The Nakamoto Upgrade is the most hyped release in the history of Stacks.
For years, DeFi here has been limited by the speed of Bitcoin blocks, making it difficult to convince degens to come and trade.
For example, whenever you wanted to swap from one token to another, or deposit a token to earn some yield, you had to wait around for 30+ minutes sometimes for it to go through.
This is not the future of finance. Especially when chains like Solana are able to process transactions in seconds (despite their security tradeoffs).
<10 Second Transactions
That all changes now.
With the Nakamoto Upgrade, the sky's the limit as far as transaction speeds go.
The current benchmark that Stacks is aiming for is <10 seconds per transaction, this will put us in competition with the largest, most successful smart contract blockchains out there today.
What’s the killer difference though? Bitcoin finality.
Bitcoin Finality
A blockchain is just an Excel Sheet if it is not secure.
Every transaction on the Stacks network is now as secure as a Bitcoin transaction.
In order to reverse a transaction on Stacks, you would have to reorganize Bitcoin itself. All things considered, this is the most important unlock for the ecosystem.
It can be argued that users don’t care about security, but this is simply not true. Long-term, the most secure blockchains will be the most resilient to attacks, attracting the most value over time.
Developers will want to build on top of blockchains that prioritize security AND speed - Stacks is doing both.
What’s Next?
Nakamoto is a work in progress.
It becomes clear when you submit a deposit into Zest Protocol and still have to wait for a Bitcoin block to confirm.
There are optimizations being made over the coming weeks to get us closer to the <10 second sweet spot. In the meantime, the Stacks core devs are prioritizing security over everything else.
There are some incredibly exciting things being built on the network parallel to the Nakamoto improvements:
- sBTC - a 1:1 Bitcoin asset that lives on the Stacks network
- Bitflow Exchange launching their runes bridge and AMM
- Zest Protocol’s BTCz and new asset listings soon
Stacks is a slow burn. We have a small, dedicated community that is focused on one goal: making Bitcoin more productive.
Despite the speedbumps, we are stronger than ever and will continue on our journey to become the zestiest protocol on the zestiest blockchain. One zestie at a time.
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And as usual, stay zesty🍊
