Muneeb, the founder of the Bitcoin Layer 2 network Stacks, shared the development history and vision of Stacks on his social platform. BlockBeats translated and organized it as follows:
Stacks is an open-source project started by the builders of Bitcoin. The developers behind it have extensive experience building applications and protocols on top of the Bitcoin network.
After the block size wars of 2017, it became clear that the only way to scale transactions or new use cases on Bitcoin was to build the Bitcoin network layer. Thus, work on the Lightning Network and Stacks began.
Stacks are Layer 2 of Bitcoin that can use smart contracts. It has a separate ledger to store data outside of Bitcoin L1, and developers can build any application on top of it. Anything that can be built on Ethereum, Solana, can be built on Stacks L2s. Welcome to the latest documentation for Stacks .
The initial version of Stacks will be launched in early 2021. This version uses the secure programming language Clarity, has the ability to read the status of the Bitcoin network, and can realize atomic swaps between BTC and any L2 asset. The initial release also had some bottlenecks. Then Stacks updated the Nakamoto version.
The next version to be launched this year will add a decentralized BTC anchor, making it easy to transfer BTC into or out of Stacks L2. At the same time, this version will also undergo a security upgrade, and the finality is determined by 100% of the Bitcoin computing power. Finally, this version will also implement block speed improvements, so that it is no longer limited by the Bitcoin block time.
Decentralized BTC pegs are being actively built by open source developers. The goal is to release $500 billion in BTC funds. Just like Ordinals contributed to Bitcoin NFT, sBTC can bring about huge changes to Bitcoin DeFi.
Stacks vs Lightning Network
Both Stacks and Lightning Network are layer 2 networks of Bitcoin. The Lightning Network is a P2P network for payments; Stacks is more like an L2 chain for fully expressing smart contracts.
Utility of STX
The release of STX was licensed by the SEC, which was unprecedented at the time. The project was decentralized before the mainnet launch and now has more than 30 independent entities and developers. STX is used as a miner reward and sBTC peg-out signer reward; its role is to keep mining and signing decentralized. After sBTC launches, users will be able to spend sBTC on most wallets and applications.
NFTs on Stacks L2
There is an active community of artists and creators on Stacks L2. People minted 650,000 Bitcoin NFTs on Stacks L2. All of these NFTs are automatically hashed to Bitcoin L1 and secured by Bitcoin in a scalable manner. Additionally, many NFT builders are active on Bitcoin L1 using Ordinals. Such as Gamma.io and Satoshibles .
Ordinals vs. L2 NFTs
Ordinals based on Bitcoin L1 are complementary to L2 NFTs. Ordinals are inherently limited by the scalability of L1, while L2 provides an obvious expansion path. Wallets like Xverse and Hiro Wallet currently support Ordinals.
DeFi on Stacks L2
At present, $250 million has been locked in the contract on Stacks L2, and 2,200 bitcoins have been issued to users as rewards. You can pay attention to ALEX and Arkadiko Protocol . Similar to Bitcoin NFT, Bitcoin DeFi is still in its early stages.
Stacks is a decentralized ecosystem, which is changing and growing all the time. For more information, please continue to pay attention to the official Stacks page .
