According to reports from Bitcoin L2Labs, the organization leading the development of Bitcoin Stacks layer-2, the launch of sBTC has been made official.
The new programmable resource, guaranteed by BTC at a 1:1 ratio, will help to enhance the chain’s DeFi ecosystem, introducing new yield opportunities.
This news comes a few weeks after the success of the Nakamoto update, which improved the scalability of Stacks.
All the details below.
Stacks announces the official launch of sBTC on mainnet.
Today, Bitcoin L2 Labs, an organization focused on the core development of Stacks, revealed to the public the launch of the sBTC coin on the mainnet.
Let’s talk about a programmable asset, guaranteed by 1:1 collateral in BTC, which brings the decentralization of the world’s number 1 crypto outside of its main structure.
sBTC is guaranteed by a network of institutional signatories that reduce the need for trust between individual entities. The token code is open-source and transparent, publicly verifiable by anyone. Its security is offered by the hash power of the L1 Bitcoin, which today is considered the most impenetrable network in the world with a power of 794 million TH/s.
For those who do not know, Stacks is a layer-2 solution born in 2021, which allows smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApp) to use Bitcoin as a secure base layer.
The launch of sBTC represents a major milestone for the project, as it unlocks a new approach for the cryptographic economy of Bitcoin.
The asset can be used in loans through lending protocols like Zest, or for decentralized trading on DEX like Bitflow and ALEX.
Other utilities concern the creation of AI agents on the aiBTC platform, in line with the current market trends.
The launch of the coin on the Stack mainnet is slightly delayed compared to what was planned in the roadmap, which mentioned a debut as early as September.
New DeFi opportunities for the Bitcoin community with sBTC
The initial phase of the launch of sBTC on the mainnet of Stacks introduces deposit-only functionality with an initial limit of 1,000 BTC.
This means that users will be able to mint the asset by locking their Bitcoin as collateral liquidity, until the maximum limit is reached.
This limit will gradually increase to integrate more users as i prelievi sBTC diventeranno disponibili nel primo trimestre del 2025.
In the new year, the protocol will progress towards a completely open and permissionless set of signatories, adding new security features.
In the meantime, depositors will receive up to approximately 5% annual rewards in Bitcoin, paid in sBTC, simply by holding the asset on the layer-2 Stacks.
Currently, Stacks has a TVL of 328 BTC, ranking ninth in the list of layer-2s associated with the orange coin.
As reiterated by the project team, the launch of sBTC on the mainnet allows users of the Bitcoin ecosystem to leverage their resources in innovative and productive ways.
The currency can be used in a wide range of decentralized activities, secured by the PoW of the main network and with interests paid in BTC equivalent.
This milestone introduces new rich opportunities DeFi, still unexplored for a large part of the crypto community.
Here is what Muneeb Ali, founder of Stacks, reported on this matter:
“Unlike the BTC block in Proof of Stake systems, sBTC is fully expressive and enables an on-chain bitcoin economy. sBTC can be implemented in a variety of applications such as decentralized lending, DEX, AI robots, etc., and it is the only programmable bitcoin asset that inherits 100% of the bitcoin hash power security.”
Andre Serrano, product manager at Bitcoin L2 Labs, continued his colleague’s speech by adding that:
“With sBTC, Bitcoin becomes highly capable beyond a store of value, unlocking the full potential of BTC in decentralized applications.”
A big step forward for Stacks after the Nakamoto update
The news of the launch of sBTC comes just a few weeks after the Nakamoto update of the Stacks chain, officially activated on October 29, 2024.
The upgrade, initially scheduled for September, introduced several significant changes for the layer-2 network.
First and foremost, the scalability factor has been improved, with Stack reducing the block time to 10 seconds, making transactions significantly faster.
Consider that on L1 you have to wait 10 minutes before the approval of a block, while on Stack now it only takes a few seconds.
It is estimated that Nakamoto, who is inspired by the name of the founder of Bitcoin, has enhanced scalability by about 120 times, making Stacks one of the most performant layer-2s in the world.
Simultaneously, the purpose of tx was raised to 100% on Bitcoin, improving security by adding the irreversibility of processes on the blockchain.
The bandwidth has been increased by 5 times while at the same rate the network latency has been decreased.
The update has made the chain decidedly more suitable to support the weight of the presence of decentralized applications, facilitating the network flow.
The active users have indeed multiplied in recent months, reaching a new all-time high of 6,500 addresses.
All these changes have been designed to make the most of Bitcoin’s potential as a programmable and productive resource, without compromising its security.