To assist the community in getting ready for the upcoming vote, we're facilitating a series of conversations covering key design decisions related to the upgrades and surfacing expert commentary for consideration and review.

There are several reasons Stacks blocks might be skipped by Bitcoin blocks, all of which are within the normal bounds of healthy operation.

we’re excited to announce that applications for the Stacks Decentralized Grants – Pilot Program (Stacks De-grants Pilot) are now open.

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.

The sBTC Working Group is excited to announce the much-anticipated launch of the sBTC Developer Release, marking the initial milestone towards unlocking a more expansive Bitcoin economy through sBTC.

It's that time again, we’re introducing the Stacks Foundation objectives for T3 2023.

Q3 saw a continued progression in how core developers work together and a further increase in contributors. Thanks to this evolution, the pace toward Nakamoto and sBTC releases is accelerating. Meanwhile, a host of successful developer and community growth initiatives drove early traction for the sBTC testnet and other pre-Nakamoto education.

Stacks is built on Bitcoin because Bitcoin is the most secure, reliable and decentralized blockchain. Bitcoin layers extend Bitcoin’s functionality without changing Bitcoin itself and compromising its security or decentralization. sBTC, the upcoming 1:1 Bitcoin backed asset, enables Stacks smart contracts to write to Bitcoin – unlocking the value of Bitcoin and enabling previously dormant use cases. Here’s a quick look at 10 ways that sBTC will unlock the power of Bitcoin.

The Stacks x EasyA Bitcoin Hackathon promises to be one of London's most fascinating hackathons of the year! Best of all, it's happening right in the center of London. IRL. And following Bitcoin Unleashed. The Stacks Foundation and Hiro have teamed up with EasyA to give away £20,000 to the best projects built at this hackathon. In just 36 hours, you could walk away with a massive prize that could help you launch the world's next unicorn application built on Bitcoin.

The blockchain world and AI revolution are on a collision course, and the Stacks layer for Bitcoin is ready to help builders innovate at the intersection of these two hot technologies.

The Stacks ecosystem is gearing up for the sBTC Developer Release, allowing select developers to build and test with an early version of sBTC, a 1:1 backed version of BTC on the Stacks layer.

Decentralized Stacking Pools will be an exciting addition to a lineup of Stacking options that already include various forms of centralized Stacking pools, non-custodial pools, and fully decentralized self-Stacking options.

As blockchain technology evolves, new concepts and technologies emerge, offering exciting possibilities for enhancing scalability, privacy, and functionality.

The Stacks Foundation recently hosted the first Ready Layer 2: Bitcoin Pitch Competition. The event took place over the course of three days and included...

Clarity, Stacks' L2 smart contract language, enables you to create these smart contracts that settle on Bitcoin. Due to its core characteristics, Clarity made it easy for front-end developers to create applications with smart contract that settle on Bitcoin. Most front-end developers take roughly 10 hours to learn the basics of Clarity. The result? The start of a broader bitcoin economy with a wide variety of applications built on Bitcoin layers. Let's explore some of these Bitcoin applications created with Stacks' L2 clarity smart contracts.

This post is part of a series dedicated to articulating the strategies and working models leveraged by the Stacks Foundation as we continue to serve and steward the Stacks ecosystem. The series will provide the latest plain language breakdowns of our focus areas and the rationale behind how we prioritize and execute. This post will provide an overview of current governance processes on Stacks and highlight opportunities where we can take governance to the next level.

Today, we’re excited to share an important step toward better interoperability on Stacks as Allbridge releases a Stacks token bridge! This bridge will connect Stacks to 19 chains including Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana. This work was made possible through support early on from Daemon Technologies and Stacks Foundation grants.

It's that time again, we’re introducing the Stacks Foundation objectives for Q3 2023.

Q2 2023

Recommendations and best practices for talking Stacks

By now, you hopefully have read about our overall approach to our work here at the Stacks Foundation in the first post of the series. This post will provide a closer look at how the Stacks Foundation views the security of the Stacks network as well as our own supportive approaches. We believe security is of utmost importance and treat our work, to support and improve the overall security profile of the chain, as a top-level consideration.

By now, you hopefully have read about our overall approach to our work here at the Stacks Foundation in the first post of this series and a bit more about our approach to events in the second post of this series. This post will provide a closer look at how we approach community programs and our intended rollout strategy.

This post will provide a closer look at how we approach events, a key building block of community, and a key function we support within the Stacks Ecosystem.

Find the Stacks Foundation's Objectives and Key Results

As our ecosystem matures and grows, so too can our approaches and strategies. With strong builders and entities entering the ecosystem all the time, our own evolution as a contributor can, and does, adapt. In this post, we’ll cover the working model we use here at the Stacks Foundation that allows us to be adaptable yet focused, as well as provide an example of this in action.

To fulfill Nakamoto's vision of sustainable miner support through fees, it is essential to drive up transaction volumes. This requires expanding the use cases of Bitcoin beyond a store of value and harnessing its full potential as the cornerstone of a decentralized economy. By broadening Bitcoin's utilization, we can stimulate fresh demand for block space, generate increased fees, and adequately incentivize miners to uphold the security of the network.

In May, the first-ever Bitcoin Builders Conference brought together a variety of builders, investors, leaders, and community members from all corners of the Bitcoin Ecosystem. Sessions shed light on various crucial aspects of Bitcoin's development and highlighted the significance of collaboration, adoption, openness to change, technical advancements, and more. These developments are not only fostering Bitcoin's growth but also providing exciting opportunities for investors to realize returns on their investments.

Gamma and Hungry Artist, a Stacks artist and trailblazer in the contemporary art scene, invites you to witness The Dreamers' Gallery—an exhibition that challenges artistic norms and defies expectations. This is the world's first-ever digital art gallery dedicated to Bitcoin NFTs!

While Bitcoin is already the largest, most valuable, and most durable decentralized asset, Layer 2 technologies can further enhance its utility and enable new use cases and applications. By leveraging Layer 2 technologies, developers and users can enjoy increased flexibility, functionality, and innovation on the Bitcoin network – in other words, fully programmable BTC.

Q1 2023 was another productive quarter which saw the successful rollout of Stacks 2.1 and overall growth

We’re introducing the Stacks Foundation objectives for Q2 2023

Hear that? That’s the sound of AI-enhanced learning empowering new Bitcoin builders with zero time spent on setup. Replit, a quickly growing developer platform powered by AI and an interactive in-browser learning framework, now features the Stacks layer for Bitcoin. This means developers (or those looking to become developers) can learn to build and deploy applications that serve the Bitcoin economy using Replit templates and tutorials.

The Stacks Foundation's Chapters Program is a community-driven initiative designed to support the growth of local Stacks communities around the world. This blog post outlines the benefits of joining the Chapters Program, such as funding, community support, marketing and promotion, access to resources, and recognition and awards. Anyone interested in the Stacks blockchain can apply to start a local Stacks Chapter and help promote its growth and adoption with the support of the Stacks Foundation and a global network of enthusiasts, developers, and thought leaders.

Stacks is built on Bitcoin because Bitcoin is the most secure, reliable and decentralized blockchain. Bitcoin layers extend Bitcoin’s functionality without changing Bitcoin itself and compromising its security or decentralization. sBTC, the upcoming 1:1 Bitcoin backed asset, enables Stacks smart contracts to write to Bitcoin – unlocking the value of Bitcoin and enabling previously dormant use cases. Here’s a quick look at 10 ways that sBTC will unlock the power of Bitcoin.

At the Stacks Foundation, Q1 has been a whirlwind of exciting conferences, hackathons, workshops, meetups and we’re just getting started - let the Spring event season and beyond begin! Check out what we’ve been up to and find out how you can join us at future events this year.

Grants are a key building block of the Stacks ecosystem. In addition to providing ongoing support to critical public goods, grants fund what builders need most. With the upcoming network upgrade (Nakamoto, which brings us Bitcoin write capabilities via sBTC), the grants program has the opportunity to leverage Critical Bounties, or RFP-style grants, to help get the highest priority tools/technologies into the hands of builders and users eager to take advantage of sBTC. Read on to learn more about the kinds of projects and teams that are suitable for critical bounties and how you can contribute to the list of critical bounties for Q2 and beyond.

There is a buzz in the air around building on Bitcoin. The rapid rise of Ordinals and Inscriptions has catalyzed a Bitcoin renaissance and is beginning to give rise to a new generation of Bitcoin builders. In this edition of the Building on Bitcoin Hackathon, we saw some of the first versions of applications embracing and utilizing emerging tooling like ordinals and Stacks to build cool things and make Bitcoin fun again. While we had several interesting and compelling projects, three stood out due to their exceptional creativity, code design, and secure testing coverage.

Ordinals seemingly came out of nowhere, utilizing BTC in a way we hadn't really seen before. In short, Ordinals is a protocol developed by Casey Rodarmor that manages to count individual satoshis; ordering them, from the first one in the genesis block. This somewhat novel way of looking at Bitcoin sparked a wave of tools, products, and debate. As you might imagine, counting satoshis back that far gives another meaning to these sats. Collectors are proving this in the volume they're being traded for.

We’re introducing the Stacks Foundation objectives for Q1 2023

In Q4, the Stacks community delivered a host of massive technical upgrades as well as an exciting look ahead at the networks future.

The Blockstack Governance Working Group is a community run organization supporting governance upgrades.

One of the core tenets of the Stacks community has always been transparency and open dialogue between the great contributors, experts, and builders who are working to grow and elevate the network. Messari leverages their industry-leading crypto market intelligence to bring the same transparency and discussion we believe in to the entire crypto industry. We are excited to share some of the key takeaways from their State of Stacks Q4 2022 report that was just released.

For the second year in a row, the Electric Capital Report shows that Stacks is the #1 Web3 project on Bitcoin as measured by developer activity, and is a top-30 crypto project (at #28) as measured by total developers.