by Louise Ivan on April 23, 2021

In the crypto world, there's no question that communities are an essential component of any project's success. Communities rally behind a protocol because the mission resonates with them. With Stacks, we're creating a better internet with Bitcoin as the foundation. We are bonded by our core belief in a user-owned internet flanked by the pillars of privacy and self-sovereign identity.

Mirroring the technical journey of Stacks, the Stacks community has grown intentionally and methodically—resulting in a tight-knit bond that has made our community nimble and effective. Now, life-long community members are stepping up to become community leaders and forming their own communities within the broader Stacks ecosystem. These 'Stacks Chapters', have already proven an incredible mechanism for mobilizing the community around specific goals and shared needs. Chapters like Stacks Pakistan and Stacks MENA have reached new demographics via Clarity hackathons and startup bootcamps, introducing more and more talented builders to the Stacks ecosystem.

Joining Stacks MENA and Stacks Pakistan are 3 new chapters that we're proud to introduce: Stacks Turkey, Stacks Korea, and Stacks China. Each of these chapters is committed to building a better internet on Bitcoin in their own unique ways and providing new opportunities for both individuals and organizations to get further involved.

GM (Keumsan) Chung & Mark Shim join as the Stacks Korea Chapter Leads. GM started out as a Stacks Evangelist and is now leading efforts to drive adoption of the Stacks mission and cryptocurrency among the general public in Korea. Specifically, GM is producing educational content in Korean, delivering the latest news to the community in their native tongue. Over the next few months, GM and Mark want to increase token access among Korean community members and create more opportunities for users and developers to get involved with Stacks.

Betty is a fierce supporter of the Stacks mission and started Stacks China as a way to share that mission with more people. She is passionate about decentralizing power and control, as well as preventing issues like censorship. Having witnessed firsthand the major problems with entrusting your data and funds to the wrong company, she is adamant that we need to build a better internet for the world. Betty is a proponent of the Stacks approach to solving these issues by leveraging Bitcoin as the foundation of the new internet. As a long-time Stacks community member, Betty has a strong connection to the founding Stacks team and believes in their commitment, professionalism, and authenticity in bringing this new internet to life.

Ömür and Ali were long-time members of the Stacks Community before becoming Chapter Leads for Turkey. Like other community members, Ömür and Ali have undertaken their own unique journeys to and through the Stacks ecosystem. For Ömür, it started during the Stacks Binance AMA series for Turkey. He had always been fascinated by Web 3.0 and through the AMA learned about Stacks and was thoroughly impressed by its status as the first SEC-qualified project in U.S. history. Meanwhile, Ali's journey started during the first STX token sale in 2017. He's been closely following the progress of Stacks since then but started becoming more active last September when he joined Stacks discussions across various Telegram groups.

Together, Ömür and Ali are working hard to spread the user-owned internet mission in Turkey and cultivate a developer community that is eager to build more applications on Stacks. As a result of their strong leadership and community building skills, Ömür and Ali have made Stacks Turkey the fourth largest cryptocurrency community in the country. Their chapter is currently working on releasing a community Stacking pool by the end of May.