Elevating User Experience with a Real AMM for Rune on Bitcoin: Enabling deep liquidity, low slippage, and fast price discovery for Bitcoin assets.

MIAMI, Dec. 19, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Bitflow and Pontis are proud to introduce the first Bitcoin Runes Automated Market Maker (AMM) on Stacks

MIAMI, Dec. 19, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Web3 infrastructure providers Bitflow and Pontis today announced the launch of the first Bitcoin Automated Market Maker (AMM) for Runes on Stacks, the leading Bitcoin Layer 2 (L2). This highly-anticipated scaling opportunity for Runes — a type of fungible token on Bitcoin — was previously limited by slow transaction speeds, high fees, pre-splitting of UTXOs, marketplace listings, and sniping of pending transactions.

Now, thanks to the recent Stacks Nakamoto Upgrade, Bitflow offers fast, cost-effective transactions, all within a user-friendly interface. Instead of marketplace listings, the Bitflow liquidity pools will enable AMM based pricing for any amount that users want to trade.

This product launch marks a significant moment for Bitcoin DeFi: a scalable system for Bitcoin assets where users experience fast confirmations and secure transactions that are as difficult to reorg as Bitcoin itself.

“Some people haven't realized this yet, but Bitcoin is fun again.” said Dylan Floyd, Co-Founder of Bitflow. “Our Runes AMM gives everyone in crypto more reasons to transact on Bitcoin, which is great for the sustainability of network fees. And thanks to the Nakamoto upgrade on Stacks, we've unlocked a premier DeFi experience for tokens on Bitcoin. Together with Pontis, we make it easy for that liquidity to flow across novel swap and earn products.”

The Runes AMM launch coincides with the Stacks Nakamoto Upgrade, which was activated at Bitcoin Block #867,867. This upgrade reduces Stacks' block times from 10 minutes to seconds and provides Bitcoin-level finality, significantly enhancing the efficiency of the Runes AMM through the bundling of Pontis bridge and Bitflow infrastructure.

Another key feature that Nakamoto unlocks is Bitcoin finality. Stacks no longer forks on its own, and after a transaction is confirmed, reversing it is at least as hard as reversing a Bitcoin transaction. Now, with the Pontis Bridge and Runes AMM, users can safely trade Bitcoin assets on Stacks after a single confirmation–allowing users to swap BTC, Runes, BRC-20s, and more.

With this infrastructure, locking in a trade with native BTC is fast and secure, requiring only one Bitcoin block and one Stacks block (5-10 seconds). In comparison, other bridge options typically demand 3-6 Bitcoin block confirmations to consider a mint safe on another chain or layer.

Bitflow's Runes AMM leverages the Pontis Bridge, a federated multisig system that brings more decentralized security and reliability to cross-chain transactions – supported by ecosystem leaders deeply invested in the success of Bitcoin, Runes, BRC-20s, and Bitcoin Layers.

Pontis signers—including leading Ordinals wallet Xverse, Smart Custody Layer for Bitcoin Asigna, prominent Ordinals launchpad OrdinalsBot, the largest DeFi protocol on Runes Liquidium, Bitcoin liquid stacking leader StackingDAO, the leading Runes ecosystem community Billion Dollar Cat, and several others—unlock powerful interoperability between Bitcoin and Stacks using a federated mint/burn model. This approach offers greater decentralization compared to single-entity custodians common in other Bitcoin AMMs.

With the Nakamoto upgrade, mint and swap transactions on the Runes AMM now achieve full Bitcoin finality and reorg protection, making them as secure and irreversible as Bitcoin itself. Once sBTC goes live on Stacks later this year, Pontis will migrate its bridge to work with sBTC, enabling an improved decentralized way to move Bitcoin assets to the Stacks L2 and back.

“At Pontis, our mission is to create a secure and seamless bridging experience for Runes and other metaprotocol assets by harnessing a consortium of trusted projects as node operators,” said Filip S, Core Contributor at Pontis. “In partnership with Bitflow, we are enhancing the user experience for BTC traders, enabling them to interact with Runes through liquidity pools on Stacks effortlessly. This achievement marks a pivotal step in advancing the adoption of Runes and laying the foundation for a new narrative in Bitcoin's evolution.”

The list of signers includes Asigna, Xverse, Leather, Liquidium, DeSpread, OrdinalsBot, Pontis, Bitflow, Hermetica, Ducat, Bima, StackingDAO, Zest Protocol, Sats Ventures, and Billy (BILLION•DOLLAR•CAT).

The Runes AMM on Stacks introduces a Uniswap-style liquidity pool structure, enabling deep liquidity, low slippage, and fast price discovery for Bitcoin assets. Thanks to the Nakamoto upgrade, reorg protections and fast block times allow the Stacks layer to be abstracted from the user experience, enabling Bitflow to offer a Layer-1 Bitcoin DEX trading experience with Stacks as the execution layer.

Smart contracts for the Runes AMM reside on the Stacks layer and interact with Pon