“Bitcoin New Culture” Continues, Secrets May Become the “OpenSea” of Bitcoin

On February 28, Yuga Labs, the strongest IP creator in the NFT field, officially announced that it would launch the NFT series TwelveFold on the Bitcoin blockchain based on the Ordinal protocol. The "Bitcoin New Culture" movement is still going on, and the spark seems to be forming a prairie fire. Among them, Stacks is particularly conspicuous, rising against the market, and its recent flagship Secrets is expected to become the " OpenSea " on BTC. So is the recent surge in Stacks a hot topic or value discovery? In addition to Secrets, what other projects are there in the Stacks ecosystem? Stacks is similar to Bitcoin Layer 2 to some extent, so in the "Bitcoin New Culture Movement", what other side chains are worth paying attention to?

The “Bitcoin New Culture Movement” is in full swing, and Stacks is rising against the market trend

We have previously proposed in "Bitcoin's "New Culture" Movement Promotes Web3 Prosperity and Promotes Three New Narratives of the Bull Market": The crypto market seems to be undergoing a movement named Bitcoin's "New Culture" ( different from Bitcoin's original concept of becoming a peer-to-peer electronic payment system, the "Bitcoin New Culture Movement" believes that with the update of Bitcoin technology and the development of the crypto market, Bitcoin should not be limited to being a payment system, but should further develop a series of Web3 applications such as the second-layer network, DeFi protocol, and NFT protocol ). In this process, the most noteworthy are the recently popular NFT protocols Ordinals and Nostr protocols. Among the concept coins related to Bitcoin's "New Culture Movement", STX is undoubtedly the most popular in the market. In the context of the general sluggish market, STX rose against the market. According to Coinmarkcap, as of 10:00 on March 1, STX was currently trading at $0.97, and the current increase was 203% from the opening price of $0.32 on February 18.

The recent surge in Stacks may be most closely related to the NFT protocol Ordinals. On February 28, Yuga Labs, the strongest IP creator in the NFT field, officially announced a plan: to launch the NFT series TwelveFold on the Bitcoin blockchain based on the Ordinal protocol. With the support of Yuga Labs, the popularity of the Bitcoin NFT market is increasing day by day. Unlike the strong position of Opeasea on Ethereum, the NFT trading market on the Bitcoin network can be said to have not yet been fully established, and the most likely to become the leader is the NFT market Secrets built on Stacks.

Secrets may become the "opensea" of BTC, what other Stack ecosystem projects are there?

Before introducing Secrets, it is necessary to mention Stack. In a sense, Stack is very similar to Bitcoin's Layer 2. Stacks uses a technology called "anchoring" to securely store application states in the Bitcoin blockchain; this technology can ensure the security and immutability of the application while also taking advantage of Bitcoin's distributed computing and security.

Secrets is built on Stacks with the goal of providing users with a decentralized NFT trading platform where users can create, display, trade and purchase NFTs. In addition, Secrets will also support some advanced features, such as grouping, batch processing, etc., to help users better manage their NFT assets. Currently, Secrets is still in the development stage and has not yet been officially released. However, the Stacks Foundation and the community have made the source code of the project public on Github, and provided developers with some development documents and tools to help them build and deploy their own applications on Stacks. In addition, Secrets will also be integrated with other applications and projects on Stacks to provide users with more comprehensive services and functions.

In addition to Secrets, the Stacks ecosystem is relatively mature. Secrets can be quickly integrated with ecological projects, thereby undertaking the migration of a large number of NFT projects on Ethereum. The main projects in the Stacks ecosystem are:

Hiro Wallet: This is a mobile wallet application developed based on Stacks that supports the storage and management of Bitcoin and Stacks tokens. It also supports access and interaction with dApps, providing users with a complete Stacks ecosystem experience.

Stacks DEX: This is a decentralized exchange based on Stacks, which allows users to trade Stacks tokens and other cryptocurrencies in a decentralized environment. It uses a smart contract language called Clarinet to provide users with safer and more convenient trading services.

SmartWeave : This is a smart contract protocol based on Stacks that uses a technology called "persistent storage" to store smart contract states in a verifiable data structure. This protocol can improve the security and reliability of smart contracts and provide developers with more room for innovation.

Boomboxes: This is a music application based on Stacks that allows users to upload, share and trade music works on the Stacks blockchain. It also uses a technology called "NFT integration" to provide more copyright protection and profit distribution mechanisms for music works.

In addition to Secrets, Stacks is also working with other blockchain protocols such as Flow to bring NFT markets to the Stacks ecosystem. Through these collaborations, Stacks will be able to provide users with a wider range of NFT options while also enabling interoperability with other blockchains.

Stacks surge, is it short-term speculation or value discovery?

The start of the new cultural movement of Bitcoin does seem to be somewhat sudden. Previously, people believed that the explosion of crypto ecological applications would mainly occur on the Ethereum network; but the Taproot or SegWit upgrade makes it easier to store data on the Bitcoin network and relaxes the restrictions on the size of witness data, making it possible for contract functions to appear on the Bitcoin network. Among them, the upgrade of Ordinals uses the recent Taproot upgrade to store NFT data in the Taproot script path expenditure script; Nostr natively supports the Lightning Network (Internet application + payment system), which is inseparable from the development of the Lightning Network. Stacks has been focusing on building the second-layer network of Bitcoin since 2017. This article believes that its current outbreak is not just short-term speculation, but more of a value discovery. The following article will analyze it from the dimensions of on-chain data, technology development, and team.

First, the number of users in the Stacks ecosystem is growing. Since 2021, the number of applications and users on Stacks has grown significantly, laying a solid foundation for the future development of Stacks. According to data from Stacks on Chain, from February 1 to 21, 2023, the Stacks network has processed 3.36 million transactions, a 223% month-on-month surge compared to 1.13 million transactions last month; during the same period, the number of pending transactions in the Stacks network memory pool has soared significantly.

Secondly, Stacks' technological progress is also very significant. Stacks has launched a programming language called "Clarity", which is a high-level language designed specifically for smart contract development. The launch of Clarity greatly simplifies and accelerates the development of smart contracts, helping to further expand the scale and influence of the Stacks ecosystem.

In addition, Stacks also merged with Blockstack PBC to strengthen its leadership in the field of decentralized Internet and blockchain technology. This merger not only strengthened Stacks' technical strength, but also provided more resources and opportunities for its future development.

Judging from the members of the Stacks team, Stacks as a whole has strong technical strength and rich business experience, and a stable team is conducive to sustainable development. The founders of the Stacks project are Muneeb Ali and Ryan Shea. Muneeb Ali is a computer scientist and entrepreneur who holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University and studied for a master's degree in computer science at Stanford University. Before founding Stacks, he worked at well-known technology companies such as Google and has rich technical and business experience in many fields. Ryan Shea is also a computer scientist and entrepreneur who studied for a master's degree in computer science at MIT and has held important positions in many well-known technology companies and startups. Before founding Stacks, he co-founded Blockstack PBC with Muneeb Ali and served as CEO of the company.

What is the future prospect of Stacks? What other Bitcoin projects are worth paying attention to?

What do crypto influencers think about the future prospects of Stacks? In addition, what other concept projects are there in the Bitcoin New Cultural Movement?

In a research report titled "Stacks Analysis: The potential of a Bitcoin Smart Contract Layer", Messari, a cryptocurrency analysis agency, believes that Stacks is expected to become an important part of the Bitcoin ecosystem, providing more secure, efficient and sustainable smart contract services, while also being able to collaborate and innovate with other cryptocurrency projects and traditional financial markets. Considering the huge user base of Bitcoin, Stacks has greater room for development than other public chains due to its close integration with the Bitcoin ecosystem, more sustainable and decentralized economic model, better privacy protection and higher performance.

Matrixport said in a research note on February 22: Because Ordinals are minted directly on the blockchain, they are considered digital products due to their persistence and immutability on the distributed ledger, while traditional NFTs can be changed by smart contract developers. The idea of ​​Bitcoin NFTs is not a new concept, it was developed by protocols such as Counterparty and Stacks. The recent hype around Ordinals NFTs caused STX to rise 50% earlier this week. The combination of NFTs and the Bitcoin network brings more security, transparency, and traceability. It opens up more use cases and rekindles interest in these tokens. Last week, the number of newly issued Ordinals NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain exceeded 100,000. In addition, Stack's ability to use the security of the Bitcoin blockchain to settle transactions makes the network well suited to develop Bitcoin DeFi.

In addition to Stacks, there are some more mature projects in the Bitcoin sidechain that are also worth paying attention to, mainly:

Lightning Network: Lightning Network is a second-layer network based on the Bitcoin blockchain, designed to enable faster and cheaper transactions. Through the Lightning Network, users can make tiny transactions without having to wait for confirmation on the Bitcoin main chain, thus achieving a fast payment experience.

Liquid Network : Liquid Network is a sidechain supported by Bitcoin exchanges and financial institutions, designed to provide faster, cheaper and more secure transaction services. It supports the trading of cryptocurrencies and assets, and provides features such as confidential transactions and batch transactions.

RSK: RSK is a smart contract platform based on the Bitcoin blockchain, which aims to provide smart contracts that are faster, safer and lower cost than Ethereum. It adopts Bitcoin's mining algorithm, realizes interaction with the Bitcoin main chain, and provides scalable side chain technology.

Rootstock Bridge: Rootstock Bridge is a bridge that transfers Ethereum smart contracts to the Bitcoin sidechain RSK. It enables Ethereum developers to leverage RSK's technology and ecosystem while benefiting from the security and reliability of Bitcoin.