stacks

The digital asset custody platform Fireblocks announced an integration partnership with the Bitcoin Layer 2 network Stacks, aiming to provide institutional users with access to native Bitcoin DeFi services. This feature is expected to officially launch in Q1 2026.This integration will allow Fireblocks' over 2,400 institutional clients to participate in the Stacks-based DeFi ecosystem without having to sell their BTC holdings. This includes STX token custody, sBTC minting and cross-chain transactions, BTC collateralized lending through Zest and Granite, as well as participation in Hermetica's BTC yield vault and Bitflow's native trading and liquidity services.

With the cryptocurrency card infrastructure company Rain completing a $250 million Series C funding round this month and reaching a valuation of nearly $2 billion, competition in the crypto payment sector around "how stablecoins are truly spent" is rapidly intensifying.Research firm Artemis data shows that the scale of cryptocurrency card payments is growing at an annualized rate of 106%, with an annualized transaction volume reaching $18 billion, close to the scale of approximately $19 billion in stablecoin peer-to-peer transfers. Artemis researcher Patrick Kim expects that by the end of this year, cryptocurrency cards will become the primary retail payment scenario for stablecoins.Currently, this "payment stack battle" is unfolding along three main paths: first, the full-stack issuance model. Rain, in collaboration with Hong Kong-based Reap, has become a principal member of Visa, integrating complete infrastructure such as card issuance and settlement, bypassing the traditional banking system. Rain disclosed that its card user base has grown 30 times year-on-year, with payment volumes increasing 38 times, and the platform now has over 200 clients.Second, the orchestration layer model. Stripe's acquisition of Bridge for $1.1 billion and the approximately $1 billion valuation of Zero Hash represents a bet by large tech and financial infrastructure companies on "chain-agnostic" solutions, helping merchants accept and settle stablecoins without concern for the underlying blockchain.Third, payment-specific blockchains. Some new players believe that general-purpose chains like Ethereum were not designed for payments. Supported by Bitfinex, Stable is set to launch a payment-focused blockchain by the end of 2025 and has already secured approximately $2 billion in pre-funding, aiming to achieve a stablecoin transfer experience without additional gas costs.Geographically, emerging markets are the core driving force behind the growth of stablecoin payments. The real payment demand in Africa, Latin America, and South Asia is significantly higher than in Europe and North America. Data shows that Visa currently holds over 90% of the on-chain card payment market share, primarily due to its support for USDC in native stablecoin settlement pilots, while USDT has not yet been incorporated into this system.

Stacks has officially announced the launch of USDCx. This is a stablecoin backed by USDC, based on Circle's new xReserve infrastructure. The launch of USDCx establishes a native and institution-grade liquidity dollar channel for the Bitcoin Layer 2 ecosystem, allowing funds to settle directly on the Bitcoin network.On the technical side, USDCx is issued through Circle's xReserve's non-custodial smart contracts, providing cryptographic proof to ensure token transparency. At the same time, this asset utilizes Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) to achieve "burn and mint" cross-chain transfers across more than 15 supported blockchains, thereby avoiding the security risks of third-party bridges and addressing the issue of liquidity fragmentation.Currently, several leading protocols within the Stacks ecosystem have begun integrating USDCx. Zest Protocol has incorporated it into its institution-grade Bitcoin credit funding pool, Granite allows users to borrow USDCx using BTC as collateral, while Bitflow has launched related deep liquidity pools and trading pairs. Additionally, mainstream Stacks wallets such as Xverse and Leather have implemented support from day one. To optimize liquidity, the official team encourages users who originally held aeUSDC (the old bridged USDC) to migrate to USDCx via the Stacks official bridge.

Stacks has announced the launch of a series of webinars called "Bitcoin Capital Markets," aimed at guiding institutional treasuries, funds, and analysts to transform Bitcoin from a passive reserve asset into a productive asset that generates yield. This series brings together experts from leading industry institutions such as Circle, Copper, Luxor, Blockdaemon, and Hivemind to discuss institutional-grade workflows and risk management solutions.So far, the first two webinars have been successfully held. The first event focused on institutional transformation, discussing the shift from static cold storage to active capital efficiency strategies, with experts analyzing risk control and security frameworks; the second webinar provided technical guidance, highlighting how to earn Bitcoin yield using Stacks layer's Dual Stacking and sBTC while maintaining self-custody, demonstrating the operational process for institutions to manage private keys while participating in DeFi.The third webinar in the series, "Yield Strategies and Productive Treasury," is scheduled to take place on January 13 at 10 AM Eastern Time, where it will delve into specific ecosystem products and how funds can manage assets through on-chain financial rails.

According to Circle's official website, Layer2 and the Bitcoin liquidity layer Stacks are now connected to Circle xReserve. Through this integration, USDCx is now available on Stacks, providing developers and users with a USDC-backed stablecoin and supporting cross-chain USDC liquidity.It is reported that USDCx is a dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by Stacks, fully backed by USDC held in Circle xReserve. xReserve is a non-custodial smart contract and interoperability infrastructure that provides deposit and minting proofs for USDCx on Stacks, enabling secure and verifiable asset issuance and cross-chain transfers.

Bitcoin Layer2 network Stacks announced a partnership with Talent Protocol to launch the weekly builder challenge in December. The theme of the first week's challenge is to develop Bitcoin applications using the new features of the Clarity 4 smart contract language.The total reward for the first week's challenge is 5000 $STX. Clarity 4 has added several features, including asset protection, contract verification, and secp256r1 signature support. The challenge is currently live on the Talent Protocol platform, and community participation is active.

Hiro Team recently announced the Beta testing of Chainhooks 2.0. Chainhooks is the development infrastructure for the Stacks and Bitcoin ecosystems.Hiro stated that Chainhooks 2.0 has been completely restructured based on the experiences from version V1, aiming to address issues such as unreliable infrastructure, high maintenance costs, and difficulty in scaling found in the old version. The new version prioritizes reliability, re-splits services, and provides a scalable architecture.The main updates in Chainhooks 2.0 include:Architecture Restructuring: Services are independently split and can be scaled independently to enhance reliability, targeting the issues of block drops and chain hook failures that occurred in version V1.Simplified Experience: A RESTful API and typed Javascript SDK are provided, allowing developers to use Webhooks with simple descriptive filters, while the service automatically handles queuing, retries, rate limiting, and observability issues.Management Features: The SDK and API offer complete lifecycle management capabilities, including creation, reading, updating, bulk enabling, and replay evaluation.Performance Improvement: Preliminary tests show an increase in throughput with lower resource consumption.Currently, access to Chainhooks 2.0 Beta is limited to 10 seats and is open for free. This Beta version currently only supports Stacks chain filtering, but the future roadmap plans to support Bitcoin filtering and will introduce a command-line tool (CLI). Hiro emphasizes that with the adoption and increasing transaction volume of sBTC, reliable tools like Chainhooks are crucial for the development of the ecosystem.

Stacks has officially completed its integration with WalletConnect, further lowering the barrier for third-party wallets to access the Stacks network.Previously, Stacks primarily implemented wallet connection and discovery mechanisms through the Stacks Connect library and the SIP-030 standard, with only a few wallets like Leather, Xverse, and Asigna providing native support. After this integration, any wallet that has connected to WalletConnect can quickly support Stacks address generation and transaction signing through the standard protocol, without the need to implement the complete Stacks Connect discovery logic.In practical use cases, users will see the new "WalletConnect" entry in the Stacks Connect pop-up, displayed alongside existing native wallet options. Developers only need to introduce the WalletConnect SDK into their projects and add a few lines of configuration code to complete the integration.This integration has been fully launched on the mainnet and is expected to expand the wallet compatibility within the Stacks ecosystem, promoting more mainstream multi-chain wallets to support STX stacking, sBTC, and Bitcoin Layer 2 applications.

The SIP-033 and SIP-034 proposals were officially activated at Bitcoin block height 923222, and the Bitcoin smart contract layer Stacks has launched the Clarity 4 smart contract language.This upgrade introduces six core features for developers: on-chain contract code hash retrieval and verification, custom postconditions for contracts, conversion of simple values to ASCII strings, retrieval of the current block timestamp, secp256r1 signature verification (supporting native key integration), and a dimensional resource term extension mechanism. These features will lower the development threshold for Bitcoin native DeFi applications, helping to build safer and more flexible financial protocols, further strengthening Stacks' position as the liquidity layer of the Bitcoin ecosystem. All transactions on Stacks are settled on the Bitcoin chain, relying on the proof-of-transfer mechanism to gain security from the Bitcoin network.

ChainCatcher news, digital asset investment platform Grayscale announced that its Grayscale® Stacks Trust (ticker: STCK) has begun trading publicly on the OTCQB® market.STCK was initially launched in May 2024 through a private placement and is now the first investment product in the U.S. to publicly quote and provide exposure to Stacks (STX). This initiative allows investors to trade STCK through regular brokerage accounts.Grayscale's Head of Products and Research Rayhaneh Sharif-Askary stated that this move expands the avenues for investors to access digital assets, enabling Bitcoin-based smart contract assets to be included in traditional portfolios. Stacks founder Muneeb Ali added that this highlights the role of Stacks in enhancing Bitcoin's programmability while maintaining the security of the Bitcoin network.It is reported that the Stacks network aims to expand and enhance the Bitcoin ecosystem through smart contracts and decentralized applications.

ChainCatcher message, according to the Web3 asset data platform RootData X tracking data, in the past 7 days, the modular chain abstract infrastructure Tria has been the project with the most new X (Twitter) top influencer followers. New influential figures following this project include 2Lambroz(@2lambro), well-known airdrop blogger Fengmi (@KuiGas), and crypto KOL Guhen.hl(@ZKSgu).In addition, the projects with the most followers from X top influencers also include Buzzing, COMBO, The Sandbox, and Stacks.

ChainCatcher message, according to the Web3 asset data platform RootData X tracking data, in the past 7 days, Bitcoin Layer2 Stacks has been the project with the most unfollows from X (Twitter) top figures. The new influential figures on X who unfollowed this project include cryptocurrency trader Loomdart(@loomdart), CryptoCondom(@crypto_condom), and Professor Suo (@hellosuoha).In addition, the project with the most unfollows from X top figures also includes Sonic.

ChainCatcher news, Gate announced the official launch of sBTC, a decentralized Bitcoin asset that is the core driving force of the Bitcoin Layer 2 network Stacks.On September 16, Stacks lifted the supply cap on sBTC, allowing for unlimited issuance, bringing deeper liquidity to Bitcoin DeFi applications.Launch Date: sBTC will officially start trading on Gate on September 22, 2025.

ChainCatcher message, according to the Web3 asset data platform RootData X tracking data, in the past 7 days, the meme coin Nobody Sausage has been the project with the most unfollows from top figures on X (Twitter). The new influential figures who unfollowed this project include crypto trader Pentoshi(@Pentosh1), cryptocurrency trader and analyst Crypto Kaleo(@CryptoKaleo), and Xu Chonglang (@cyrilxuq).In addition, the project with the most unfollows from top figures on X also includes Stacks.

ChainCatcher news, the Bitcoin Layer 2 network Stacks announced that its Total Value Locked (TVL) will exceed $600 million by August 2025, mainly driven by the growth of sBTC bridging Bitcoin assets. An independent operating entity, Stacks Labs, has been established simultaneously, with Hiro Systems CEO Alex Miller serving as the interim head, responsible for protocol development and ecosystem expansion.The Stacks Endowment fund has officially launched, allocating 500 million STX over the next five years for developer grants, DeFi incentives, and market expansion. Previously, the SIP-031 governance proposal passed with a 97.5% support rate, setting a voting record of 303 million STX.The foundation has set up a dedicated page to track the progress of Stacks Labs and the donation fund, but has not disclosed a specific funding allocation timeline.

ChainCatcher news, according to the latest developer report released by the crypto investment firm Electric Capital, the development activity of the Bitcoin ecosystem project Stacks has significantly increased, ranking among the top 20 ecosystems in the crypto industry in terms of developer activity, and leading all Bitcoin-related projects. The report shows that the monthly developer submissions for Stacks have been continuously growing, indicating its leadership in open-source development compared to similar projects.Electric Capital has been tracking developer data for thousands of blockchain projects worldwide for a long time, and its report is widely regarded as an important indicator of project development vitality. The analysis points out that developer activity represents execution and innovation, rather than market speculation.Notably, as the Token2049 summit in Singapore approaches on September 30, the Stacks team has begun to preview that important news will be released. Industry insiders believe that Stacks is transitioning from "participating in Bitcoin" to playing a key role in "shaping the future of Bitcoin."