STX, the native token of the Stacks Network, soared amid the explosive hype of Bitcoin Ordinals in March and an increase in the protocol’s total value locked (TVL). The project will also be upgraded later this year for improved speed and scalability.
STX, the first token issued in 2019 to receive certification from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), rose 23 percent in March to $1.25 — the token’s all-time high since a year ago. Although the pace of gains slowed in late March, it is still up 350% in the past 3 months, bringing its valuation to $1.5 billion.
Considering tokens with a market capitalization above $1 billion, STX was the second-best performing digital asset in March, behind XRP, according to Messari.
Stacks is a Bitcoin Layer 2 protocol for smart contracts that seeks to shift the functionality of Bitcoin from its well-known role as an alternative payment system to a more flexible programmable platform.
STX started to rise last month amid growing interest from market participants in creating the NFT Bitcoin Ordinal.according to Ali – Co-founder of Stacks, whose initial function is NFT minting, users have minted 650,000 NFT Bitcoins on Tier 2 Stacks.
According to DeFiLlama, Stacks Network’s TVL has also skyrocketed over the past few months, from $8 million in February to $35 million in mid-March before dropping to $25 million.
stupidnoise: De Philama
Decentralized finance analyst Michael Nadeau said:
“The hype around Stacks is definitely due to Ordinals, but it can last if developers persevere. Bitcoin needs projects like this to last for a long time.”
Smart contract protocol Stacks has a ledger for storing data outside of Bitcoin’s layer 1, allowing developers to build applications on the platform, similar to what they do on Ethereum or Solana.
Stacks are designed to make Bitcoin more programmable. Right now, the feature is more associated with the other two blockchain platforms, which are seeing a lot of DeFi activity right now.
In an interview, Stacks’ Ali commented that the recent interest in STX may partly stem from anticipation of Stacks’ upcoming Nakamoto upgrade later this year.
pairSTX 4-hour price chart | Source: Tradingview
He said the upgrade would give users access to full smart contracts on the layer 2 chain, allowing them to move BTC in and out of bitcoin while layer 2 transactions are secured by the layer 1 network.
According to Ali, unlike Ethereum and Arbitrum, users cannot now easily transfer BTC to the Stacks layer. This is the biggest problem.
The update aims to increase the liquidity and capacity of the network.
Ali also explained that unlike many blockchains that require high-performance hardware to run a node, Stacks helps users run nodes on less complex hardware such as a Raspberry Pi or regular laptop, thereby helping to make it more accessible. According to Ali, unlike Solana or ICP, Stacks does not require you to run nodes in the data center, which is a typical node deployment method that requires high hardware.
in a Reportcrypto hedge fund NorthRock Digital wrote, “Despite limitations in developing a crypto-economy based on Bitcoin, Stacks has a huge potential opportunity… for the crypto-economy, relatively small is now built on top of Bitcoin.” superior.”
NorthRock has identified three main layer 2 networks on top of Bitcoin: Lightning, RSK, and Stacks. Each layer 2 “complements each other and has different goals, but Stacks has gone the furthest in growing the ecosystem for more traditional crypto applications (NFTs, DeFi, name services, etc.)”.
NorthRock also noted that the upcoming Bitcoin halving could benefit Stacks.
“The halving itself will reduce Bitcoin’s security budget and further reinforce the need to expand fee pools through a more efficient Bitcoin ecosystem. This will reinforce the importance of Layer 2s like Stacks.”
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Mingying
According to Coindesk
