On February 2, Yuga Labs, the strongest IP creator in the NFT field, officially announced that it will launch the NFT series TwelveFold on the Bitcoin blockchain based on the Ordinal protocol. The “new culture of Bitcoin” movement continues, and the sparks seem to be taking off. Among them, Stacks is particularly conspicuous, frequently rising against the market, and its recent staple Secrets is expected to become “OpenSea” on BTC. So is Stacks’ recent surge a hot hype or a value discovery? In addition to Secrets, what other projects are there on the Stacks ecosystem? Stacks is similar to Bitcoin layer 28 to some extent, so what other sidechains and so on are worth paying attention to in the “Bitcoin New Culture Movement”?
The “Bitcoin New Culture Movement” is in full swing, and Stacks is rising against the market
The crypto market seems to be engaged in a movement called Bitcoin “New Culture” (unlike the original idea of Bitcoin becoming a peer-to-peer electronic payment system, the “Bitcoin New Culture Movement” believes that with the update of Bitcoin technology and the development of the crypto market, Bitcoin should not be limited to becoming a payment system, but should further develop a series of Web3 applications such as Layer 3 networks, DeFi protocols, NFT protocols, etc.). The most noteworthy in this process is the recent explosion of NFT protocols Ordinals and Nostr protocols. Among the concept coins related to Bitcoin’s “new culture movement”, STX is undoubtedly the most popular in the market. According to Coinmarkcap, as of 1 o’clock on March 10, STX is now trading at $0.97, up 2% from the opening price of $18.0 on February 32.
Stacks’ recent surge is perhaps most closely related to the NFT protocol Ordinals. On February 2, Yuga Labs, the strongest IP creator in the NFT field, officially announced a plan to launch the NFT series TwelveFold on the Bitcoin blockchain based on the Ordinal protocol. With the blessing of Yuga Labs, the popularity of the Bitcoin NFT market is increasing day by day. Different from the strong position of Opeasea on Ethereum, the NFT trading market on the Bitcoin network can be said to be not fully established, and the most likely to become the leader is the NFT marketplace Secrets built on Stacks.
Secrets or “OpenSea” on Bitcoin, what else are the Stack ecological projects
Before introducing Secrets, it’s worth mentioning Stack, which in a sense is a lot like Bitcoin’s Layer 2. Stacks uses a technique called “anchoring” to securely store application state in the Bitcoin blockchain; This technology can guarantee the security and immutability of the application, while also taking advantage of Bitcoin’s distributed computing and security.
Secrets is built on Stacks, and its goal is to provide users with a decentralized NFT trading platform on which users can create, display, trade, and purchase NFTs. In addition, Secrets will also support some advanced features such as grouping, batch processing, etc., to help users better manage their NFT assets. Currently, Secrets is still in development and has not yet been officially released. However, the Stacks Foundation and community have made the project’s source code publicly available on Github and have provided developers with some development documentation and tools to help them build and deploy their own applications on Stacks. In addition, Secrets will integrate with other applications and projects on Stacks to provide users with more comprehensive services and capabilities.
In addition to Secrets, the Stacks ecosystem is relatively mature, and Secrets can quickly integrate with ecological projects to undertake the migration of a large number of NFT projects on Ethereum, and the main projects in the Stacks ecosystem are:
Hiro Wallet: This is a mobile wallet application developed based on Stacks that supports the storage and management of Bitcoin and Stacks tokens. It also supports access and interaction of dApps, providing users with a complete Stacks ecosystem experience.
Stacks DEX: This is a Stacks-based decentralized exchange that allows users to trade Stacks tokens and other cryptocurrencies in a decentralized environment. It uses a smart contract language called Clarinet to provide users with more secure and convenient transaction services.
SmartWeave: This is a Stacks-based smart contract protocol that employs a technique called “persistent storage” that stores smart contract state in a verifiable data structure. This kind of protocol can improve the security and reliability of smart contracts and give developers more room for innovation.
Boomboxes: This is a Stacks-based music application that allows users to upload, share, and trade musical compositions on the Stacks blockchain. It also uses a technology called “NFT integration” that can provide more copyright protection and benefit distribution mechanisms for musical works.
In addition to Secrets, Stacks has partnered with other blockchain protocols such as Flow to bring NFT marketplaces to the Stacks ecosystem. Through these partnerships, Stacks will be able to offer users a wider selection of NFTs, while also enabling interoperability with other blockchains.
The skyrocketing of Stacks is short-term hype or value discovery
The opening of the Bitcoin New Culture Movement does seem to have some sudden flavors, and before that the explosion of crypto ecological applications was mainly thought to occur on the Ethereum network; But Taproot or SegWit upgrades make it easier for the Bitcoin network to store data and relax limits on witness data size, opening up the possibility of the emergence of contract functionality on the Bitcoin network. Among them, the upgrade of Ordinals is to use the recent Taproot upgrade to store NFT data in the Taproot script path spending script; Nostr natively supports the Lightning Network (Internet Application + Payment System), which is inseparable from the development of the Lightning Network. Stacks has focused on building Bitcoin’s layer-2017 network since <>, and this article argues that its current explosion is not just short-term hype, but more about value discovery. The following article will analyze the dimensions of on-chain data, technology development, and team.
First, the number of users in the Stacks ecosystem is growing. Since 2021, the number of applications and users on Stacks has grown significantly, which lays a solid foundation for the future growth of Stacks. According to Stacks on Chain, the Stacks network has processed 203.2 million transactions between February 1 and 21, 336, a 113% sequential surge from 223.<> million transactions in the previous month; During the same period, the number of pending transactions in the Stacks network mempool spiked significantly.
Secondly, the technological progress of Stacks is also very significant. Stacks has launched a programming language called “Clarity,” a high-level language specifically designed for smart contract development. The launch of Clarity greatly simplifies and accelerates the development of smart contracts, helping to further expand the size and impact of the Stacks ecosystem.
In addition, Stacks merged with Blockstack PBC to strengthen its leadership in the decentralized internet and blockchain technology. This merger not only strengthens Stacks’ technical prowess, but also provides additional resources and opportunities for its future growth.
From the perspective of Stacks team members, Stacks as a whole has strong technical strength, rich business experience, and the stability of the team is conducive to sustainable development. The founders of the Stacks project were Muneeb Ali and Ryan Shea. Muneeb Ali is a computer scientist and entrepreneur who holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University and a master’s degree in computer science from Stanford University. Prior to founding Stacks, he worked at well-known technology companies such as Google and has extensive technical and commercial experience in a variety of sectors. Ryan Shea is also a computer scientist and entrepreneur who studied for a master’s degree in computer science at MIT and held senior positions in several well-known technology companies and startups. Prior to founding Stacks, he co-founded Blockstack PBC with Muneeb Ali and served as CEO of the company.
What are the future prospects for Stacks, and what other Bitcoin projects are worth watching
What do crypto big V think about the future prospects of Stacks? In addition, what are the other Bitcoin New Culture Movement concept projects?
In a research paper entitled “Stacks Analysis: The potential of a Bitcoin Smart Contract Layer”, cryptocurrency analyst Messari believes that Stacks is expected to become an important part of the Bitcoin ecosystem, providing more secure, efficient and sustainable smart contract services, while also cooperating with other cryptocurrency projects and traditional financial markets. Considering the huge user base of Bitcoin, due to the close integration of Stacks with the Bitcoin ecosystem, a more sustainable and decentralized economic model, better privacy protection and higher performance, etc., it has more room for development than other public chains.
Since Ordinals are minted directly on the blockchain, they are considered digital products due to their persistence and immutability on a distributed ledger, while traditional NFTs can be changed by smart contract developers, Matrixport said in a February 2 research report. The idea of Bitcoin NFTs is not a new concept, it was developed by protocols such as Counterparty and Stacks. The recent hype surrounding Ordinals NFTs led to a 22% jump in STX earlier this week. The combination of NFT and Bitcoin networks brings more security, transparency, and traceability. It opens up more use cases and reignites interest in these tokens. Last week, the number of newly issued Ordinal NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain surpassed 50,10. In addition, Stack’s ability to leverage the security of the Bitcoin blockchain for transaction settlement has allowed the network to develop Bitcoin DeFi well.
In addition to Stacks, there are some more mature projects in the Bitcoin sidechain that are also worth paying attention to, the main ones are:
Lightning Network: The Lightning Network is a second-layer network based on the Bitcoin blockchain that aims to enable faster and cheaper transactions. Through the Lightning Network, users can make tiny transactions without having to wait for confirmation on Bitcoin’s main chain, enabling a fast payment experience.
Liquid Network: Liquid Network is a sidechain backed by Bitcoin exchanges and financial institutions that aims to provide faster, cheaper, and more secure trading services. It supports the trading of cryptocurrencies and assets and offers features such as confidential transactions and bulk transactions.
RSK: RSK is a smart contract platform based on the Bitcoin blockchain that aims to provide smart contracts that are faster, more secure, and lower cost than Ethereum. It uses Bitcoin’s mining algorithm, enables interaction with Bitcoin’s main chain, and provides scalable sidechain technology.
Rootstock Bridge: The Rootstock Bridge is a bridge that transfers Ethereum smart contracts to Bitcoin’s sidechain, RSK. It enables Ethereum’s developers to take advantage of RSK’s technology and ecosystem while benefiting from Bitcoin’s security and reliability.
