Hey Stackers,

Thank you for an incredible 2024 capped by the successful launches of Nakamoto and sBTC. Last year was all about the tech, while 2025 is already being defined by traction. As we step into 2025, we look forward to keeping the momentum of this past year going and taking more giant steps toward activating the Bitcoin economy.

To the many represented in this newsletter:
Thank you and congratulations,

Rick and Claire | Stacks Foundation

PS: For a Stacks Foundation-focused recap of 2024 and an overview of Stacks in 2025, please check out this post from our Interim Executive Director.

🟧 Core Development: Nakamoto, sBTC, and Beyond

The Nakamoto Upgrade

In October, Stacks core engineers released the Stacks Nakamoto upgrade. The release represents a monumental step forward for Stacks, cementing its position as a true Bitcoin Layer 2. Transactions on Stacks are now as irreversible as Bitcoin's, leveraging the security of Bitcoin’s hash power. Since then, the network has seen further optimizations, while sBTC continues to grow, in many ways thanks to the incredible foundation Nakamoto provides.

Programable Bitcoin: sBTC

sBTC deposits are now live, marking a pivotal moment for Bitcoin-powered DeFi on Stacks. Over 1,000 BTC has already been moved to Stacks via sBTC, with 40-50% deployed in DeFi protocols—an encouraging sign of its growing utility and potential.

As per the sBTC Rollout, the next steps focus on improving the user experience (UX), increasing the deposit cap beyond the current 1,000 BTC, and enabling withdrawals. Additionally, business development efforts are underway to integrate sBTC with centralized exchanges (CEXs), further expanding its accessibility and adoption.

Big moves highlighting Stacks’ core decentralization

• Bitcoin L2 Labs is a new organization focused on core product development of Stacks, the leading Bitcoin L2.

• Stacks Asia Foundation introduced itself to the world to activate the Bitcoin economy with Stacks in Asia.

🟧 Industry Leaders Embracing sBTC

Painting the world orange 🟧🖌️

Creating A Decentralized Signer Network

Chorus One, Degen Lab, Stacking DAO, Planbetter Pool, Despread, Chorus One, Restake, Kiln, Luganodes, Alum Labs, Blockdaemon, Xverse, and Fast Pool all became part of the Signer network for the Stacks L2.

New entities like Near, Asymmetric Research, Aptos, Figment, Sensei Node, Staking Defense League, Luxor, and many others pledged to become a Signer for Stacks and sBTC as well, making sBTC the strongest institutional graded Bitcoin L2 BTC asset on the market.

Partnership momentum to the very end of the year!

Elsewhere, other leading Bitcoin organisations announced plans to embrace sBTC via the Best & Brightest campaign that closed the year:

• Ankr, the #1 provider of Bitcoin-secured infrastructure, has joined the Stacks ecosystem as a Signer, bolstering the network's security and decentralization just as sBTC goes live.

• CoinFlip ATMs enable customers to easily convert cash to crypto and vice versa, serving over 400,000 customers globally. The company also has a rapidly growing presence in the Australasia region, Mexico, and Italy, among others.

• Travala, the leading crypto-native travel booking platform, will roll out bookings with sBTC and STX for their users in January 2025.

• Fordefi, the first MPC wallet to fully support Bitcoin DeFi, has announced it will enable support for all SIP-010 assets, including sBTC, Stacks’ long-awaited 1:1 programmable asset for Bitcoin.

• LearnWeb3, the largest Web3 education platform, is rolling out new content to increase the adoption of sBTC, Stacks' Bitcoin-native programmable asset.

• Xverse, the leading Bitcoin ecosystem wallet, has been at the forefront of Bitcoin ecosystem innovations, providig the first mobile experience for the Stacks L2, Ordinals, and Runes.

• Portal Ventures, the Leading Pre-seed VC Firm and the First to Call the Bitcoin Thesis, to Back sBTC

• Immunefi, the leading onchain crowdsourced security platform protecting over $190 billion in assets, is bringing its security expertise and elite community of researchers to sBTC with an upcoming "Attackathon" event.

• Bitcoin Frontier Fund, Home of the Top Bitcoin Accelerator, To Invest in Teams Built on sBTC.

Hints of More Key Partnerships To Come:

• Stacks Engineers are bringing sBTC to Solana, as published by the official Solana X account.

• Stacks developers bring Bitcoin to the Aptos Network via sBTC.

📊 Stacks Stats

Industry Highlights

• Grayscale adds STX to Grayscale’s Research Top 20 based on high potential.

• Coinbase adds STX as #22 for its institutional COIN INDEX.

• Electric Capital ranks Stacks as #7 for fastest fastest-growing developer ecosystem.

🏗️ Builders

Zest Protocol

• Launched its first programmable Bitcoin lending pool with sBTC (more).

• Saw nearly 400 BTC via sBTC supplied, nearly 40% of the first sBTC cap (more).

• Launched the Stacks Markets, with stSTX, USDh, and other tokens (more).

• Raised $3.5M in seed round funding to redefine Bitcoin lending (more).

Bitflow

• Launches the highly anticipated Runes AMM based on sBTC (more).

• Integrates sBTC to create STX/sBTC trading pair and more with 60% APY (more).

• Releases their DEX aggregator and Multi-Hop Swaps (more).

• Raises $1.3 Million in Pre-Seed Funding (more).

ALEX

• Reaches $2.5+ Billion Total Transaction Volume (TTV) and $140 Million Total Value Locked (TVL) (more).

• Launched ALEX Launchpad V3, a multi-chain launchpad poised to support project tokens on 18+ networks (more).

• Integrated Runes & sBTC (more).

• Launched the 12,000,000 ALEX token incentive program called Surge (more).

StackingDAO

• After launching in late December 2024, StackingDAO released its points system (more).

• Announced its partnership with Xverse to allow liquid stacking directly from the wallet interface (more).

• Reached over 90,000,000 in TVL (more).

• Rebranded to align further with the goal of unlocking Bitcoin DeFi (more).

Velar

• Launched its Automated Market Maker on Stacks (more).

• Raised $3.5M to build the world’s first PerpDEX on Bitcoin (more).

• Launched its VELAR token via ByBit (more).

• Integrated sBTC into its platform (more).

Hermetica

• Launches Bitcoin-backed Stablecoin USDh on Stacks (more).

• Reports on consistent 20-30% APY on staking USDh (more).

• USDh borrowing on Zest had a cap doing to $200K (more).

• Closed a $1.7M Seed round to expand USDh (more).

Stacks / Bitcoin Wallets

• Xverse reintegrated Stacks native token swaps (more).

• Xverse integrated sBTC to its mobile wallet (more).

• Leather integrates sBTC (more).

• Leather introduces Leather earn, a native way to hold sBTC and earn BTC yield (more).

🧡 Community & Governance

Several significant SIP (Stacks Improvement Proposal) votes took place in 2024 that drove important outcomes for the Stacks ecosystem:

1. SIP-029 Approval: In December, the Stacks community unanimously approved SIP-029, which focused on preserving economic incentives during major network upgrades. The proposal aimed to align Stacks halvings with Bitcoin halvings and maintain adequate incentives for miners and validators/signers following the Nakamoto upgrade and sBTC launch.

2. SIP-025 Approval: In August 2024, Signers unanimously approved SIP-025, which proposed a temporary simplification of the threshold signature scheme for Signers under the Nakamoto upgrade. 

3. SIP-027 Voting: A voting period for SIP-027, which aimed to enhance wallet support for multisig transactions, took place in August 2024. The outcome of this vote was significant for improving the Stacks ecosystem's functionality.

4. SIP-021 Nakamoto Release: The voting period for the crucial SIP-021 Nakamoto Release concluded in March 2024. This vote was pivotal for the implementation of the upgrade.

👨‍💻 Developers

1. Stacks is the 7th Fastest growing Developer Ecosystem according to Electric Capital

2. Stacks Hackathon at Harvard with hundreds attending 

3. Stacks hits 100,000 builders learning about Stacks' smart contract language Clarity on largest Web3 Developer community app EasyA

4. Largest Developer Education Platform LearnWeb3 becomes part of the leading Orgs supporting sBTC

5. LearnWeb3 Introduces full Stack App course for DEXs and other apps on Stacks, working with sBTC and other SIP10 tokens

6. Over $60K in STX has been awarded to developers submitting code to Code for STX, the Stacks developer incentive program for builders.

7. Immunefi launches Attackathon to help strengthen the security of Stacks and sBTC, with a second one scheduled in February 2025.

8. Q4 saw the most smart contracts getting deployed on Stacks in 2024.

9. New Stacks Documentation launches, with the goal to better onboard more developers to Stacks.