struggled mightily at times under demand load, Sovryn was badly hacked, and even Lightning addressed a major bug on its network. And of course, Bitcoin’s price remains below what we’d all like to see.

Here’s some of the good news. Driving some of the recent congestion on the Stacks layer was a surge in BTC domain registrations. Registrations were up 191.32% in Q3 vs. Q2 and are off to a meteoric rise in Q4, seeing more registrations in just the first 10 days of the quarter than the entirety of Q3. On the developer side, Clarity Camp from the Stacks Foundation brought over a hundred new developers into the fold during the quarter, with a healthy waitlist and new course in partnership with Codecademy driving continued interest. And, the Lightning Network surged over 25% in the last four months, reaching $100m in capacity.

Last but not least, Titan’s recent analysis gives Bitcoiners some validation:

All this points to Bitcoin remaining a strong, steady place to build. With Stacks 2.1 and Subnets on the way, we’re excited to get Stacks ready for primetime and welcome the rest of the world to building on Bitcoin. 🚀

-Mitchell Cuevas & the Stacks Foundation Team

—

🚀 Stacks 2.1

🙌 Featured News

🏗️ Stacks Builders

🙌 Quick Hits

🥳 Events, Conferences, & Parties

🌈 New Tutorials

➕ Much more

✨ Try an app built on Bitcoin today

Try nearly 100 decentralized apps built on the Stacks layer for Bitcoin. There are apps for finance, collectibles, blogging and many more.

🚀 Stacks 2.1 is Coming

Stacks 2.1: Strengthening The Connection to Bitcoin — stacks.org

As a community, we see the incredible potential of Bitcoin and are committed to building the best tools to make it more useful. Stacks is the top Web3 project on Bitcoin today, and this is just the beginning. We’re excited to highlight the updates proposed for the network in Stacks 2.1 — an upgrade that will strengthen the connection between Stacks and Bitcoin.

A Closer Look at 2.1: Stacking Improvements — stacks.org

In advance of the launch of Stacks 2.1, we will be releasing posts that provide a closer look at each of the key updates for the network. For a quicker breakdown of what’s coming, check out our first post about 2.1 updates.

A Developer’s Guide to Stacks 2.1 — www.hiro.so

What developers need to know about the upcoming Stacks 2.1 upgrade. For developers working on wallets and related clients, 2.1 brings a number of important changes to how stacking is handled.

🙌 Featured News

Stacks & QuickNode: Making Bitcoin dApps possible — blog.quicknode.com

On September 7th, QuickNode, the leading Web3 cloud platform for building blockchain-powered applications, announced beta support for Stacks. QuickNode makes it easier to build blockchain applications that scale and offers a variety of tools including elastic APIs, analytics, and SDKs.

QuickNode aims to serve the developer community by providing the best tools and the most reliable blockchain infrastructure offerings possible, notably providing blockchain infrastructure for crypto and tech heavyweights including OpenSea, Adobe, Twitter, DappRadar, PayPal, Coinbase, Chainlink, and 1inch.

Hyperchains are now Subnets — www.hiro.so

As you know, Hiro has been working on a high-throughput, low-latency scaling solution for Stacks called hyperchains. Check out a new hyperchains demo here and stay tuned for another blog update on our progress later this week, but today we have a different kind of community update: we need to rename hyperchains. The trademark for “Hyperchain'' is already registered, and in order to avoid any potential issues, we want to make this change as swiftly as possible.

A New Front Door for Crypto. — stacks.org

In partnership with Codecademy, we’re proudly revealing a new, completely free course for blockchain beginners: “An Introduction to Blockchain and Crypto.” The course will offer their over 45 million users (and anyone else that’s interested) a clear path to learning the basics about blockchain–no oaths or commitments to a specific protocol required!

Blockchain.com Wallet Integration — stacks.org

Back in June, Blockchain.com listed Stacks (STX) in the Blockchain.com Wallet enabling you to buy, sell, swap, and earn 2% annually on your STX. On September 29, the team announced Stacks network support. You can now send, receive, and store STX on-chain using your new Stacks Private Key Wallet.

Clarinet Roadmap: Looking to the Future — www.hiro.so

Over time, Clarinet has evolved as the Hiro team has rolled out new features, talked to developers, and adapted to the changing needs of the Stacks community. In this post, we’ll look back at how Clarinet came to be and discuss what we have planned for the future.

A New Look and Feel for Clarity — stacks.org

The new Clarity design was the result of an open process started by long-time community leader Brad.id aka BradleyBaker.btc aka @fluidvoice and supported by Will Corcoran at the Stacks Foundation. A big thank you to them, and of course, every single designer that submitted options. The community voted overwhelmingly for this new look; the winning submission came courtesy of Ginny over at Hiro Systems.

🏗️ Stacks Builders

Stacks Web3 Startup Lab

After 10 weeks of immersion, 10 teams made their pitches.

The Stacks Web3 Founders Lab is a venture that includes a 2-month “bootcamp-style” pre-accelerator for Web3 startups. On Sunday, July 31st, 9 teams finally presented their learnings and work at the pre-accelerator's Demo Day. Meet the 10 teams and learn a bit about each of their projects in this post and check out the demo day video here.

Builder Spotlight: ALEX — stacks.org

Chiente Hsu is the founder and CEO of ALEX, a DeFi platform on Bitcoin (via Stacks). ALEX provides liquidity bootstrapping for emerging token launches and aims to pave the way as a DeFi innovation that rewrites finance for Web 3. In our discussion, we learn more about what ALEX unlocks for users, how Chiente first got involved with crypto and the Stacks ecosystem, and more.

ALEX Stacks Bridge

ALEX is building Stacks Bridge, connecting USDC on Ethereum with xUSD on Stacks. Stacks Bridge is a wrapped bridge, with Tokensoft as the tech partner. USDC has a marketcap of over $48B and Stacks…

Builder Spotlight: StackerDAO Labs — stacks.org

Orlando Cosme is the Founder of StackerDAO Labs and part of the 2nd Stacks Accelerator Cohort. StackerDAO Labs is a one-stop shop to create and manages DAOs secured by Bitcoin. In the below conversation, we learn more about his vision for the project, his experience in the Accelerator, and what's next for StackerDAO Labs.

Builder Spotlight: Trajan — stacks.org

Ragnar Lifthrasir is the Founder of Trajan, a professional community for Web3. When Ragnar was increasingly frustrated with professional sites like LinkedIn and Glassdoor, he started brainstorming how professional representation could be different on Web3. In our conversation below, we talk about the vision and philosophy behind Trajan, the different problems that the project aims to solve, and the future of social capital and identity.

Builder Spotlight: NeoSwap — stacks.org

John Ennis is a PhD Mathematician, former founder of an AI services company, and current founder/CEO of NeoSwap. In the below discussion with John, we learn about his vision for NeoSwap, an NFT liquidity platform that hosts "parties" enabling NFT trades and sales.

🌈 Tutorials

Build a DEX on Stacks: Clarity - Pointer

This time we’re partnering with our friends at Stacks to bring you this tutorial on building a decentralized exchange on Stacks. We’re going to learn about Stacks, Clarity, and DeFi, and build something awesome!

How to Create and Deploy a Clarity Smart Contract on the Stacks Blockchain explained - step-by-step beginners guides | QuickNode

This guide will demonstrate how to create and deploy a Clarity smart contract on the Stacks Testnet using Clarinet, a command line tool for developing, testing, and deploying smart contracts.

Breaking Down an Order Book Contract for NFT Marketplaces

Byzantion, an NFT marketplace for Bitcoin-secured NFTs, walks through a contract enabling one of the first true order books for NFTs.

Subnets Update: NFT Use Case and Beyond — www.hiro.so

Hiro's Subnets update covers an NFT use case on devnet as well as instructions and guides for how to write Subnet contracts and spin up a Subnet node.

How to Mint NFTs on the Stacks Blockchain explained - step-by-step beginners guides | QuickNode

In this guide, we will take things a step further and learn how to create and deploy a SIP-009 compliant NFT contract to the Stacks Testnet. Once deployed, you will also learn how to mint the NFTs through the Stacks Sandbox. Let us get started!

Introducing Stacks.js Starters: Launch a Frontend in Just a Few Clicks — www.hiro.so

Generate Web3 projects in just a few clicks with our latest templates for the most popular Javascript frameworks.

➕ More

Purchase Bitcoin Directly in Xverse Wallet — medium.com

Xverse, the most advanced web3 Bitcoin wallet, is thrilled to announce that users can now purchase Bitcoin (BTC) and STX, the native token of the Stacks blockchain, directly in the app. This is…

Why Bitcoin Layers Are Important to Bitcoin Economy Growth — www.youtube.com

Listen to the full stacker chats on your favourite podcast channel: https://podcasts.bcast.fm/e/r8kw5my8-how-trust-machines-is-bringing-in-more-builders-to-t...

Why Investors Are Looking to Bitcoin DeFi — www.xverse.app

A trillion dollars of native Bitcoin capital is waiting to be made into a productive asset. DeFi opens the door to a fast, free, fair and borderless financial system, removing associated risks, costs and barriers of traditional banking.‍

Defending the Freedom of Bitcoin Open Source Development — www.hiro.so

Why Hiro is donating to the OpenSats Legal Defense Fund.

CoinList Now Supports STX and Stacking — stacks.org

Today, we are excited to share that CoinList, one of the leading platforms for new crypto offerings, has added support for Stacking following its listing of STX earlier this year.

Peer-to-Peer: A Community Collection for Gender Equity - Gamma.io Blog — blog.gamma.io

Equity, noun: the situation in which everyone is treated fairly according to their needs and no group of people is given special treatment. What is the whole point, the long term […]

📅Events: Recaps & Upcoming

"The #BuildingOnBTC party rocked🔥

“The #BuildingOnBTC party rocked🔥 with extra vibes at the #Xverse DJ booth/bar 😁🎶 and a swanky @trygamma #BitcoinNFT gallery. Great to see the community!

@hirosystems #Bitcoin @stacks @trustmachines”

In a recent workshop, Hiro’s Developer Advocate Max Efremov broke down the differences between two popular smart contract programming languages—Clarity (of the Stacks and Bitcoin ecosystem) and Solidity (Ethereum and EVM-compatible blockchains)—so you can make an informed decision on which language is right for your application.

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Coming Up:

Bitcoin 2022 in Amsterdam — b.tc

The team behind Bitcoin Magazine and Bitcoin 2022 are going global in Amsterdam October 12-14.

Builders Event at Soho House

Eventbrite - Stacks Foundation presents ZEST, FLOW TRADERS, MAVEN 11 & STACKS brings you Bitcoin Unleashed - Friday, October 14, 2022 | Saturday, October 15, 2022 at Soho House Amsterdam, Amsterdam, NH. Find event and ticket information.

Disclaimer: The information shared in this email is strictly for informational purposes. You should not take its content, opinions, and/or descriptions provided as technical advice, legal advice, financial advice, or investment advice. See full disclaimer at stacks.org/terms.

There’s so much going on in the world of Stacks that we couldn’t wait for the next quarterly update. Below you'll find stories from August covering things like:

• An updated look at Stacks 2.1

• Subnets and a developer survey from Hiro

• Builder spotlights 

• An update from the world of NFTs

• Upcoming events

• And much more

The Stacks community is full of inspiring projects and ideas so we hope this update pumps you up as much as it did us. Please feel free to share any links we might have missed by replying to this email and definitely keep your eye on stacks.co/blog for posts like the ones below coming to you in real-time.

To Unleashing Bitcoin,

The Stacks Foundation team

Quick Hits

Help Us Improve Hiro Products — www.hiro.so

Take a short survey to tell us about your experience developing on Stacks. In return, we’ll send you some special swag as a thank you.

SIP 016: Ratified! 🎉

Thanks to Friedger Müffke and Dan Trevino, the Stacks ecosystem will benefit from smoother flow and improved standards for metadata.

These SIP Authors are long-term loyal community members who also helped to create the NFT standard (SIP-009) and many other standards. You can follow their work on Github here:

• Friedger - https://github.com/friedger

• Dan - https://github.com/dantrevino

Click here to read the full text of Schema Definition for Metadata for Digital Assets.

⚡Hiro x Coinbase ⚡

Funding your Hiro wallet just got easier thanks to Hiro's latest integration with Coinbase Pay!

Here’s a quick overview for how to get $STX in your wallet faster than you can say “web3 on #bitcoin."

1. Select “Buy” from the Hiro Wallet home screen and then “Coinbase.” Please note, this integration is currently limited to purchases in the United States. International support is coming soon.

2. Enter the amount of $STX to purchase and your payment details.

3. Once purchased, the STX will arrive directly in your Hiro Wallet account for usage with the Stacks app of your choice, such as buying an #NFT or investing in a #DeFi protocol.

Learn more here.

3 Examples of Web3 Contracts at Work in Building Apps for Bitcoin — www.hiro.so

Meet 3 different projects building on Bitcoin.

10 Tips to Keep Your Crypto Safe — medium.com

Bitcoin was invented with inherent security qualities to provide financial freedom to individuals. The blockchain’s principles of cryptography, decentralization and consensus provide trustless transactions and a financial system that’s almost impossible to hack. 

Orbit Bridge Calling for Stacks Validators — stacks.org

Ahead of the Orbit bridge launch following the Stacks 2.1 upgrade later this year, the time has come to onboard Validators to help process and record transactions generated by the Stacks chain.

🏗 Stacks Builder Spotlights

This month we wanted to celebrate our Builders! From grantees to residents to super Stacks fan, we interviewed a handful of builders to learn more about their contributions to the Stacks ecosystem.

We'll be hosting a Twitter Spaces with each of the spotlighted builders at the beginning of September to open up the conversation to the Stacks community so keep an eye out!

Know a builder that you want spotlighted? Reach out to press@stacks.org for consideration and tell us a little bit about what they are building and why it's amazing!

Q&A with Stacks Web3 Startup Lab Founder, Albert Liang — stacks.org

Albert Liang is the Founder of the Stacks Web3 Startup Lab, a venture that includes a 2-month “bootcamp-style” pre-accelerator for Web3 startups. In our discussion below, we talk about Albert’s vision for the pre-accelerator program, hear about his observations coming off of the first cohort’s 9-week immersion (and upcoming Demo Day), starting a company as a Web3 founder versus a Web2 founder, and more.

Builder Spotlight: DLC.Link — stacks.org

In our discussion with Aki, we learn more about how Discreet Log Contracts work and why they’re so important in bringing crypto into the mainstream, how he and his team got started working on this project, their vision, what they’ve learned, and what’s coming up next.

Builder Spotlight: NeoSwap — stacks.org

John Ennis is a PhD Mathematician, former founder of an AI services company, and current founder/CEO of NeoSwap. In the below discussion with John, we learn about his vision for NeoSwap, an NFT liquidity platform that hosts "parties" enabling NFT trades and sales.

Builder Spotlight: Boom — stacks.org

Dan Trevino is the Founder of Boom, a Stacks Residents Program project that became the first NFT platform on Stacks. In our discussion with Dan, we learn more about what inspired him to create Boom, what's coming soon for their team, and his journey as a leader and builder in the Stacks ecosystem.

Builder Spotlight: StackerDAO Labs — stacks.org

Orlando Cosme is the Founder of StackerDAO Labs and part of the 2nd Stacks Accelerator Cohort. StackerDAO Labs is a one-stop shop to create and manages DAOs secured by Bitcoin. In the below conversation, we learn more about his vision for the project, his experience in the Accelerator, and what's next for StackerDAO Labs.

Builder Spotlight: Trajan — stacks.org

Ragnar Lifthrasir is the Founder of Trajan, a professional community for Web3. When Ragnar was increasingly frustrated with professional sites like LinkedIn and Glassdoor, he started brainstorming how professional representation could be different on Web3. In our conversation below, we talk about the vision and philosophy behind Trajan, the different problems that the project aims to solve, and the future of social capital and identity.

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Clarity Universe Camp III Hackathon

Clarity Universe just wrapped up its third cohort and several students put their newfound knowledge to the test in the third Clarity Universe hackathon. It is amazing to see just exactly how far everyone has come along, with some having had their first introduction to smart contracts during the camp. We are pleased to announce the winning projects and invite you to check them out:

#1 Helping Hands | Devpost — devpost.com

Helping Hands is a project which allows users to ask for donations by giving proper description to prove that they are really in need. People can view the list of all the people in need, read their descriptions, upvote or downvote them with a sound comment that why or why not should here be money donated.

#2 Paydii | Devpost — devpost.com

Paydii created a set of smart contracts designed to facilitate decentralized buying and selling of digital goods. With some more building and refinement, Paydii has the potential to become a pioneer in the world of decentralized digital marketplaces.

#3 Stacks Guild | Devpost — devpost.com

Stacks Guild is a platform designed to reduce financial barriers to entry. Guilds buy assets and then loan those assets to incoming players in exchange for a percentage of the new players' "earnings"'.

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Clarity Camp IRL

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Stacks Must Reads: Subnets + 2.1 Upgrade

It’s Official: Hyperchains Are Now Named Subnets — www.hiro.so

Faster transactions coming to a subnet near you.

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Stacks 2.1: Strengthening The Connection to Bitcoin — stacks.org

We see the incredible potential of Bitcoin and are committed to building the best tools to make it more useful. Stacks is the top Web3 project on Bitcoin today, and this is just the beginning. We’re excited to introduce the latest tools and upgrades coming to the network in the Stacks 2.1 upgrade — updates that will strengthen the Stacks connection to Bitcoin.

Beyond Stacks 2.1: What Are The Next Big Moves For Stacks? — stacks.org

We're working to raise the data the Stacks Ecosystem needs to prioritize upgrades and features in the near future.

Meet the 1st Stacks Web3 Startup Lab Pre-Accelerator Cohort — stacks.org

The Stacks Web3 Startup Lab is a venture that includes a 2-month “bootcamp-style” pre-accelerator for Web3 startups. On Sunday, July 31st, 9 teams finally presented their learnings and work at the pre-accelerator's Demo Day. Meet the 9 teams below and learn a bit about each of their projects.

ALEX2 Orderbook: Testnet Guide — medium.com

The ALEX Lab Foundation is launching the Orderbook Testnet imminantly. Our goal is always to build together. With your test and feedback, we will create a better protocol.

Purchase Bitcoin Directly in Xverse Wallet — medium.com

Xverse, the most advanced web3 Bitcoin wallet, is thrilled to announce that users can now purchase Bitcoin (BTC) and STX, the native token of the Stacks blockchain, directly in the app.

Defending the Freedom of Bitcoin Open Source Development

In three weeks, pseudonymous Bitcoiner hodlonaut will take the stand in Oslo, Norway to defend his allegations that Australian computer scientist Craig Wright is not Satoshi. You can read a full timeline of the situation here. Although you might not expect it, this case directly impacts Bitcoin open source development.

hiro blog

What's New In NFTs?

Gamma.io Proof of Work Celebration — blog.gamma.io

Gamma was inspired to host a fun community-wide event—everyone is invited: Proof of Work Celebration! Let’s celebrate and educate community members on the value of proof of work.

Bitcoin NFTs: Yes, they exist! — medium.com

Twitter has been roasting Mojang’s NFT ban on Minecraft. The announcement shocked the blockchain community: partly for the ban itself, but perhaps moreso for defining NFTs as ‘often purchased with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.’ 

What is IPFS and How Does it Work? — blog.gamma.io

IPFS stands for the InterPlanetary File System (believe it or not). In their own words it is: A peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol designed to preserve and grow humanity’s knowledge by making the web upgradeable, resilient, and more open.

Arkadroids NFT Distribution — arkadikofinance.medium.com

Arkadiko is excited to announce the next phase of the Arkadroids project! This blog post will shed some more light on what the Arkadroids are and how you can get hold of one!

A Look Inside Gamma’s Create Portal and How It Empowers NFT Creators — www.hiro.so

Gamma’s Co-Founder walks through the code of the Create Portal.

Upcoming Community Sessions and Events

Join Us for Mainnet at the BUILDING ON BTC Party, September 22 at 7:00 PM — www.eventbrite.com

All of us at Stacks and Hiro are excited to be celebrating how far crypto has come since the last bear market! Despite the current price volatility, the future looks bright for us builders and we can't wait to connect with you at one of NYC's best spaces, Lavan 541. We'll have DJ Marc Wolf, arcade games, a claw machine, an NFT gallery projection room with Gamma, and lots of fun swag!

Use code: STACKER for 50% off.

Register for Bitcoin Unleashed: Builder's Edition October 7 — bitcoinunleashed.org

Bitcoin Unleashed: Builders Edition is a premier virtual event bringing together founders and developers for all things building on Bitcoin.

You’ll learn from industry luminaries, build alongside the best developers in the space, and connect with fellow Bitcoiners from across the globe. The event will be followed by a hackathon hosted in conjunction with Gitcoin and Stacks entities.

Virtual Event Recaps

More Bitcoin Building News

Built With Bitcoin Foundation Constructs A School In Kenya And Showcases Bitcoin As A Force For Good — www.forbes.com

The school was built in collaboration with Paxful and Zamzam, a humanitarian organization dedicated to eradicating poverty by providing clean, sustainable water and access to quality education to villages around the world.

Move Over, Ethereum – Bitcoin’s Lightning Network Has Apps, Too — www.coindesk.com

Bitcoin’s dominant scaling system continues to grow despite a formidable bear market.

The Off-Chain Bitcoin Bull Market — bitcoinmagazine.com

The bitcoin price may be down from its all-time highs, but off-chain uses for bitcoin assets are in their own bull market.

Early Days Of The Internet Similar To Bitcoin — bitcoinmagazine.com

Understanding how the internet protocol was built using layers can help paint a picture of the Bitcoin network and how it can develop in a similar fashion.

Hey there, here’s your sign to stop doom scrolling. Like, now. We know it’s chaotic (to put it mildly) in the world of crypto, but we think you’ve had enough of that. This newsletter is your oasis in the crypto desert, the cozy ski lodge of your crypto winter.

As usual, we’ve captured highlights from the last quarter of building on Bitcoin. Before we jump into that, though, consider this report from The Block as further framing of the immense opportunity in front of projects focused on Bitcoin. The report, commissioned by Trust Machines, covers why Bitcoin is a stable foundation, offers a comparison of various Bitcoin layers, and outlines potential challenges and catalysts for further adoption.

In our opinion, it highlights what many in the Stacks, Lightning, and other Bitcoin-based projects have been saying all along; that Bitcoin is the foundation you want to be building on.

"You're going to want to build your buildings on a solid footing of granite, so bitcoin is made to last forever — high integrity, very durable." Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy

And it’s not just a one-way relationship. Layers around Bitcoin are positive for Bitcoin itself, as highlighted in the report; “Bitcoin-based protocols, which increase the networks scalability and utility, are poised to expand its use cases, broaden its user base, and create a larger ecosystem that would generate more aggregate transaction fees - a positive for the network’s economic sustainability.”

If you’re new here and are interested in how you can get started building on Bitcoin, the Stacks community is happy to be your guide. Join us on your favorite channel, come to an event, check out this developer guide, read about the tradeoffs of different Bitcoin layers, see what’s next for the network, or just hop in Discord and say hello!

Mitchell Cuevas and the Stacks Foundation Team

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🏗️ Building on Bitcoin

🚀 Bitcoin DeFi

📈 Stacks Stats

🙌 Stacks Ventures Demo Days

🦄 NFTs secured by Bitcoin

🛣️ Stacks Roadmap

🥳 Events, Conferences, & Parties

➕ Much more

🏗️ Building on Bitcoin

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Bitcoin’s bid to become the ‘one chain to rule them all’ – TechCrunch — techcrunch.com

VCs are pouring millions of dollars into startups expanding the Bitcoin ecosystem through dApps.

🙌 Bitcoin + New Talent

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Trust Machines Hires Former Coinbase, BNY Mellon Execs - Blockworks — blockworks.co

A former Coinbase COO and senior attorney at the FTC have made the jump to Trust Machines, a bitcoin-focused developer

Hiro Welcomes Tech Startup Veteran Julia Austin to Board of Directors

Hiro, the go-to developer tools company for builders of the Bitcoin economy, announced the appointment of Julia Austin to their Board of Directors.

⚡Lightning and RSK

Announcing lnd 0.15 beta: To Taproot and Beyond! | Lightning Labs

Headlined by Taproot support, the Lightning team announced lnd 0.15 beta, their first release of 2022! You can find more detail in the full release notes.

Announcing Taro: A New Protocol for Multi-Asset Bitcoin and Lightning | Lightning Labs

Today we’re excited to announce Taro, a new Taproot-powered protocol for issuing assets on the bitcoin blockchain that can be transferred over the…

Bitcoin 2030: The Long Term View | RSK

In this article, the team at RSK takes a long-term view of Bitcoin. What does Bitcoin look like in the year 2030? Will it continue to be the world’s leading and most reliable crypto asset? Will more nation-states adopt Bitcoin as legal tender?

🚀 Bitcoin DeFi

Bitcoin Does Not Need DeFi, But DeFi Needs Bitcoin - Bitcoin Magazine — bitcoinmagazine.com

Bitcoin is the most secure network in human history. Without the security and immutability unique to Bitcoin, DeFi will never achieve mass adoption.

Bitcoin DeFi 101: The Essentials of DeFi in the Bitcoin Ecosystem — www.hiro.so

From stablecoins to yield farming, learn about the basics of DeFi.

📈 Stacks Stats

Community Leader Louise Nakamoto gave us a rundown on the Stacks State of the Network. Check out the full tweet thread here.

• STX Addresses 417K to 444,490

• Smart Contracts 3,235 to 5,127

• TVL 478M STX to 524M

• BTC Rewards 1127 BTC to 1770 BTC

• Entities 45 to 72

• Trading Pairs 38 to 49

• Transactions crossed 1.5M from 1M

• Three new SIPs got approved: SIP 016 Metadata for Tokens , SIP 018 Arbitrary messages, SIP 019 Notifications for Token Metadata Updates

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Discover Apps — www.stacks.co

Try decentralized apps built on Stacks, secured by Bitcoin. There are apps for finance, collectibles, blogging and many more.

🙌 Stacks Ventures Demo Days

Meet the Startups From Stacks Ventures’ Cohort 2

Stacks Ventures hosted a Demo Day introducing 24 new startups building on Bitcoin to the world. If you missed it, check out the recordings below to learn more about the new DeFi, NFT, DAO, and CityCoin use cases emerging on Stacks.

Cohort 2 - Stacks Ventures Demo Days — www.youtube.com

Meet the teams that are building real companies powered by Bitcoin. From DAOs, to DeFi, to gaming, and much more, this class is poised to help Bitcoin become a mainstay as a foundational layer for leading companies.

CityCoins expanding services via 12 new accelerated projects — cointelegraph.com

The Stacks Ventures startup accelerator for the Stacks Bitcoin layer-2 solution is working with 12 startups that wish to add functionality to the CityCoins platform.

ALEX Introduces “Co-Farming"

We are introducing “Co-Farming with ALEX” exclusively for the STX/ALEX LP tokens that will be unlocking during cycle #32 and beyond. Co-Farming rewards our most loyal community members that have been…

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🦄 NFTs secured by Bitcoin

The Mintery Opens Applications — mintery.co

Applications for Cohort 2 of the Mintery are open until July 31st. If you're thinking about creating an NFT, it's a can't miss.

Mintery: Meet the Artists — stacks.org

The Mintery helps artists thrive with Bitcoin-powered NFTs; meet the artists from the inaugural class, they've taken the Stacks community by storm.

The Artists Behind the Projects – Gamma.io — blog.gamma.io

The NFT collections we know, love, and collect all have an amazing artist at their heart. This collection celebrates "The Artists Behind the Projects".

Introducing The MultiPass | HeyLayer — blog.heylayer.com

MultiPass NFT Passport is an App for NFT unlockable content. Multipass provides utility to NFTs. Powered by HeyLayer.

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🎥 Crash Punks Announces its Animated Series

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🛣️ Stacks Tech and Ecosystem Initiatives

Introducing the Stacks Roadmap — www.stacks.org

Audience and stakeholders of all different types need to know where the network is headed, so we set out to create one place where ‘roadmap’-related content can be collected and displayed. At a glance, you should be able to tell what major improvements are coming up as well as get a sense for smaller tooling, team, or other more specific updates.

An Update on Hyperchains: a Scaling Solution for Stacks — www.hiro.so

Hyperchains come with the promise of high throughput, low latency workloads, so you can build fast and reliable experiences for your users TL;DR: We are live on Testnet and on target to launch our first NFT use case on Testnet in July 2022!

Announcing micro-stacks v1.0.0 – micro-stacks.dev — micro-stacks.dev

With the release of micro-stacks v1 comes many new improvements and framework libraries for React, Vue, Svelte, and Solidjs.

Scaling Stacks Grants and Stacks Foundation Programming — stacks.org

In a bear market, the Stacks Ecosystem is thriving while Stacks Foundation programming expands.

EmpireDAO Opens Doors to Stacks Community — stacks.org

Stacks community members now have access to the flagship EmpireDAO location in NYC as an in-person resource. EmpireDAO serves as a co-working space but will also offer unique amenities like a recording studio, making it a welcoming space for artists and creators as well.

Stacks Foundation Resident's Program Q1 Update — stacks.org

Our first cohort of residents is focused on key areas of the ecosystem, including governance, DAOs, token community management, NFTs, and Stacking. Below is an update from each resident and their respective projects.

Clarity Brand Update: Powerful, Decidable, Predictable, and now Beautiful too — stacks.org

Today, thanks to the Stacks community, it gets an updated look and feel that better reflects the importance of the language and will serve it well as adoption continues to grow.

Preview Ledger Support in the Hiro Wallet, Web Extension — www.hiro.so

Help us test a preview build of the Hiro Wallet extension that supports Ledger devices.

New Listings & Integrations

MoonPay x Stacks — stacks.org

MoonPay, the leading fiat onramp for crypto is now supporting Stacks.

Unbanked Announces Support for Stacks' STX Token - Crypto Briefing — cryptobriefing.com

At Miami's Stacks Summit today, Unbanked announced its integration with the Stacks blockchain, a Bitcoin smart contracts platform.

STX Integrates with Major eCommerce Platform Shopping.io — stacks.org

STX holders can now use STX tokens on the world’s largest eCommerce sites, including Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and Home Depot.

Blockchain.com Adds Wallet Support for STX, Allowing Holders to Buy, Sell, and Earn — stacks.org

Today, we’re excited to announce that Blockchain.com, the world’s most popular crypto wallet, has added Wallet support for STX. With STX support already available on Blockchain.com’s Exchange, users will be able to toggle between the Wallet and Exchange to buy, sell, and earn STX rewards.

STX is now live on Liquid’s JPY and USDT Market — stacks.org

STX is now available for withdrawal and deposit on the Liquid exchange, and trading will officially go live on Wednesday, April 28 at 3:00 PM JST.

KYVE Adds Supports for the Stacks, Enabling Access to Decentralized On-Chain Data — stacks.org

With Stacks supported, developers can access raw data from a wide variety of KYVE-supported blockchains via an API to build out more diverse applications.

First-ever Stacks (STX) decentralized Perpetual Futures is live! — stacks.org

Decentralized Perpetual contracts and expiry futures markets have arrived in the Stacks network.

🥳 Events, Conferences, & Parties

Stacks Community Events: June Recap — stacks.org

At the Stacks Foundation, June has been a whirlwind of exciting conferences, hackathons, workshops and meetups. Check out what we’ve been up to and find out how you can join us at future events.

Share this with a developer ❤️

Build a DEX on Stacks — www.pointer.gg

We’re partnering with our friends at Stacks to bring you this tutorial on building a decentralized exchange on Stacks. We’re going to learn about Stacks, Clarity, and DeFi, and build something awesome!

Where Should You Develop Your Blockchain App? — www.hiro.so

As a blockchain developer, one of the most important decisions you’ll make is which ecosystem to build in.

—

Disclaimer: The information shared in this email is strictly for informational purposes. You should not take its content, opinions, and/or descriptions provided as technical advice, legal advice, financial advice, or investment advice. See full disclaimer at stacks.org/terms.

Growing up, all I wanted to do was tell stories of people doing things that pushed the boundaries of what was considered conventional. In the crypto world, there is no shortage of these kinds of stories. Within the Stacks ecosystem, we have so many builders blazing their own trails in order to build a better internet (no easy feat).

From Satoshibles building the first NFT bridge between Ethereum and Bitcoin, to the birth of the Bitcoin Odyssey Fund with Okcoin, we have seen what is possible when builders have the right resources at their disposal.

This past quarter, we also celebrated International Women's Day and saw female founders establish new use cases for IVF, bring on star talent to support their projects, and host virtual NFT gallery openings.

In this newsletter, you'll get a recap of some of the major happenings in the Stacks ecosystem. As the Stacks blockchain turned 1 year old this year, it is amazing to see how far teams have come in such little time.

Always be building,

Caitlin Eckvahl and the Stacks Foundation Team

(You may have received this email twice, Revue changed some email settings that resulted in most going to spam, so we've resent it. Apologies for any inconveniences, please enjoy this edition!)

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Below you'll find highlighted news and highlights from the first quarter of 2022 sorted by theme.

📈 State of the Network

🌉 Building Bridges

👩‍💼 Ladies of Bitcoin

💰 Bitcoin Odyssey

🚀 Bitcoin DeFi

🦄 Bitcoin NFT Report

➕ Much more

✨ New to Stacks or want to share it with a friend? — www.youtube.com

Check out this video to learn what Stacks is all about in just a minute!

📈 State of the Network

• Stacks was named the #1 Web 3 Project on Bitcoin

• Stacks crossed 400K wallet addresses

• The network passed 1 million STX transactions

• 200K+ NFTs minted on STX

• Over $300m in new capital entered the ecosystem for Bitcoin builders

🌉 Building Bridges

A deeply-connected Stacks ecosystem starts with building bridges between other chains and in Q1, two teams worked to connect Stacks with more than 20 new chains including Ethereum, Solana, Near, and Celo.

Allbridge to become the first token bridge for the Stacks token — cointelegraph.com

Allbridge token bridge and Bitcoin software developer Daemon Technologies have partnered to provide the Stacks ecosystem with its first on-chain token bridge for the native Stacks (STX) token.

Satoshibles Is First NFT Collection to Bridge Between Ethereum and Bitcoin via Stacks - Bringing Satoshi Home — decrypt.co

The Bitcoin-inspired Satoshibles NFT project began on Ethereum. Now, it's finding new life on Stacks thanks to a cross-chain bridge.

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Orbit Chain Integrates Stacks To Welcome Bitcoin To The Growing $80B DeFi Economy — stacks.org

The Orbit Chain team will integrate the Stacks blockchain and turn their attention to creating bridges between Stacks’ Bitcoin-connected blockchain and Orbit Chain’s growing ecosystem of public blockchains.

👩‍💼 Ladies of Bitcoin

Who run the world? 🌎 In Q1, we celebrated International Women's Day with HeyLayer's metaverse gallery and recognized many of the women who make up the Stacks ecosystem, along with some new artists minting their first works on Stacks. Female founders across the ecosystem made celebrated their achievements in the world of fashion, healthcare, and entertainment, making the Stacks ecosystem a more vibrant and inclusive environment.

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HeyLayer Hosts Women’s Day in the Metaverse, Benefitting Ukraine

The “HerNFT” event featured the work of more than 30 female NFT artists, including Goldy Succi, Mother Pop, Kaylee Hawley and others. Their work on the Stacks blockchain will be on display in a virtual gallery curated specifically for this event, which started on Tuesday.

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Bitcoin-based tracking platform Eggschain partners with Boston IVF — cointelegraph.com

Healthcare data supply chain platform Eggschain and Boston IVF fertility clinic have started a partnership where Eggschain will use the Bitcoin blockchain to help secure and scale the data storage capabilities of Boston IVF.

Lindsay Lohan offering ‘experiential NFTs’ on Superfandom — cointelegraph.com

Hollywood star and singer Lindsay Lohan has signed on to the Superfandom experiential NFT platform, to help attract more artists and entertainment figures.

💰 Bitcoin Odyssey: Fueling Bitcoin Builders

One of the biggest developments to occur this quarter was the birth of the Bitcoin Odyssey, a $165M pledge led by Okcoin, the Stacks Foundation, and Stacks Ventures designed to accelerate developers and teams building on Bitcoin. The pledge brings together the top names in crypto venture capital, including more than 15 participating partners such as Digital Currency Group, Blockdream Ventures, White Star Capital, and more.

Okcoin, Stacks Launch $165M Pledge to Support Bitcoin-Related Projects — www.coindesk.com

The Bitcoin Odyssey is a year-long pledge taken by VC firms to deploy money into solutions that accelerate the adoption of bitcoin.

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Muneeb Ali’s Trust Machines Raises $150M — www.coindesk.com

Also in the way of fueling builing on Bitcoin, Stacks Co-founder Muneeb Ali's Trust Machines raised $150M to 'build the largest ecosystem of Bitcoin applications and the underlying technologies.' Participating investors include Breyer Capital, Digital Currency Group, GoldenTree, Hivemind and Union Square Ventures.

🚀 Bitcoin DeFi

ALEX Launches Mainnet on Stacks

Full Service Bitcoin DeFi Platform, ALEX Launches Mainnet on Stacks — finance.yahoo.com

ALEX users will be able to use ALEX’s platform to lend a variety of crypto tokens, borrow at a fixed rate without risk of liquidation, deposit tokens to earn interest, and engage in yield farming.

Introducing Lydian DAO

Lydian is a community-driven DAO that features DeFi 2.0 mechanics at its core and resides on the Stacks Blockchain. Lydian is a yield-farming DAO and decentralized treasury management protocol which uses USDA to manage its treasury.

Stackswap Introduces Bitcoin-pegged token

Introducing LBTC, a BTC-pegged token, based on STSW or STX as collateral. The LBTC Vault feature will now be open for users. LBTC is a BTC-pegged token issued with the Stackswap token (STSW) or…

🦄 Bitcoin NFT Report

Meet the Mintery

In February, applications for the inaugural Mintery program went up, and by Bitcoin Unleashed in Miami in April, creators were sharing their progress and teasing upcoming collections. This 'NFT Accelerator' was run by the Stacks Foundation to help artists make the jump into the world of Web 3. Click through if you're interested in joining a cohort!

Megapont announces $MEGA — medium.com

We are always very excited when DeFi and NFTs come together. This past quarter, Megapont announced in its newsletter that the MEGA token is coming to Stacks via ALEX to create the MEGA utility token. ALEX will assist in ensuring that the MEGA tokenomics are sensible and that the token is using audited, secure smart contracts.

Satoshibles x Built with Bitcoin — www.builtwithbitcoin.org

Satoshibles announced its charitable campaign with Built With Bitcoin Foundation to raise funds for the foundation’s on-going efforts to build schools and communities around the world.

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Bitcoin Monkeys announced $BANANA Staking

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New NFT Projects Come to Stacks

Welcome Tiger Force 🐯 and Punks Army 💪! Both teams recently migrated from Solana over to Stacks, making for a more vibrant NFT community for the Bitcoin ecosystem.

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STXNFT Releases New Features

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Stacks Infrastructure and Ecosystem Initiatives

Should The Grants Program Become a DAO? — stacks.org

We're exploring the next evolution of the Stacks Foundation Grants Program, starting with how it might be well-suited for a DAO.

Introducing the Grants Ambassador Program — stacks.org

The Stacks Foundation Grants Program is looking for several community leaders to help drive the grants process. Ambassadors will function as part mentor, part project manager, part consultant, and part visionary.

Celebrating Stacks Chapters Across the World — stacks.org

Since the launch one year ago, seven chapters have launched across the globe in countries including Korea, Turkey, China, Pakistan, Japan, Russia, and India.

Developer Resources: So, you need a Clarity smart contract audit... — stacks.org

Learn about where you can find Clarity smart contract auditing resources.

Introducing the Stacks Talent Portal by HireVibes

The #1 Web 3.0 project on Bitcoin has a nearly unquenchable thirst for new talent, this new portal will help builders bolster their teams. All new job posts within the Stacks Ecosystem are currently free as they are being sponsored by the Stacks Foundation for ~6 months.

Immunefi Implements Bug Bounty Program for the Stacks Blockchain

Immunefi, the leading bug bounty and security services platform for DeFi projects and decentralized networks, has opened its bug bounty program on Stacks. Up to $1,000,000 per bounty can be earned for eligible bugs.

New Listings & Integrations

STX Now on Coinbase, CoinList, and Binance 🥳

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Stacking is Live on Binance: Bitcoin Yield on the World's Largest Exchange — stacks.org

Stacking is now available on Binance, the largest exchange in the world in terms of the daily trading volume of cryptocurrencies. Binance users can opt-in for Stacking via Binance Stacking to earn BTC rewards directly in their wallets.

MoonPay x Stacks — stacks.org

MoonPay, the leading fiat onramp for crypto is now supporting Stacks. With over 5M customers, MoonPay, with its widgets and APIs, as well as its newer NFT Checkout, is making Web 3.0 more accessible.

Unbanked Announces Support for Stacks' STX Token — cryptobriefing.com

At Stacks' Bitcoin Unleashed, Unbanked announced its integration with the Stacks blockchain which will enable users to spend STX tokens with debit cards in approximately 60 countries.

Stacking is Now Available In The Flexible, Secure D’CENT Wallet

Popular Korea-based D’CENT wallet, which features robust mobile apps, as well as biometric and hardware support, has rolled out support for Stacking.

Creditcoin To Bring Stacking to 2 Million Users in Africa

By integrating Stacks with Creditcoin, a whole new pool of users in Africa will be able to leverage Bitcoin DeFi, giving them direct exposure to Stacking. Integration is expected to go live in Q3 2022.

Thanks for Coming to Bitcoin Unleashed 🌴☀️ 💜

To celebrate all that has been achieved within the first few months of the year, the global Stacks community gathered in Miami for Bitcoin Unleashed and Bitcoin 2022. Folks came in from all around the world and it was amazing to see the community IRL. Stay tuned for the next Stacks event!

Photo Gallery | Bitcoin Unleashed | April 5 - April 6, 2022 — bitcoinunleashed.org

Thank you for joining us, enjoy photos from the event.

Bitcoin 2022 kicks off in Miami, crypto prices plunge, and DeFi with bitcoin: CNBC Crypto World

CNBC's MacKenzie Sigalos breaks down how North America's largest bitcoin conference, Bitcoin 2022, has changed over the years. CNBC's Tanaya Macheel speaks with Brittany Laughlin, executive director at Stacks Open Internet Foundation, about building a DeFi network on top of bitcoin.

CoinMarketRecap: Live in Miami! What is Stacks? What are CityCoins? Bitcoin 2022 predictions. — soundcloud.com

CoinMarketCap was on the ground at Bitcoin Unleashed and gathered hot takes from the Stacks Foundation, CityCoins, Hiro, and Stacks Ventures.

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Disclaimer: The information shared in this email is strictly for informational purposes. You should not take its content, opinions, and/or descriptions provided as technical advice, legal advice, financial advice, or investment advice. See full disclaimer at stacks.org/terms.

Bitcoin Unleashed not only marked a major industry event but was a much-needed opportunity to reconnect with the Stacks community and build new relationships. For those that were able to make the trip to the notable (and beautifully decked out) Faena Forum in Miami, thank you. For all those that joined us virtually, thank you.

We saw 650+ of you in person and 6,000+ people virtually to hear from 85+ speakers on panels, workshops, and AMAs. We heard developers, Stacks NFT projects, Stacks Venture teams, researchers, top media outlets and leaders in the blockchain space share their cutting edge research and current thinking about the future of decentralized technology. You can find all of the Bitcoin Unleashed talks on the Stacks YouTube channel, an overview of key takeaways below, and a photo gallery here.

Thank you to our amazing sponsors who made sure we could organize the best event possible. A special thank you goes to our lead sponsors Hiro, CityCoins, and Xverse; please be sure to see some important information from them below.

We will be back with another Bitcoin Unleashed Summit this fall to showcase Bitcoin innovation, development, and adoption - stay tuned for the exact date. The Stacks Foundation also hosts and coordinates events across the ecosystem including local community events, weekly Twitter Spaces, AMA’s, webinars, and more. You can check out the full calendar here.

Here's to unleashing more Bitcoin!

Shannon Voight and the Stacks Foundation

❤️ Important Messages from our Sponsors

Developer Updates from Hiro, Straight to Your Inbox — www.hiro.so

Hiro builds developer tools for Stacks, so you can build applications for Bitcoin. We regularly create educational resources so that you can better use Hiro tools, including Clarinet, the go-to tool for local smart contract development, and the Stacks API, a powerful interface to interact with the Stacks blockchain. Some of our recent resources include:

• How to authenticate your users with Stacks.js

• How to debug smart contracts with Clarinet’s inline debugger

• How to use NFT endpoints in the Stacks API

Stay up to date with our product releases and educational resources by subscribing to our mailing list. To sweeten the deal, we’ll send you Hiro’s speaker decks from Bitcoin Unleashed too. 

🠒 Sign Me Up

XVerse: Your Gateway to Web3 on Bitcoin. — www.xverse.app

We hope you enjoyed the Xverse Wallet NFT gallery at Bitcoin Unleashed! We truly enjoyed seeing so many of you there. Try Xverse today and join our growing community on Discord and Twitter.

🠒 Download the app at xverse.app!

Miami Developer Camp with Miami Dade College — clarity-lang.org

The MiamiCoin community was honored to be part of hosting you all for Bitcoin Unleashed in our own backyard. If you know anyone that's interesting in learning to build on MiamiCoin, we're kicking off an exciting educational initiative for developers in partnership with Miami Dade College, Venture Miami, and the Stacks Foundation.

🠒 Build on the MiamiCoin network and unlock your city

⭐ New Stacks Vision Video

Intro to Stacks - Unleash Bitcoin's Potential — www.youtube.com

An Introduction to Stacks - share this video with anyone that's new to Stacks to give a great peek into what building on Bitcoin is all about.

📌 Key Takeaways from Bitcoin Unleashed

• $165M Pledge to Support Bitcoin - Introducing The Bitcoin Odyssey. The Bitcoin Odyssey is designed to propel Bitcoin builders into this future.

• Mitchell Cuevas, Head of Growth at the Stacks Foundation, had a fireside chat with Daniel Gouldman, Co-founder and CEO of Unbanked, where they discussed Unbanked’s support for Stacks' STX Token. More coverage here.

• CityCoins Community Lead Patrick Stanley presented a vision for CityCoins 2.0: Ideas collected from many community discussions to further decentralize the CityCoins protocol and achieve faster city activation and capital deployment.

• The Future of Stacks in 2022 with Muneeb Ali, Founder of Stacks and Co-founder and CEO of Trust Machines.

• New Stacks NFT projects presented as part of the Mintery led by Mitchell Cuevas and Ileana Malacrino.

• CEO and Director of Tucows, Elliot Noss sat down for a fireside chat with Alex Miller, CEO, Hiro to chat about the Difference between Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0

• Permissionless Philanthropy - Crypto has been thrust into the spotlight as a major technological actor in the war on Ukraine. This session started with an address by the Ukrainian Deputy Minister for Digital Transformation, Oleksandr Bornyakov, who has been pivotal to the country's crypto efforts.

• How Bitcoin Can Be Used as a Savings Technology with Meltem Demirors, Chief Strategy Officer of CoinShares, Muneeb Ali and MacKenzie Sigalos, Technology Reporter, CNBC.

• Social Money With Zuby & Aubrey Strobel - Aubrey (Author, Speaker, and Creator in the Bitcoin space, Formerly Head of Communications at Lolli) and rapper, author, podcaster and speaker Zuby sit down for a fireside chat about branding, Bitcoin and incentives for fans in the era of cryptocurrency.

2022 will go down as the year of 'Building on Bitcoin', but it's the work that's happened throughout 2021 that set the stage. Just one year ago, the Stacks mainnet launched and brought builders the tools to unleash over $1T in capital on the Bitcoin network.

It's wild to reflect and realize that so many important projects and programs we now consider staples didn't exist at this time last year. The Stacks Accelerator wasn't announced until April 2021 and now they're already closing in on the deadline for their second cohort!

There was no CityCoins, no Syvita Guild, no Stacks Residents, no agencies auditing Clarity, no institutional custody options, there was just one wallet, the first Stacks Chapter was just one month old in Pakistan, and projects we all know and love like Arkadiko, ALEX, Stackswap (and so many more! ❤️), were little more than ideas! And that's to say nothing of NFTs, new standards and tools, listings, integrations, and continued improvements driven by Stacks core developers. Wow.

As you return to what you're building, give yourself a moment to appreciate how far we've come and how fast it has happened. The day-to-day doesn't always feel monumental, but this community is doing something special. The fruits of our labor have only just begun to bloom!

To another year of unleashing Bitcoin,

Mitchell Cuevas and the Stacks Foundation Team

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We've lined up the best of Stacks 2021 sorted by theme below.

🎉 Stacks Anniversary

⛓️ Stacks Infrastructure

💸 Bitcoin DeFi

🦄 Bitcoin NFTs

🚀 Stacks Accelerator

🎟️ Events

You can also browse the archive for more detailed updates from previous bi-weekly editions published throughout the year.

🥳 Stacks Turns 1!

As Stacks Turns One, It Celebrates as the #1 Web3 Project on Bitcoin — cointelegraph.com

In just a single year, the Stacks community has made major progress in its mission to build a better internet on Bitcoin.

"The Stacks community has proven the incredible potential of smart contracts for Bitcoin, from DeFi to NFTs, CityCoins, to philanthropic efforts, portable identity to new infrastructure, all in a single year. The technology and resources are all here. What happens next is dictated by visionary builders."

- Brittany Laughlin

Take a trip back in time to one year ago.. 🎂

📈 By the Numbers

• STX Address Growth: 330,448 -> 391,995

• Active Addresses per day: 200+ -> 2,500+

• Smart Contracts Built: 23 -> 2,568

• Stacking TVL: 124m STX -> 461m STX

• Total Stacking BTC Rewards: 1127 BTC = $54.5M

• Entities: 7 -> 45+ companies

• Direct Contributors: 400+ Founders/Developers/Marketeers

• Community: 30K -> 100K+

• Trading Pairs: 34+

⛓️ Stacks Infrastructure

All the success builders have had this year naturally starts with the underlying infrastructure. This year, we all made strides toward building a better Stacks and the network is stronger, faster, and more secure for it.

Hiro Wallet Officially Available in Chrome and Firefox Stores — www.hiro.so

It all starts with the wallet! The Hiro web wallet was introduced to Chrome and Firefox in 2021 and allowed Stacks users to easily engage in the Bitcoin NFT and DeFi economy.

Popular Korean Wallet D'CENT Adds Stacks, Brings Biometric Hardware and iOS and Android Options — stacks.org

The Stacks Korea Chapter is pleased to share that popular South Korean wallet provider, D'CENT, has added support for Stacks (STX).

South Koreans Can Pay With Bitcoin and Stacks, Paycoin Integration

This integration means merchants who accommodate Paycoin will soon accept STX and bitcoin as methods of payment.

NFTs on Bitcoin: Satoshibles Announce Integration with Stacks Blockchain | by Satoshibles

Since day one of our launch, less than two months ago, we have been popular with users from the Bitcoin community. Some even stating that Satoshibles were the first NFT they purchased! Using Satoshi…

Orbit Chain Integrates Stacks To Welcome Bitcoin To The Growing $80B DeFi Economy — stacks.org

The Orbit Chain team will integrate the Stacks blockchain and turn their attention to creating bridges between Stacks’ Bitcoin-connected blockchain and Orbit Chain’s growing ecosystem of public blockchains.

Stacking Pools 🏊‍♂️

2021 brought the Stacks community several options for earning Bitcoin yield from the protocol in the form of Stacking pools. These pools have allowed thousands of Stackers to pool their STX together as a community and earn Bitcoin together.

Upgrades, New Tools, New Resources

Stacks 2.05 Upgrade Successful — stacks.org

To make sure the Stacks network can handle the growth, core developers and the community rallied to introduce Stacks 2.05, a Stacks release that provided the network an important increase in capacity.

Microblocks Reduce Transaction Processing Times to Seconds — www.hiro.so

The Stacks blockchain introduces microblocks, an update to provide users and applications with more timely feedback on the status and results of transactions.

Chainlink Update: Integration Ready For Developers On Stacks Testnet — stacks.org

An important update on the highly-anticipated integration of Chainlink on Stacks, plus other oracle updates from the ecosystem.

Messari Reviews Stacks — messari.io

Stacks addresses the two major difficulties of building on top of Bitcoin: scalability and smart contracts. Messari's report delves into the past, present, and future state of the ecosystem.

Smart Contracts For Bitcoin: Top Audit Agencies Embrace Clarity To Meet Demand Of Bitcoin Builders — stacks.org

Builders can now readily access smart contracts auditing services from top smart contract auditing firms in the industry, including NCC, Least Authority, and Coinfabrik.

250+ Developers Learn To Write Smart Contracts For Bitcoin in Q4 — stacks.org

Bitcoin smart contracts kicked off at the beginning of 2021 and near the end, we welcomed more than 250+ skilled smart contract developers via Clarity Universe, a 6-week immersive learning experience.

Grants & Stacks Chapters

This past year the Stacks Foundation turned up the heat and made some serious moves with the grants program. Grantees received over $400K USD and more than 300K STX. Chapter grants received over $270K USD and 186K STX.

Stacks Residents Provide The Ecosystem A New Layer of Expertise and Leadership — stacks.org

This year the Stacks Foundation helped welcome a new cohort of residents. Expanding on the success of the Stacks Grants Program, the Stacks Residence Program is intended to encourage more open-ended research, network experimentation, and innovative business incubation.

Impact of Stacks Chapters: Global Growth Led By Local Efforts — stacks.org

Last year, the Stacks Foundation introduced Stacks Chapters, localized programs around the world that help onboard more builders and developers to the Stacks network and increase awareness of Stacks.

LUMS and Stacks Pakistan Are Reshaping Pakistan’s Future Around Blockchain Technology

Stacks first started with academic roots. As part of this commitment, Hiro supported LUMS with a Stacks research grant of 5 million STX tokens that aims to fuel research on blockchain technology and distributed applications.

Xangle Awards Stacks Project 'Prime' Grade

Stacks Korea is excited to announce that Stacks has been rated ‘Prime (AA-)’ by Xangle, a key crypto-asset disclosure platform in the country. This rating indicates Stacks is an excellent blockchain project with great reliability and strong capabilities that can help it accomplish its goal of unleashing Bitcoin's full potential.

💸 Bitcoin DeFi

DeFi and Bitcoin. Who would have thought that the two would link up in 2021? Bitcoin DeFi has been one of the greatest things to grace the Stacks ecosystem this year. We saw new Stacking highs, increased institutional interest, and new DeFi creations emerge out of the Stacks Accelerator.

Stacks-Based Crypto Project ALEX Raises $5.8M to Build DeFi on Bitcoin — decrypt.co

ALEX is betting on the Stacks protocol to build its upcoming full-service DeFi project on the Bitcoin blockchain. The round was led by White Star Capital with participation from venture capital firms such as Cultur3, GBIC, and OK Blockchain Capital, among others.

Arkadiko: The Protocol Bringing DeFi To Bitcoin Through Self-Repaying Loans

By launching the decentralized USDA stablecoin, self-repaying negative interest rate loans, and other DeFi applications, Arkadiko is enhancing the STX token’s capital efficiency and serving as a foundational building block to unlock Bitcoin’s trillion-dollar value. Shortly after the launch, Arkadiko surpassed $60M in TVL and more than $7M USDA minted.

BitGo integrates Stacks, bringing Bitcoin DeFi to institutions — cointelegraph.com

Institutional exposure to digital assets is broadening, with more investors looking to generate yield on their Bitcoin holdings via Stacks.

Coinbase Custody and Coinbase Prime Integrate STX and Support for Stacking

Riding on the wave of institutional interest, Coinbase Custody listed STX and Coinbase Prime added support for Stacking, adding new features for institutions to leverage their holdings.

Stacking surpassed $1B!

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🦄 Bitcoin NFTs

It is hard to imagine that before 2021, there were no NFTs on Stacks. Today, there are hundreds of projects and a growing community of artists who have all created unique works all backed by Bitcoin.

Bitcoin NFTs Are Emerging on Stacks. Can They Thrive? — decrypt.co

The answer is yes! This piece captures some of the best NFT highlights from 2021 including the introduction to Boomboxes, the historic drop of Bitcoin Birds and Stacks Punks, and the migration of Satoshibles to Stacks.

Bitcoin Birds Helps Save Birds IRL

12 year old, Abraham Finlay started the Bitcoin Birds with his family and quickly sold out the 400 NFT collection within just a few days. The collection amassed more than $1M in NFT sales and the Finlay family has used a portion of the profits to rescue and rehabilitate local birds in Oregon.

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Megapont, Satoshibles, and Stacks Foundation's Louise Ivan Payawal Talk About the Bitcoin NFT Community

Megapont released its Robot factory and Megapont Fund — www.megapont.com

Apes are in fashion these days and now with Megaponts, you can dress your apes up as robots. Pick and choose from a collection of robo parts for your Megapont thanks to its newest Robot factory.

Layer Launches SatoSHE in the Metaverse Gallery Show

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CrashPunks Paid Homage to Stacks' Snow Crash Roots

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Santa Delivers AR NFTs for Christmas

Profile pic NFTs aren't the only kinds of NFTs out there! The Open Art Source team worked with Shaderverse to deliver AR versions of their Arties collection just in time for the holidays.

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Boombox introduces the first yielding NFTs on Stacks

The Boom team launched Boomboxes, a novel type of NFT that offers rewards via Stacking. Boomboxes are transferable and allow owners to redeem a percentage of Stacking rewards at any time. In just a quarter, they crossed over $1M Stacked all-time.

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🏙 CityCoins

In 2021, we saw CityCoins take over Miami and NYC, and Stackers helped raise $55 million+ for Miami and NYC via CityCoin mining.

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NYC Gets Own Cryptocurrency After Mayor-Elect Adams Touts Bitcoin — www.bloomberg.com

New York City Mayor-elect Eric Adams welcomes its first CityCoin following the success of Miami Coin.

🚀 Stacks Accelerator

The Stacks Accelerator program was announced in April 2021 with the promise of helping entrepreneurs jumpstart their Bitcoin-powered businesses. By the end of the year, 25 companies graduated from the first cohort and increased their valuations by an average of 4x. → More stats

Stacks Launches $4M Accelerator to Fund Tech Teams Building Apps on Bitcoin — www.coindesk.com

The first accelerator cohort kicked off with 25 companies, which was managed by Trevor Owens, the Stacks Accelerator Managing Partner. The first cohort created some of the first NFT, DeFi, and Web3 use cases for the growing Bitcoin economy on Stacks.

Risidio opens the Bitcoin NFT gates with Cara Delevingne, Fatboy Slim, Dave Stewarts, and Chemical X — decrypt.co

Risidio's debut marked the launch of the first Bitcoin NFT collection in existence, paving the way for many other NFTs to be launched on Stacks.

Tracking sperm on Bitcoin with Eggschain's Wei Escala — cointelegraph.com

Eggschain founder, Wei Escala made history with the launch of Eggschain by securing the first patent for tracking genetic material on the blockchain for the purposes of in vitro fertilization (IVF).

GoSats launches Bitcoin cashback rewards card in India — cointelegraph.com

Accelerator graduate, GoSats launched a program that allows users to earn cashback rewards paid in BTC when shopping at their favorite brands in India.

StackSwap Raises $1.3 Million in Funding Round to Build World First DEX Built on Bitcoin Network

PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC / ACCESSWIRE / November 5, 2021 / StackSwap, the first complete DEX and Launchpad on the Bitcoin Network has announced the completion of its private round. According to the official press release, the blockchain platform was able to raise $1.

Moonray PBC raises $3.5M for marketplace for NFT game items — venturebeat.com

The Moonray team is helping bring the first Bitcoin metaverse experience to Stacks! Animoca Brands led the round, with participation from other top angels and funds including GBV Capital, Metavest Capital, LD Capital, and Lucid Blue Ventures.

Stacks Accelerator Announces a Three-Month Program to Build the Future of Civic Engagement on CityCoins

The CityCoins Accelerator Track is an extension of Stacks Accelerator's mentorship-driven program awarding up to $50,000 investment to selected teams, who can additionally apply for up to $100,000+ in non-equity grants from the Stacks Foundation.

🎟 Event Highlights

Stacks and Miami really bonded this year. Members of the Stacks community gathered in Miami for DCentral Miami and Art Basel. We expect the Stacks community to have even more opportunities to connect IRL in 2022 💕.

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It is not Art Basel without the artists of course 🖼

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A note about these updates: The team and I greatly enjoy compiling these updates yet with each edition the attempts to be comprehensive become more futile. We've opted to simplify and highlight, but if we've left out something that's important to you, please do let us know.

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Disclaimer: The information shared in this email is strictly for informational purposes. You should not take its content, opinions, and/or descriptions provided as technical advice, legal advice, financial advice, or investment advice. See full disclaimer at stacks.org/terms.

A better internet on Bitcoin has long been the shared dream of the Stacks community. This quarter, though, saw its manifestations truly awaken.

As if you can't tell by the quote, I'm pretty excited for Dune. In some ways, Dune's spice is a good comparison for Bitcoin. Beyond its obvious use as a currency, it is a scarce resource that requires great effort to mine. Attempts to replace or replicate it are never satisfactory, it enables both thought and function not possible without it, and it is something still not yet fully understood, but which clearly influences the world around it in a major way.

And yes, it even enables space travel (way beyond the moon, too).

Herein lies the lesson from Dune: They embraced spice. They found ways to enhance and unleash it to serve everything from their health to their technology. This is what the Stacks community has been doing for Bitcoin since Stacks 2.0 launched.

In a little over 9 months, we've seen things done that have never been done on Bitcoin before. From NFTs that earn a BTC yield, to decentralized loans that repay themselves, Stacks and its builders have begun to unleash the full potential of Bitcoin.

Stackers, we're not just welcoming this evolution but driving it. Thank you for everything you've done and continue to do. For the rest of you, don't worry, we'll be here when you wake up.

Stay spicy,

Mitchell Cuevas and the Stacks Foundation Team

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Below you'll find highlighted news and content from the past quarter sorted by theme. Contains heavy doses of the following:

🚀 Bitcoin DeFi blooms as Bitcoin moons

💸 Stacking strides through $1 Billion TVL

🦄 Bitcoin NFTs arrive and thrive

🔥 STX is storming up social and market charts

⭐ Stacks Accelerator teams star for Stacks

➕ Much more

You can also browse the archive for more detailed updates from previous bi-weekly editions published throughout the quarter.

Join next week's Stacks Town Hall for a recap of Q3 + what to look forward to in Q4. We'll also be giving away special edition NFTs to a few town hall attendees. ➡ Register now

🚀 Bitcoin DeFi

Arkadiko Mainnet Launch

Meltem Demirors shared her excitement for the Arkadiko mainnet launch, which leverages the unique relationship between Stacks and Bitcoin to enable unique self-paying loans.

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Miami Coin Marches Toward $20M

Continued excitement and mining, along with the recent surge in Stacks price has the Miami wallet stuffed with funds ready for the city to put to good use.

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ALEX Testnet Welcomes over 1200 Testers

The ALEX team launched their testnet on Oct 10th and has since completed tests with nearly 600 people. ALEX’s core product is essentially a zero-coupon bond (in conventional finance) powered by Stacks. A key benefit of this product is reduced uncertainty about a loan’s interest rate, resulting in better financial planning.

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DeFi Puts Down Roots In The Bitcoin Network

Despite Ethereum being the blockchain of choice for smart-contract capabilities, there has been a push to bring decentralized finance to the Bitcoin network.

Brink and the Stacks Foundation Are Supporting Bitcoin Core Development With $BTC Yield — stacks.org

The sponsorship is the first of its kind, being paid directly with the bitcoin yield generated via Stacking on the Stacks blockchain.

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Earn BTC While Shopping With GoSats

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💸 Stacking strides through $1 Billion TVL

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🦄 Bitcoin NFTs

The Big Bitcoin NFT Edition — newsletter.stacks.org

NFTs on Bitcoin are exploding thanks to Stacks creators. Check out this edition dedicated to Bitcoin NFTs from throughout the Stacks ecosystem.

Bitcoin NFTs Are Emerging on Stacks. Can They Thrive? — decrypt.co

Hint: The answer is yes. NFTs are launching on Bitcoin. It’s being done through Stacks, which settles its transactions to the leading crypto’s blockchain. And, be sure not to miss your fellow Stacker, Alla from Layer, being quoted in Benzinga’s breakdown of NFTs this week.

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Stacks Punks — www.stackspunks.com

The popular “Punk” NFT craze has hit the Stacks community! Stacks Punks have amassed nearly $500,000 in transactions so far, with some Punks selling for upwards of 10,000 STX.

Rare Sense’s NFT platform Superfandom set to be “OpenSea for fan engagement” — finance.yahoo.com

Stacks Accelerator team Rare Sense’s NFT platform, Superfandom connects creators, celebrities, and influencers to their fans through NFTs. Superfandom enables creators to easily launch NFTs that allow exclusive experiences, such as social media collabs or in-person interactions.

Boom

The Boom team launched Boomboxes, a novel type of NFT that offers rewards via Stacking. Boomboxes are transferable and allow owners to redeem a percentage of Stacking rewards at any time. In just a quarter, they crossed over $1M Stacked all-time.

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⭐Stacks Accelerator Stars

Demo Day #1

Missed the first-ever Stacks Accelerator Demo Day? You’re in luck, both sessions are now available. These teams showed us what’s coming to Bitcoin soon and it’s an exciting glimpse into a future not far away. The impact of these teams will reverberate through the Stacks Ecosystem sooner rather than later.

💸 DeFi and Fintech → Watch Now

🌅 NFTs & Web 3.0 → Watch Now

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Eggschain

First Patent for Tracking Genetic Material via Blockchain

Eggschain, a healthcare technology company that combines genetics and blockchain to track genetic material, announced its pioneering, patented solution for tracking and tracing the storage and transfer of blood, genome, tissues, organs, DNA, RNA, sperm, eggs, embryos, and other biospecimens. Eggschain is proudly built on Stacks.

Blocksurvey

Combining the power of Stacks with AI, the Blocksurvey team continues to innovate on the world of privacy-first forms. GPT-3 surveys enable users to generate relevant survey questions fast.

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Sigle: Write To Earn BTC

The Sigle team will soon be launching a stacking monetization model for their decentralized blogging platform. Readers will be able to lock up STX in support of writers who can, in turn, earn the BTC yield generated through stacking.

💰 STX Cryptocurrency

Stacks (STX) price rallies 195% as more catch on to Bitcoin DeFi

One project aiming to combine the features of DeFi with the security of the Bitcoin network is Stacks (STX), a layer-one blockchain protocol designed to bring smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps) to the Bitcoin network.

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Coinbase Custody Adds STX Support

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Brittany Laughlin on Coindesk TV To Chat Coinbase Prime

Bitcoin DeFi is Here: A Deep Dive into Trust-less Swaps

Developers in the Stacks ecosystem recently demonstrated that Bitcoin DeFi is possible today. Longtime Stacks community members Friedger Müffke, Asteria, and Jude Nelson in collaboration with other Stacks community developers, deployed working Bitcoin swaps with NFTs and other crypto-assets.

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MiamiCoin stacking is now live, exclusively on Okcoin

Stack your MiamiCoin (MIA) and earn rewards with Okcoin. Earn up to 430% APY* rewards. The minimum stacking amount is super low and Earn charges no fees, so get ready to start earning.

India’s Largest Exchange Lists STX

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Binance Adds STX/BUSD

Binance USD (BUSD) is a 1:1 USD-backed stablecoin issued by Binance (in partnership with Paxos). Approved and regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), The BUSD Monthly Audit Report can be viewed from the official website.

Wrapped Bitcoin coming to Stacks this fall

Coming soon this fall, Stacks users around the world will be able to use native Wrapped Bitcoin across the Stacks network, aka xBTC. Stacks developers will also have access to programmable xBTC with the help of Hiro System’s developer tools.

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📊 New Stacks Data Portals

Stacks Mining Monitor — www.stxmining.club

Daemon Technologies has released an updated design of the STX Mining Monitor. This newest release provides an overview of recent mining activity in the STX mining market and gives all users a snapshot of on-chain activity on both the Stacks and Bitcoin blockchains.

Get the latest data from the Stacks 2.0 blockchain

Discover the latest on-chain data from Stacks 2.0 including transactions per day and growth of unique addresses over time. The Sigle team plans to add more here, so let them know what you want to see!

Stacks Data Center

Stacks holder distribution, smart contracts, mempool, wallets, pools, prices, and more can be browsed and navigated in this robust new data portal indexing the Stacks chain.

Stacking.club: New Stacking Overview Page

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⛓️ Stacks Technology

The Next Era In Scaling Stacks — stacks.org

As congestion has been an issue during hot NFT launches, Stacks Core Developers are hard at work on several methods to give builders the speed, security, and scalability options they need to thrive.

Framework for Stacks Scalability

Check out Stacks Founder Muneeb Ali’s latest forum post addressing questions around Stacks scalability and potential optimizations that can be made to network capacity. The scalability properties of Stacks and its design tradeoffs are unique and it’s worth understanding them.

What To Expect For Stacks 2.1, The Next Major Stacks Network Upgrade — stacks.org

Stacks 2.1 is a proposed network upgrade to the current Stacks 2.0 mainnet released in January. The upgrade will not happen automatically, so we’ve compiled information about the origin, status, voting plans, and included upgrades to help educate ecosystem stakeholders on what comes next and how to get involved.

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Hiro Web Wallet (Chrome/Firefox) Ready For Primetime

Released earlier this year in time for the launch of Stacks 2.0, the wallet extension has matured enough that it is now recommended for regular production usage, including interacting with web apps and managing STX and other Stacks-based assets.

Clarity Universe Expands — stacks.org

Clarity Universe graduated its first cohort, helping 100 new developers get started on their smart contracts for Bitcoin journey. Clarity Universe offers a 6-week course, starter contracts, and a talent portal.

Hong Kong University Students Embrace Stacks, Clarity Smart Contracts

Daemon Technologies partnered with faculty at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) to bring students a 6-week pilot course on Clarity.

Clarinet: Taking Clarity Development to the Next Level

Clarinet is our new go-to tool for local Clarity smart contract development. It is designed to facilitate rapid smart contract development, testing, and deployment. It consists of a Clarity REPL and a testing harness.

Stacks.js Version 2: What You Should Know

The JavaScript packages under the stacks.js umbrella continue to improve, with a major upgrade to version 2 on the way. This blog details breaking changes, how to use new TypeScript features, info about the new wallet SDK, and more.

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Release v0.70.0 · /stacks-blockchain-api · GitHub

Bug Fixes

• docs: ensure naming convention is followed (ff7f9d3)

• rosetta account/balance speed (c49a4d4)

• socket.io incorrect microblock and mempool updates (95d4108)

Features

• add broadcast/confirmed tx logs (26e50fd)

• set api version in openapi schema automatically (1b9126e)

Introducing bitcoin.clar

Syvita has created an open source Clarity library for executing various bitcoin-related operations in smart contracts on Stacks. The library currently enables cross-chain transaction verification for both Catamaran swaps and Sypool and is available for all developers to integrate now.

Stacks Blockchain Release 2.0.11.3.0

This software update is a point-release to change the transaction selection logic in the default miner to prioritize by fee instead of nonce sequence. This release’s chainstate directory is compatible with chainstate directories from 2.0.11.2.0.

🤝 Stacks Integrations and Partnerships

Blockchain.com Lists Stacks (STX) in the US, Globally

Blockchain.com continued its support for Stacks by listing the asset on their Exchange. The listing is now live and the initial listing includes STX-USDT, STX-USDC and STX-USD pairs.

Orbit Chain Integrates Stacks To Welcome Bitcoin To The Growing $80B DeFi Economy — stacks.org

The Orbit Chain team will integrate the Stacks blockchain and turn their attention to creating bridges between Stacks’s Bitcoin-connected blockchain and Orbit Chain’s growing ecosystem of public blockchains.

‘Acorns for Crypto': Round up into BTC, Stacking

Round up your spare change with RoundlyX to build a Stacks position. With Okcoin and RoundlyX, you can easily dollar cost average into Stacks and then earn BTC rewards on your holdings!

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Popular South Korean Wallet D'CENT Adds Stacks Support, Offers Biometric Hardware and iOS & Android Options — stacks.org

The Stacks Korea Chapter was pleased to share that popular South Korean wallet provider, D'CENT, has added support for Stacks (STX).

❤️ Community & Ecosystem Expansion

Impact of Stacks Chapters: Global Growth Led By Local Efforts

The Stacks Chapters Program, supported by grants from the Stacks Foundation, works with community leaders around the world to grow and educate the global Stacks community. This piece shines a light on the incredible progress and impact that Chapter Leads in Pakistan, the MENA region, Turkey, China, and Korea have made over the last 2 quarters.

StacksXPLORE 1.0 in Pakistan

The Stacks Pakistan team recently hosted XPLORE, one of the largest blockchain conferences in the region. The event featured talks by numerous tech industry leads and the final round of Stacks Pakistan’s nationwide blockchain hackathon.

Stacks Map illustrates a rapidly growing ecosystem

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📝 Can't Miss Content

Jolocom launches new GDPR-compliant blockchain identity management app, SmartWallet 2.0

Jolocom, a Stacks Grant recipient, launched their new GDPR-compliant and Stacks supported blockchain identity management app, SmartWallet 2.0. By using blockchain to provide identity management, users can store their identity documents on their device, control who can see their documents, and understand how their identity is used.

Mayor Suarez on MiamiCoin launch, says city is focused on ‘differentiating our economy’

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez discusses the launch of ‘MiamiCoin’ (which is built on Stacks) & the evolution of the city’s “tech ecosystem”. Suarez says the city is focused on “differentiating its economy” by “creating the new wave of technological products”.

Stacker Chats: Talking Bitcoin DeFi and @jack

On the latest edition of ‘Stacker Chats’ Gina & Muneeb talk cross-chain Bitcoin transactions on Stacks and Jack Dorsey’s new Bitcoin DeFi project.

Philip De Smedt on Loans That Repay Themselves — Stacker Chats Recap and Transcript — www.hiro.so

In this Stacker Chats episode, Gina of Hiro Systems sat down with Philip De Smedt, CEO and co-founder of Arkadiko, the first stablecoin on Stacks that uniquely enables your collateral to earn a yield.

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A small note about these updates: Every quarter the team and I greatly enjoy compiling these, yet each quarter the attempts to be comprehensive become more futile. We've opted to simplify and highlight, but if we've left out something important to you, please reply and we can add it.

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Disclaimer: The information shared in this email is strictly for informational purposes. You should not take its content, opinions, and/or descriptions provided as technical advice, legal advice, financial advice, or investment advice. See full disclaimer at stacks.org/terms.