Q2 was a challenging, but rewarding quarter. Issues downstream of the Stacks 2.1 release took a significant amount of unexpected time to address from our team, core developers, and integration partners of Stacks. The good news: These key issues were addressed and updates shipped. And, in spite of the unexpected load, the Stacks Foundation team was still largely able to deliver on other work we scoped for the quarter.

Remember, if you're looking for a Stacks Ecosystem update, check out the latest quarterly newsletter, this post specifically focuses on the Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) of the Stacks Foundation.

As usual, we’ve outlined our performance against our set Q2 2023 OKRs. You can read a bit more about the planning and prioritization process for these OKRs here and you can always find our current quarter's OKRs on our website. Generally, new OKRs for each quarter are shared one month into the quarter.

Choose your journey:

Another quarter, another 30% increase in developers. While the growth rate slowed some from the craze of Q1, we still met our growth goal. During the quarter, we also ramped up educational efforts to support new Bitcoin builders, including the launch of Bitcoin Primer, which can serve as a go-to onboarding tutorial for developers hoping to get into Bitcoin.

Elsewhere, support of the Bitcoin Builders Association led to 21 newly established Bitcoin Builders Meetup Groups worldwide. Over 600 new community members specifically interested in Bitcoin building originated from these efforts and were provided with knowledge on how to get started with Stacks and other Bitcoin layers/tooling.

After compiling feedback and input from community leaders and entity leaders at events, over Discord, and on the phone, we compiled a simple one-sheet that contains the current best recommendations when it comes to talking about Stacks. Key properties like stacks.co, CoinMarketCap, and others have been updated to reflect these recommendations and we’ve begun to see it reflected back to us in reports and coverage.

Further, work was kicked off to explore how the Stacks brand may be improved to follow the evolution in the positioning as a Layer 2. This is being done in light of the industry and Bitcoin builders having settled on these terms with the growth of activity (Ordinals and BRC-20s) on the Bitcoin base layer. You can track updates on this project here and a consultant has been brought on to accelerate the exploration - we expect materials for community feedback to be available in August.

The quick version: The focus on sBTC remains.

• Coordination and support of sBTC: We will continue to focus the majority of our efforts on work related to sBTC and Nakamoto. Meanwhile, we'll be helping the network to be prepared for these releases by supporting the Testing and Hardening Working Group, stewarding SIP-related research and feedback sessions, and providing project management support to core developers.
• Support of a successful sBTC Mini release: We expect a test version of sBTC to be available in the coming months and will be working with various Working Group leads to ensure there are clear goals for the release and plans or people in place to ensure these key outcomes, which are likely to center on developer feedback and testing.
• Developer education and experience: These efforts never stop as we head toward an initial test release of sBTC, currently called sBTC Mini. We'll be making sure prospective builders have the opportunity to try the system out, provide feedback, and get a jump start on building exciting and useful apps enabled by sBTC. Look out for hackathons, pitch competitions, and other developer-focused events and resources.
• Refreshed visual and narrative tools: This quarter, we expect the brand explorations related to sBTC and Stacks to start coming to fruition, so we'll be supporting the working group leading these efforts to ensure community feedback is well covered and any updated recommendations around brand or narrative are populated in high visibility places as well as provided to community leaders that need them.