Stacks (STX) is a layer-2 blockchain solution designed to bring smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps) to Bitcoin. It was launched in January 2021 by Blockstack PBC (now Hiro Systems PBC), co-founded by Muneeb Ali and Ryan Shea. Stacks aims to enable smart contracts and dApps to leverage the security of Bitcoin as a base layer and its capital, effectively enabling a new ecosystem of decentralized services built on top of Bitcoin's blockchain.
The native cryptocurrency of the Stacks network is STX, used for executing smart contracts, processing transactions, and staking within the network's consensus mechanism to support the network's security.
Stacks’ Clarity smart contract language is designed to be predictable and secure. Clarity is a decidable language, meaning that developers can know with certainty what a program will do before executing it, reducing the risk of bugs and vulnerabilities.
Proof of Transfer (PoX), Stacks’ consensus mechanism, is an extension of Proof of Work (PoW), where instead of expending energy to mine new blocks, miners transfer Bitcoin as proof of their investment in the network. This secures the Stacks blockchain while utilizing the existing energy and computational work of Bitcoin mining. In return for transferring Bitcoin, miners receive newly minted STX tokens and fees from the network's transactions.
Stacks’ integration with Bitcoin allows for smart contracts on Stacks to directly interact with Bitcoin transactions. With the release of sBTC, a 1:1 Bitcoin-backed asset, Stacks will enable seamless movement of BTC between layers. This brings a new level of functionality to Bitcoin, such as Bitcoin-based DeFi applications, NFTs, and digital identity solutions, all secured by the Bitcoin network.
