theBlock Research Pins Stacks as a Key Player in the BTC Network

Bitcoin is widely considered to be the world’s leading cryptocurrency. However, builders can use this technology to develop powerful applications, protocols, products, and services. Several ecosystems emerged on top of Bitcoin over the years, and Stacks continues to note tremendous growth. The Ongoing Evolution of Stacks Many people may recall Stacks under its former name of Blockstacks. It is a smart contract layer for Bitcoin tethered to the Bitcoin blockchain through a cross-chain consensus mechanism. The hash of the Stacks state is embedded into every Bitcoin network block. More importantly, Stacks is not limited to Bitcoin’s scaling – or lack thereof – as it relies on a different approach to process transactions. Under the Stacks hood, the network relies on two types of blocks: Anchor blocks: used to tether Stacks to Bitcoin Microblocks: powering applications requiring high throughput and low latency. One of the emerging partners through Stacks is Hiro, an organization focused on building Bitcoin applications. They, too, see merit in further scaling Stacks through Hyperchains and increasing the throughput even further. Hiro proposes using trusted federated hyperchains to evolve into a trustless hyperchain solution. Stacks Adoption Increases Rapidly The approach by Stacks immediately gained traction since launching its smart contracts in 2021. That resulted in a Total Value Locked increase following...