At just over 3 months old, Stacking has already crossed $1 billion in locked value. Thinking back to January when Stacks 2.0 launched, we were all certainly excited and hopeful for this new way to earn Bitcoin, but I'm not even sure the most confident among us would have uttered the 'b-word' this soon.

From my perspective though, the more exciting aspect of Stacking is how it has pulled so many new people into the ecosystem. For those of you that don't know, I personally (with a little help from Zapier) follow up with every single person that asks to learn more about Stacks or Stacking via stackstoken.com. Often these conversations go well beyond the initial follow-up and turn into longer conversations about the project, the mission, and how excited they are to have discovered the Stacks community.

Here are just a few recent notes I've received:

For the stalwarts in the community, the broader mission of an internet founded on user-ownership is something we've all been working toward for a long time. Now though, Stacking has given us a new way to expose this mission to people and to help them become actively invested alongside us. It's led me to the conclusion that Stacking is quickly becoming the new front door to a better internet on Bitcoin.

As I was reflecting on this milestone and Stacking in general, I wanted to zoom in a bit on a partner to Stacks (and Stacking) that deserves a lot of credit for the rise of these new entrants to the ecosystem: OKCoin. In future posts, I may cover others as well - it's certainly been an ecosystem-wide effort to get Stacking to this point.

If you're not familiar, OKCoin was the first exchange to list STX in the United States and launched Stacking right alongside the release of the Stacks 2.0 mainnet. In doing so, they provided the opportunity for everyone to access Stacking right away, regardless of their size of holding or technical ability. I have no doubt that the ability for people to jump right into Stacking has played a critical role in the overall momentum around Stacking - it's only been recently that other pools have come online and even those have clearly benefitted from OKCoin having taken the plunge to figure out what works and what doesn't.

I've been working with the OKCoin team since the middle of 2020 and I thought I could provide a little more insight into just how much they've taken on.
I hope this serves two purposes:

1. Gives everyone a peak into how dedicated the OKCoin team is and helps us all to appreciate their role further
2. Encourages a little more empathy, patience, and understanding when it comes to any issues you or others might face with Stacking via OKCoin

We shouldn't forget that Stacking is a mere 3 months old. When OKCoin integrated Stacking, the documentation for it had not been written yet. The team at OKCoin believed in Stacks so much that they were willing to put the time in to integrate a brand new non-standard blockchain and an unproven, novel yield generating mechanism on top of it.

Despite taking on the challenge of being the first to integrate, OKCoin has already turned around a revamped portal for Stacking based on user feedback and shared important data with the community.

I'll also note that:

• No one has ever missed a reward payment
• No one has ever been shorted a reward
• OKCoin users have even received bonus BTC at various points
• No one's Stacks have been lost or misplaced (by OKCoin that is, a few of you have done that to yourselves :0)
• OKCoin has never charged a fee for Stacking

While Stacks 2.0 has been reliable and stable since the launch, it hasn't been totally smooth sailing either. As the network gains traction, inevitably there are updates, hotfixes, and other improvements that must be made along the way. And of course, they rarely come at convenient times. Specifically, a few recent node upgrades and hotfixes bumped OKCoin wallets offline and because it happened on a Friday, OKCoin engineers were not able to adjust to the change made by Stacks engineers the same day. While funds were safe throughout and the downtime was minimal, the goal is never to interrupt a user's ability to interact with their Stacks.

At the Stacks Foundation, we're working directly with OKCoin to improve how important fixes are communicated and rolled out to partners like them so that we can eliminate any impact to users in the future. We not only thank them for rolling with the punches, but also for helping us develop systems other partners can benefit from.

OKCoin is continuing to listen to users and are directly integrated with the Stacks community via Telegram groups and at regular events like AMAs. A couple weeks ago they added the STX/USDT trading pair and their engineers are providing feedback as work continues on Stacks 2.1.

So, if you're out there and you see someone that seems to be having an issue with Stacking and/or OKCoin, remind them that everything is safe and there are really amazing people working to help them. As part of the community, we'd love your help in identifying posts or conversations where people seem to be having trouble. All of us, including the OKCoin team, care deeply about the user experience for Stacking and are committed to working quickly to resolve any issues, assist with user error or misunderstandings, and continually smooth out the process and communication surrounding the mechanism. If you want to take it one step further, chime in and show some love for OKCoin and their work and reassure the person with the issue that it will be promptly addressed.

As always, feel free to ping the OKCoin team or myself on community channels with your feedback or questions and we'll look forward to Stacking with you for years to come.