With hundreds of people attending Bitcoin Unleashed London in person, and the thousands watching behind their screens at home, Bitcoin Unleashed showed that when Bitcoin builders from ever community join forces, something extraordinary happens. From Ordinals L1 creators to Bitcoin Decentralized Finance builders on the L2, the event truly united everyone under one orange banner, confirming the renaissance of the Bitcoin builder's culture.

For Stacks, Bitcoin Unleashed highlights the announcement of exciting new technology, programs, and opportunities for builders. We highlighted the top 5 most noteworthy announcements.

Day one of the Bitcoin Unleashed London event will go down in history as the day that the sBTC Developer Release officially saw daylight. After months of hard work by the sBTC working group, sBTC Resident Andre Serrano announced the launch of the Developer Release on the Dev Den stage. This milestone highlights the start of the incentivized Testnet Program, as well as many hackathons focused on creating top tier Bitcoin applications with sBTC.

On Friday, ALEX Founder Chiente Hsu took the stage to share the creation of the Bitcoin Lab Ecosystem Fund, aiming to support projects building on DeFi protocol ALEX’ finance layer for Bitcoin. The fund provides initial capital, market opportunities, and technical assistance to builders. It seeks to catalyze growth and expansion within the Bitcoin ecosystem. Chiente added that for builders, access to funding and grants are crucial, and the fund also connects them with ALEX' community and network of advisors.

As part of a “special announcement” listed on the Bitcoin Unleashed schedule, Stacks Foundation Director of Activation Mitchell Cuevas & Copper Head of Sales Michael Roberts shared the official Stacks integration for Copper. Through this integration, institutional clients gain the ability to safely custody, trade, and leverage Stacking with all existing and future SIP-010 tokens on the Stacks Bitcoin layer.

In addition to the integration, Michael noted that Copper is leading the way as the first major custodian to announce support for Stacks' anticipated Nakamoto upgrade and sBTC, a decentralized and 1:1 backed Bitcoin asset expected to launch on the Stacks layer in 2024.

Stacks Foundation Director of Governance and Community Programs Jenny Mith shared that applications for the Decentralized Grants Program will soon open. The Decentralized Grants Program is an effort for the community to fund initiatives of fellow community members that are considered to be valuable and contribute to the growth of the Stacks ecosystem. The Decentralized Grants program is a pilot of $25,000 in Grants funding for Q4, with requirements and the full process all setup by a group of dedicated core community members.

EasyA App Founders Dom and Phil Kwok brought more success to Bitcoin Unleashed, sharing the exciting news on stage that over 2,000 developers successfully went through the Bitcoin L2 Stacks Clarity challenges in the app. This means that these developers now know the basics of Clarity, and became prospects to become the next generation of Bitcoin builders.

You can watch all separate sessions back by going to the following playlist on YouTube: here