The price of Stacks (STX) is on the rise, and investors are taking notice. As of March 18th, the cryptocurrency was up 25% compared to the previous day, and it has increased six times in value since the beginning of the year. According to Coingecko, the market cap of STX is over $1.7 billion, and it shows no signs of slowing down.

One reason for this surge in popularity is the fact that Stacks provides a smart contract layer for Bitcoin (BTC), which has long been seen as the gold standard in the cryptocurrency world.

Stacks is an open-source network for decentralized applications and smart contracts that uses the security of the Bitcoin blockchain. This means that it can be used for a variety of purposes beyond just Bitcoin payments, including decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.

As the popularity of DeFi continues to grow, Stacks is attracting more attention from investors. Its DeFi ecosystem stocks have risen across the board, with STX’s liquid staking protocol “ALEX Lab (ALEX)” increasing by over 30% from the previous day, and the lending service “Arkadiko Finance (DIKO)” increasing by 20%.

One of the key advantages of Stacks is its scalability. While Bitcoin has struggled with scalability issues, Stacks provides a complementary solution as an L2 layer. This has become particularly important with the rise of NFT issuing protocol Ordinals, which is facing scalability challenges. According to Stacks co-founder Muneeb Ali, solutions like Stacks will become increasingly important in the coming years.

As reported by DeFillama, the total value of assets locked (TVL) in the Stacks network stands at $35.4 million, which is smaller when compared to the Ethereum ecosystem. However, this figure has surged by approximately 5 times since early February 2023 when it was around $7 million. In addition, lending protocols on Stacks and TVL on DEX have experienced double-digit growth in the last week.

To that end, Stacks is constantly improving its technology to better serve its users. In its upcoming version 2.1 update, Stacks is introducing Stacking 2.0, which will allow for incremental additions called “topping off” and automatic compound stacking. This will improve the profitability of stacking and have a positive impact on capital efficiency in the self-repaying loan protocol Arkadiko on Stacks.

Additionally, version 2.1 enhances interoperability between Stacks and Bitcoin. It allows for the sending of Ordinals, Bitcoin’s native asset, to STX-based wallets such as Hiro and Xverse. On the other hand, since Stacks assets can be directly added to Bitcoin addresses, users and developers will be able to use Stacks applications with just a Bitcoin address.

Looking further ahead, Stacks is planning a larger update called “Nakamoto,” which will be implemented in the fourth quarter of 2023. This update will introduce sBTC in Stacks, which will enable trustless writing to the Bitcoin network, unlocking the liquidity of Bitcoin with a market capitalization of 69 trillion yen, and providing a use case for DeFi operations. It will also greatly improve the transfer speed of the Stacks blockchain.

Overall, Stacks is quickly becoming a major player in the cryptocurrency world. Its innovative technology and focus on scalability and interoperability are attracting investors and users alike. With new updates and features in the works, the future looks bright for Stacks and its growing community of supporters.

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This article was republished from azcoinnews.com