The Iterative Journey of Stacks: Empowering Bitcoin with Smart Contracts

From Blockstack to Stacks, the Stacks team has continuously built technology and ecology from scratch, which is particularly solid and impressive in the current market environment.

As Bitcoin approaches the breakthrough of $100,000, the community is eagerly awaiting the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Although the performance of related ecosystem tokens has not been particularly impressive, U.S. compliant trading platforms such as Coinbase and Kraken have recently issued cbBTC and KBTC, respectively. Industry giants have never paused their exploration of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Compared to other chains or its own nearly $2 trillion market cap, the Bitcoin ecosystem has a long way to go, but it also holds enormous development opportunities. From the perspective of the secondary market, there has always been a demand for track rotation and switching from high to low positions. In the Bitcoin ecosystem, Stacks stands out as a leader in this field, and its iterative journey has become the best representation of the exploration of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Stacks has continuously built technology and ecology from scratch, which is particularly solid and impressive in the current market environment.

Recently, the case between Ripple and the SEC has reached a temporary conclusion, and the resignation of the SEC chairman has triggered a super bull market for XRP. Like Ripple, Stacks is also a representative of compliance in the crypto industry. In July 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) terminated its investigation into Stacks and Hiro. Moreover, Stacks is the first token issuance project ever approved by the SEC.

The Dream of Smart Contracts on Bitcoin: From Blockstack to Stacks

The history of Stacks can be traced back to Blockstack, founded in 2013 by Muneeb Ali and Ryan Shea from Princeton. As the initial v1 version, Blockstack aimed to create a decentralized internet ecosystem using a distributed computing network, fully replacing traditional cloud computing. At that time, Blockstack hosted a large number of DApps.

By 2021, Blockstack's v2 version, the Stacks mainnet, was officially launched. At this point, the team's goals underwent a significant shift—from serving a decentralized internet to empowering Bitcoin. Through the Stacks protocol, developers can build applications with smart contract functionality on the Bitcoin network without modifying Bitcoin itself. In this process, Stacks inevitably faced criticism from Bitcoin "maximalists," but Muneeb has consistently conveyed the philosophy of Stacks to the community.

PoX and Clarity: Deep Integration of Bitcoin and Stacks

Stacks' ability to securely integrate with Bitcoin is attributed to its innovative Proof of Transfer (PoX) consensus mechanism. The core idea of the PoX mechanism is to allow miners to participate in Stacks block mining by transferring Bitcoin, rather than relying on power-consuming competition. This way, Stacks not only inherits the security of the Bitcoin network but also allows Bitcoin holders to become direct participants in the ecosystem.

Compared to traditional Proof of Stake (PoS), the design philosophy of PoX aligns more closely with Bitcoin's decentralized spirit. It uniquely transfers the value of Bitcoin into the Stacks ecosystem, creating a tight economic bond between the two. For miners, the PoX mechanism provides a new way to capture value, while for developers, this deep integration gives them greater confidence in implementing smart contracts on the Bitcoin network.

Alongside the launch of the Stacks mainnet, a smart contract language designed specifically for Bitcoin, Clarity, was introduced. Clarity is a non-Turing complete language, meaning it focuses on implementing verifiable functions while avoiding uncertainties in complex computations. When using Clarity, developers can preview the execution results of smart contracts in advance, greatly reducing the risk of unexpected behaviors. Additionally, Clarity runs directly on-chain, avoiding vulnerabilities that traditional smart contract compilers might introduce. This language, designed specifically for Bitcoin, lays the foundation for DeFi, NFTs, and other complex applications.

Nakamoto Upgrade: Faster, More Stable, Secure

Just as there is no perfect code, Stacks also has room for improvement in expanding Bitcoin.

The initial design of Stacks tied block production to Bitcoin's block production. This resulted in high latency due to slow block production, and even micro-blocks could not completely resolve the issue. At the same time, the security of the Stacks network was not fully bound to Bitcoin, as the cost of reorganizing the last N blocks in the Stacks blockchain was equivalent to generating the next N + 1 Stacks blocks, making the cost of attacking Stacks lower compared to a 51% attack on Bitcoin.

In light of this, Stacks launched the "Nakamoto Upgrade" in 2024, which was officially completed on October 29. The significance of this upgrade lies not only in technical optimization but also as a key step towards the prosperity of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Fast Block Confirmation: Optimizing User Experience

The Nakamoto upgrade introduced a fast block confirmation mechanism, allowing users to achieve near real-time transaction confirmations on Stacks. Micro-blocks and Bitcoin anchor blocks will be eliminated, replaced by continuously produced Stacks blocks, allowing miners to produce multiple blocks during a single Bitcoin block period, significantly enhancing transaction speed.

The time required for user-submitted transactions to be confirmed is no longer