Stacks: Bitcoin Layer 2 solution
Basic Information
Co-founded by Muneeb Ali and Ryan Shea in 2013, the Stacks public chain was originally named Blockstack and later renamed Hiro Systems PBC. One of the major features of the project: it is a blockchain project that meets the SEC's regulatory standards for financing under Reg A. As of today, Stacks has completed 5 rounds of funding with a total amount of $88 million (as shown below).
Source: Rootdata
According to official information, Stacks will launch a version called "Nakamoto" in the first quarter of 2024, and the biggest highlight of this version is the transaction speed, which has increased from the current 10-30 minute block speed tied to Bitcoin L1 to 5 seconds of block production.
铭文板块带动 Stacks 热度
This round of inscription plate craze also came to the Stacks chain. Since the launch of STXS, Stacks' first inscription project, the price of STX has risen by 50% from $1 to around $1.5 currently.
Source: coingecko
And, most notably, most exchanges have been in a state of stopping withdrawals in the past week after STX exploded from the inscription project STXS. Today, exchanges have opened withdrawals one after another, but most exchanges have also increased their withdrawal fees. The figure below shows the current exchange can withdraw coins to the on-chain wallet.
Exchange withdrawals
Ecological development
Source: DefiLlama
By analyzing the Stacks on-chain data, the ecosystem is still in its early days, with a TVL of nearly $60 million. If the product upgrade can be carried out in 2024, the concept of BTC L2 is likely to run out of several projects with a market value of more than 100 million, or even billions. So, what are the sectors worth paying attention to at present and the corresponding leading projects? Odaily Planet Daily will sort out the projects with high ecological popularity at present.
Inscription plates
In this wave of inscription craze, the Stacks chain also has its own "homegrown" inscription project. Although it is not as popular as the inscriptions of Ethereum and Solana, the inscriptions issued on Stacks have also run out of their own leading project, STXS, which is also the first inscription project issued by the chain, and it is also popular in Europe and the United States, and has also received official support. Currently, the inscriptions issued on the chain are ranked according to the current market capitalization as shown below. It is clear from the figure that the development of inscriptions on this chain is still very early, even the leading project STXS has a market value of less than 7 million US dollars, and there are only three inscription projects with a market value of more than 100,000 yuan.
Stacks 铭文市值排名榜
Although the overall market capitalization of the Stacks inscription market is relatively small, there are already venues where secondary trading can be carried out (as shown below). After a version iteration, the basic experience of trading STX 20 projects on the platform can be satisfied, and there are still complaints about the following:
- When making a purchase, the pending time is too long. Since the speed of block generation is synchronized with BTC block production in the current version of Stacks, a simple transfer may take more than 20 minutes. In addition, the platform will need to go through 6 blocks of confirmation after the purchase action is on the chain, which further extends the transaction time, and it is initially estimated that it will take at least nearly 2 hours to complete this series of actions.
- Due to the small number of contacts in the chain, the gas will not be adjusted, resulting in the transaction being in the Pending state all the time. Since most people do wallet interaction on the Stacks chain with little or no operation. Therefore, when trading, the gas fee will not be adjusted, resulting in the failure to be on the chain, and the situation of stuck chain (the previous transaction is not completed, and the subsequent transaction cannot be carried out), and finally you can only wait for a new transaction after block 256 (the pending transaction on the Stacks chain will be automatically canceled if it is still packaged after 256 blocks).
It is for this reason that when the secondary exchange was first launched, the floor price of the inscription leader STXS fell all the way from a high of $600 in the OTC market to a low of around $200, and is currently maintained at around $300. However, compared to other public chains with inscriptions, the pace of Stacks' development of a secondary exchange in just one week and the iteration of the second version after Christmas has been very fast. If Stacks increases the block generation speed in the first quarter of next year, most of the transaction problems will be solved, and the projects in its inscription ecosystem may have a decent increase, so it is worth paying attention to.
Source: STX 20.com
DeFi sector
ALEX
ALEX is an open-source DeFi protocol based on the Stacks public chain. The goal is to provide a complete DeFi offering for the Bitcoin network. Currently, ALEX's position on Stacks is like Uniswap on Ethereum.
ALEX
ALEX's mainnet features include Swap, Lending, Staking, Yield Mining, and Launchpad. In addition, at the moment when BRC-20 is booming, ALEX has also launched an order book exchange for BRC-20.
Order book trading
Also, it's worth paying attention to the Launchpad service on ALEX. It is also a hot plate at the moment, and ALEX is also involved. The latest issue of Launchpad is a re-sale of old OG projects, which has a certain community base and is worth paying attention to.
Launchpad 部分
ALEX is the native token of Alex Labs and the reward medium for the platform to provide liquidity and staking, with a current ALEX price of $0.375 and a market cap of about $245 million.
Quinceko
Official Twitter: https://twitter.com/ALEXLabBTC
Official website: https://app.alexlab.co/swap
NFT sector
Gamma
Gamma is the largest NFT trading platform in the Stacks ecosystem, consisting of three core parts: NFT marketplace, NFT launchpad, and WEB3 social platform. Gamma's goal is to organically bring together three groups of people: collectors, creators, and investors in the Bitcoin ecosystem to explore, trade, and showcase NFTs. Users can use the Gamma bot to mint their unique digital creations and collect or sell them. Similar to other mainstream NFT decentralized exchanges on public chains, Bitcoin NFTs can also be created without code using Gamma.io, and users can successfully create them in just a few minutes.
Gamma
In the recent week, the most discussed NFT project in the Stacks ecosystem is Happy Welsh, whose project token has also skyrocketed dozens of times from zero in the first half of the year to this wave of market. Happy Welsh has a total amount of 2000 and a floor price of 70 STX (pictured below).
Happy Welsh
For the Gamma platform itself, GAMMA is its native token, a protocol designed for non-custodial, automated, and actively managed centralized liquidity, and users can earn 10% of the fees in all liquidity pools on Gamma as rewards by staking GAMMA. The current GAMMA token price is $0.27 and the market cap is around $17 million.
Quinceko
Official Twitter: https://twitter.com/trygamma
Official website: https://stacks.gamma.io/
Wallet section
Xverse
Xverse is a WEB3 crypto wallet built on Stacks and supports the Ordinals protocol. Users can manage BTC assets and Stacks assets through this wallet. At the same time, the wallet also has a built-in stack function, which allows users to earn Bitcoin yield through stack STX, which currently has an annualized yield of 9%.
Overall, the Xverse wallet has a simple UI and a wallet creation process similar to many EVM-compatible wallets, using a mnemonic phrase to restore the wallet. For users who are Xi to MetaMask wallets, this greatly lowers the threshold for using Xverse wallets. Once the wallet is created, multiple addresses will be generated at the same time, one is the Bitcoin address, which is used to receive and send Bitcoin assets. One is the Stacks network address, which is used to manage Stacks-based assets.
Xverse
Official Twitter: https://twitter.com/xverseApp
Official website: https://www.xverse.app/
Leather
Leather is a wallet app built on Bitcoin, formerly known as Hiro Wallet. Hiro is a development tools company that empowers developers on the Stacks blockchain. Similar to the Xverse creation process, it's easy for users who have used MetaMask to get started. At the same time, Leather has some handy built-in little features that allow users to buy STX directly from within Leather using a credit card, debit card, or even bank transfer.
Currently, the wallet supports browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Brave, as well as desktop versions for MacOS, Windows, and Linux. The browser extension allows you to connect to apps, buy STX, mint and buy NFTs, and use Ledger hard wallets. The desktop version allows you to participate in staking, earn Bitcoin, and secure your assets using a Ledger hard wallet.
Leather
Official Twitter: https://twitter.com/LeatherBTC
Official website: https://leather.io/
summary
On the whole, Stacks did not really break out in this round of market, and it is still in the early days. If the "Nakamoto" version in Q1 2024 can be successfully launched, Stacks is likely to usher in an explosion under the BTC Layer 2 narrative.
If the Stacks ecosystem explodes, the current popular inscription plates, Launchpad launchpads, and Meme sectors are worth paying attention to, while the infrastructure sector should also pay more attention to its data changes and look for alpha.