On the first anniversary of the launch of Stacks blockchain (STX), which seeks to make Bitcoin (BTC) programmable, the network achieved over 350 million monthly API requests, 40,000 Hiro (development tool for Stacks to build applications on Bitcoin) wallet downloads, and 2,500 Clarity smart contracts. According to a report by Electric Capital, a venture capital firm focused on cryptocurrencies and fintech, these statistics make Stacks the largest project on Bitcoin.
More than 11,000 users earned more than 100 BTC rewards per month on Stacks due to its unique proof-of-transfer, or PoX, consensus mechanism. Miners bid BTC to verify transactions, execute smart contracts and mine new blocks on the STX blockchain and earn STX as rewards. Meanwhile, the BTC bids are sent to STX holders as rewards for performing tasks like running nodes. To date, the mechanism has delivered over $50 million worth of BTC rewards and surpassed $1 billion in total value locked.
According to the report, there were also decentralized finance, or DeFi, advancements on BTC created through Stacks. These included the launch of wrapped BTC (xBTC), the Arkadiko borrowing and lending protocol, and Bitcoin Lightning decentralized swaps, allowing users to swap STX for Bitcoin, stablecoins and altcoins.
The first projects to launch on Stacks were New York City’s and Miami’s CityCoins, generating $50 million for their respective city treasuries. Brittany Laughlin, executive director of the Stacks Foundation, issued the following statement regarding the milestone:
The Stacks community has proven the incredible potential of smart contracts for Bitcoin, from DeFi to NFTs, city coins 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.