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Scaling Solution ‘Stacks’ Pumps on Promise of Bringing Smart Contracts to Bitcoin

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Despite a tumultuous 48 hours for the digital asset sector, many asset prices have already begun to rebound, showing a promising level of resiliency.  A select few however, have not only rebounded over this time, but thrived as recent events highlighted the importance of certain endeavours.  One such example is the Bitcoin scaling solution ‘Stacks (STX)', which looks to bring smart contracts to the worlds largest and safest network.

The Goal of Stacks

Traditionally, Bitcoin has not been associated with smart contract capabilities and decentralized applications (dApps).  This resulted in Ethereum's rise to prominence, as it was able to offer increased functionality at a time when Bitcoin could not.  Over the years, scores of plucky start-ups have attempted to supplant Ethereum as the top offering of its kind, to no avail.  All the while, Bitcoin continued to grow its network, boasting unrivaled security, stability, and reliability.

Now, projects like Stacks look to change the long-standing idea that Bitcoin cannot support smart contracts by doing just that.  Functioning as a hybrid layer 1/2 network, Stacks leverages a coding language known as ‘Clarity', to simultaneously leverage the aforementioned traits on offer by the Bitcoin network while increasing its functionality.

While we won't get in to the details of how it achieves this, the goal of Stacks is simple – bring scalability and smart contracts to the Bitcoin network.  If successful in its goal, a Bitcoin/Stacks combo has the potential to make the vast majority of competing projects obsolete.

Increasing Attention

When top projects like Polygon (MATIC), Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), and more, were recently labelled as securities by the SEC, it was only a matter of time before investors took note of projects that offer similar capabilities without the regulatory ambiguity.

As Stacks indicates on its site, the project is an ecosystem that is, “…very decentralized with many independent entities working on it”.  What this means is that with the lack of a common enterprise, Stacks looks much less likely to be labelled a security than many other projects boasting smart-contract capabilities.

It is important to note that this is not the only catalyst for migration towards Bitcoin.  Over past weeks, interest in Bitcoin based ordinals has skyrocketed, also highlighting the need for scaling solutions.  This combined with the regulatory limbo in which certain projects now find themselves are each no doubt playing a role in the increased popularity of Stacks and similar offerings.

Price Movement of STX

At time of writing, STX tokens are boasting gains of ~16% over a 24hr period.  Interestingly this rapid rise coincides with news breaking of the SEC charging Coinbase with a litany of securities violations, labelling various top projects as securities along the way.

CoinGecko – 24hr STX/USD

On the back of this price gain, STX now finds itself on the cusp of cementing itself as a top-50 project by marketcap, with significant room to grow.  For now, the majority of trading volume involving STX is occurring on Binance, with popularity rising on both OKX and KuCoin as well.

To learn more about this project and where to purchase STX, make sure to check out our Investing in Stacks guide.

Alternative Scaling Solutions

It should be noted that Stacks is not the only Bitcoin scaling solution under development.  In fact, despite its recent rise in popularity, the project is still playing catchup to the most popular option – the Lightning Network.  Then there is also the Liquid Network on offer by Blockstream.

Regardless of which solution achieves dominance, the future for Bitcoin is bright as the dilemma forcing a choice between scalability, security, and decentralization becomes a moot point.

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