Stacks Is the #1 Web3 Project on Bitcoin For Second Year in a Row
Published by Stacks Foundation Team on January 17, 2023
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.
Despite some losses in 2022 due to the market downturn, Stacks has shown steady developer growth since its launch. In addition to healthy developer interest, Stacks has had nearly 24,000 smart contracts deployed, 1 million NFT events, 500,000 stacks addresses, 140,000 .btc names registered, 7 billion STX transferred, and dozens of companies launched in the ecosystem.
But what’s even more impressive is that Web3 developers are here to stay.
Despite some losses in 2022 due to the market downturn, Stacks has shown steady developer growth since its launch. In addition to healthy developer interest, Stacks has had nearly 24,000 smart contracts deployed, 1 million NFT events, 500,000 stacks addresses, 140,000 .btc names registered, 7 billion STX transferred, and dozens of companies launched in the ecosystem.
But what’s even more impressive is that Web3 developers are here to stay.
Bear markets are for builders
The Electric Capital Report shows that developers continue to build despite market downturns. The decrease in developers participating in Web3 was only down 11% despite the value of all networks (not just Stacks) being down 71%. Developers believe Web3 isn’t a trend; it’s an essential new way to build.
This is consistent with data Bitcoin developer tools company Hiro found: 55% of developers in the Stacks ecosystem said that the bear market increased their desire to work in Web3.
Bitcoin layers: unlocking billions of latent BTC capital
According to the report, Bitcoin has seen a 3x growth in monthly active developers since 2018. Stacks continues to play a key role in the industry’s growth which includes bringing fully expressive smart contracts to Bitcoin and welcoming more developers into the ecosystem, from full-time, part-time, and those interested in one-time contributions. The rise of Bitcoin layers such as Lightning, Stacks, and Rootstock has opened up the possibilities of building on top of Bitcoin, which will soon unlock billions of latent BTC capital.
Why you should build on Bitcoin in 2023
As the most secure, decentralized, and trusted blockchain, Bitcoin is the most sound infrastructure for the next digital frontier. The Stacks community is on the verge of shipping the next big innovations for Stacks and Bitcoin layers. In the coming months you can expect:
Stacks 2.1: The community voted in favor of Stacks 2.1 this past December, and once live in a few weeks, Stacks will gain new Clarity functions that tighten its integration with Bitcoin, decentralized mining pools, better bridges, stacking improvements and more.
Subnets: Led by Hiro, this scalability solution for Stacks will provide a high throughput, low latency solution so developers can offer a fast and reliable experience for their users. Developers will also be able to use subnets to experiment with EVM-compatibility and ZK-rollups without requiring consensus-level protocol changes.
sBTC: As described in the recent white paper, the sBTC proposal will help fulfill the original vision of Stacks by creating a decentralized Bitcoin peg, enabling Stacks smart contracts to write transactions to Bitcoin. Stacks mainnet launch in 2021 brought Clarity and the ‘read’ access to Bitcoin state; sBTC is the remaining missing ‘write’ piece for a fully expressive Bitcoin layer that can unlock hundreds of billions in Bitcoin capital.
Nakamoto Release: The proposed Nakamoto release of Stacks in 2023 will bring a decentralized two-way Bitcoin peg (sBTC), faster blocks, and Bitcoin finality to the Stacks layer.
Excited to dive into building on Bitcoin layers? Join us on Discord or Telegram to learn more.
Stacks 2.1: The community voted in favor of Stacks 2.1 this past December, and once live in a few weeks, Stacks will gain new Clarity functions that tighten its integration with Bitcoin, decentralized mining pools, better bridges, stacking improvements and more.
Subnets: Led by Hiro, this scalability solution for Stacks will provide a high throughput, low latency solution so developers can offer a fast and reliable experience for their users. Developers will also be able to use subnets to experiment with EVM-compatibility and ZK-rollups without requiring consensus-level protocol changes.
sBTC: As described in the recent white paper, the sBTC proposal will help fulfill the original vision of Stacks by creating a decentralized Bitcoin peg, enabling Stacks smart contracts to write transactions to Bitcoin. Stacks mainnet launch in 2021 brought Clarity and the ‘read’ access to Bitcoin state; sBTC is the remaining missing ‘write’ piece for a fully expressive Bitcoin layer that can unlock hundreds of billions in Bitcoin capital.
Nakamoto Release: The proposed Nakamoto release of Stacks in 2023 will bring a decentralized two-way Bitcoin peg (sBTC), faster blocks, and Bitcoin finality to the Stacks layer.
Excited to dive into building on Bitcoin layers? Join us on Discord or Telegram to learn more.
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