Convert STX to TRY

Stacks, a layer-2 Bitcoin solution, allows smart contracts and DApps on the blockchain. Its design emphasizes Bitcoin’s security and resilience while adding Ethereum-like features. As a layer, Stacks lets developers build atop Bitcoin without modifying its essential structure, enabling an extended environment that leverages Bitcoin’s decentralisation and trustlessness.

Stacks’ independent token, STX, incentivizes block production and network upkeep, unlike Bitcoin’s primary chain. This token paradigm provides incentivized validation while keeping Bitcoin’s simplicity. Stacks, unlike Lightning, maintains a permanent state, which is necessary for data-consistent applications like smart contracts. Lightning is transaction-focused and transitory.

Stacks also makes Bitcoin a productive asset in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) without third-party custodians or asset wrapping on non-Bitcoin chains. Stacks helps Bitcoin evolve from a store of value to a platform for decentralized financial products by anchoring on its security and employing a token-based incentive system. This approach allows Bitcoin’s network to innovate without the complexity and security risks of programmability straight to the core protocol.

Stacks is creating a scalable ecosystem that uses Bitcoin as a decentralized monetary base to secure financial applications and software. This layered approach keeps Bitcoin simple while Stacks adds enhanced programmability, making Bitcoin the foundation for more decentralized applications and financial services.

What is the STX?

The STX token incentivizes and funds network participants to protect and build the layer-2 platform in the Stacks ecosystem. Unlike Bitcoin, which is only a store of wealth and decentralized currency, STX supports Stacks’ unique features and economic incentives. Proof of Transfer (PoX) allows STX holders to “stack” their tokens to receive Bitcoin incentives and secure the network. Participants maintain Stacks blockchain integrity and indirectly support Bitcoin’s layer-2 ecosystem by committing STX, combining Bitcoin’s security paradigm with additional economic incentives for developers and consumers.

One unique approach STX improves the Stacks network is by aligning incentives between the two networks through the PoX mechanism. STX holders participate in a consensus process using Bitcoin’s Proof-of-Work security as a secondary chain through PoX. This increases Stacks’ decentralised architecture and allows the network to reward STX holders with Bitcoin, strengthening Bitcoin-Stacks economic ties. This arrangement promotes network security without Proof-of-Work mining, which wastes resources and complicates things.

STX fuels transactions and smart contracts on Stacks, helping the ecosystem develop. STX pays transaction fees when users engage with dApps or start smart contract operations on the network, keeping it running and safe. The ecosystem discourages spam and encourages efficient use by charging transaction processing, like Ethereum does for gas. STX is essential to the network’s functionality and usability, enabling Stacks’ goal of growing Bitcoin’s use cases without compromising security or decentralisation.

By offering staking and investment, STX expands the developer and user community. Its economic design encourages developers to build apps since STX rewards offset platform deployment expenses and efforts. STX allows investors and ecosystem members to engage in Bitcoin’s layer-2 expansion, establishing economic value related to the network’s performance. STX supports infrastructure and economic growth, making the Stacks ecosystem a flexible, Bitcoin-powered environment for decentralized innovation.

What Makes Stacks Unique?

Stacks looks to take what makes Bitcoin so powerful, and extends it with additional functionality, without needing to fork or change the original Bitcoin blockchain.

It does this by connecting directly with the Bitcoin blockchain through its proof-of-transfer (PoX) consensus mechanism, which has miners pay in BTC to mint new Stacks (STX) tokens. Moreover, STX token holders can also stack (not stake) their tokens to earn Bitcoin as a reward.

Stacks introduces a new smart contract programming language known as Clarity, which is designed to be both secure and easy to build with thanks to its unambiguous syntax. This smart contract-centric programming language is also used by the Algorand (ALGO) blockchain.

On top of this, Stacks was the first cryptocurrency to receive SEC qualification for a sale in the United States, allowing it to launch a $28 million Reg A+ sale cash offering for its STX tokens in July 2019.

STX Tokenomics

In order to promote ecosystem growth and development, the Stacks STX token was introduced in 2021 with a genesis block that produced an initial supply of 1.32 billion tokens. A 2017 token sale was used to distribute 32% of this initial allocation, with the remaining tokens going to the Stacks Foundation (15%), Hiro PBC (25%), and the Stacks ecosystem fund (28%). In order to maintain long-term ecosystem sustainability, this allocation model was designed to guarantee balanced funding for development, community projects, and operating expenses.

Every block sees the minting of new STX tokens, which are mostly used as prizes for miners and stackers. The inflation rate is originally set at 10% and is expected to drop by 0.5% annually until it reaches a stable rate of 2.5%. The goal of encouraging early adopters while maintaining a limited token supply for the future is in line with this steady inflation decrease. This approach will result in a final STX supply of roughly 2.04 billion over a 20-year timeframe, offering a stable tokenomics framework to encourage network engagement and sustain a token ecosystem.