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Stacks AMA
Recorded: May 27, 2025 Duration: 0:35:57Space Recording
Short Summary
The recent Stacks Town Hall unveiled a transformative draft SIP proposal aimed at enhancing the ecosystem's growth and operational efficiency. Key highlights include a successful fundraise by Insignia, plans for increased token emissions, and a focus on builder grants to attract new developers, all signaling a robust future for Stacks in the crypto landscape.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Hello, hello everybody. following a very special edition of a Stacks Town Hall, talking about the building on Bitcoin, Stacks in 2025,
and really how Stacks is taking things to the next level
and how we are looking to grow and accelerate the greater ecosystem on the heels of,
one, SBTC withdrawals kicking off a few short weeks ago,
two, the release of the technical DeFi updated roadmaps, in addition to several key factors of proposals around dual staking, value accrual around STX and SBTC, and what that DeFi
ecosystem will look like in the second half of 2025 and beyond, as well as two more major your milestones. SBTC taking in 2,000 new Bitcoin in over a couple hours to take SBTC deposits from
3,000 to over 5,000 BTC as one of the largest in the entire Bitcoin ecosystem. And last but not
least, and that includes what I'm about to mention here in just a moment,
we just got off of a big shout out as well to the Insignia team on their announcement of a
fundraise. The team just announced the completion of a fundraise. A shout out to the entire team
at Insignia and all that you guys have done around multi-sig and for the greater infrastructure of Bitcoin as well.
That said, everyone, we are excited to continue today's discussion.
We just had a major announcement of a draft SIP, Stacks Improvement Proposal, SIP.
And this proposal provided a lot of where this ecosystem is going to go. It summarized a
little bit about what was talked in last week's discussion around roadmaps and technical upgrades,
codenamed today as the Satoshi upgrades, but it also covered how Stacks is positioning to grow,
scale, and dominate just like Bitcoin in the future as well.
And I brought on some of the best and the brightest from around the industry to kind of give us
their views, their thoughts, and also answer some of your questions as well on today's AMA.
So that said, Alex, I see you on here. Can you give us a quick TLDR on the SIP proposal and
the draft of what was just talked about in the town hall? And then Maniba, I'd like to get your
thoughts as well. But Alex, why don't you kick us off? All right. I don't know if I can do it quick.
There, as was pointed out, there is a lot in this one. So first off, number one, I'd encourage you,
it is posted. I just went inside. It is posted live on the Stacks forum. You can go take it a read there. I'm sure someone will be, I know
there's some amazing community members on this call, and I assume one of you guys is going to do
an amazing breakdown Twitter thread on it. So if you don't feel like reading what I think is probably
a 10 page plus document, you can wait for that one. But yes the tldr on it is uh we want to compete we want to be a top 10 ecosystem we want to be the
home of the bitcoin economy and to do that we need a streamlined uh operation where there's like
one organization who is responsible for core protocol development you know making sure that
like we're approaching the
chain from a product centric perspective and the engineering is happening on that's doing marketing,
that's doing incentives, that's doing all these things while, of course, still keeping the open
decentralized ecosystem and governance that's going on. So number one, it proposes creating that.
And number two, it says, great, if we're going to compete at this level, if we are going to be a top 10 ecosystem, you know, Stacks has raised $80 million in its entire existence.
There are places, I think the entire budget of the Ethereum Foundation or Solana Foundation's more than that in a single year.
And so it says, hey, we're going to need some more resources to do that.
And so we're going to mint some tokens up front, about 100 million that'll be used for working capital that will not come to market.
Those just get deployed into things like DeFi, into funds, into stuff like that. And again,
it's all listed in the SIP. And then two, we're going to increase emissions from 3.5 to 5.75%
for the next five years, which as a point of reference, the average, sorry, not the average, because average would be higher, but the median top 50 crypto ecosystem inflates 10% per year.
And so we're still going to be at like half of what the median is for crypto, but we're
going to create an endowment that allows us to fund things like core protocol development,
like business development, like DeFi incentives, like security.
Obviously, security is a huge thing for our builders.
And it's actually going to set us up to be the thing that we all want to be and to bring
the Bitcoin economy in the way that we know it can be on the StaxL2.
Alex, that was a perfect TLDR.
And thank you.
Anything to add?
And then we've got a few builders and core ecosystem members who weren't able to be on the town hall.
I want to make sure that they get a few minutes in.
And then again, everyone, we will break shortly after recapping with those who weren't able to attend the town hall to answer your questions as well.
So do get those ready.
Maneem, anything else to add?
And thank you, Alex.
Yeah, I think I would just plus one a lot of what Alex said. to get those ready. Manif, anything else to add? And thank you, Alex.
Yeah, I think I would just plus one a lot of what Alex said.
And I think Tyco actually put it
on the previous town hall,
that there's going from zero to one
and then going from like one to n.
And I think the zero to one,
we can just feel it in our bones
that that's been done
right the core core technology is there the core product is there the builders are there the the
big planes are flowing right they're coming in and in a traditional tech startup i know we're in a
very different world is the open protocol but in a traditional tech startup if you get half a billion
dollars of Bitcoin deposited into
your technology, you would go out and raise a massive growth round. That's what would happen
in a traditional tech startup. But over here, this is very different. But I think it's almost
similar to that, that the ecosystem is saying, we are ready for growth. All of the next things
are going to be focused on growth initiatives,
DeFi incentives.
There are so many things that we were just not doing in the ecosystem due to the regulatory landscape or historic SEC offerings.
And coincidentally, all of this is also lining up, right?
Like the ecosystem is now decentralized enough.
The U.S. administration has changed. also lining up right like the ecosystem is now decentralized enough the u.s admission
u.s administration has changed and you know there are opportunities to actually go out
and engage in you know marketing activities growth activities outside of the u.s globally
capital markets which is like a big thing right like if you want to be a home of bitcoin defi
of course it's both on-chain capital markets and in the trading markets as well.
And that we have never, never played a role.
So it's a time to go from one to one.
So throw more fuel on the fire.
And I think one thing that I really liked is this general attitude.
There are a lot of really smart people in this ecosystem, more dedicated, mission driven.
But also, nobody wants to be a part of something that's sort of like a small or a
mid-sized ecosystem right people want to go big or go home right so you want this big shot uh an
aggressive roadmap an aggressive target throw the right amount of capital and operational efficiency
at it and then that excites the top tower that tells people like here here we are thinking big
we're going to knock it out of the park.
And I think that just re-energizes everyone in the ecosystem.
And I think this is what this structure is about.
We are not talking about a small thing.
We are talking about a big thing because we have big breakthroughs and we want to be a top-head project.
Absolutely agree. And Rena, coming to you, first thoughts, fresh off the town hall, the draft of the SIP proposal is now live. What are your first thoughts and thinking just off the cuff? And then I got a question, follow up for you real quick too.
I mean, I couldn't be more excited for what is coming in the SIP and what's really going to fuel and unlock DeFi in particular in the SIP.
Last week, we had the town hall where I got to debut our DeFi roadmap.
And a lot of these initiatives to be a billion dollars on chain before the end of the year will be fueled by the SIPP. And so I think it really streamlines operations and the requisite capital to bring
brand new LPs, builder grants, really institutions that have never participated in Stax DeFi.
The SIPP kind of addresses all those concerns. I love it. And quick follow-up for you, but
for all the builders up here, I would welcome your thoughts on this question
that we had live during the town hall. So I want to make sure it gets brought up. But
Rena, I want to start with you. A question was asked, what's the future of consumer-based
applications on Stacks? Like being able to use Stacks as a payment gateway or around
PayFi to do day-to-day activities and tasks. So an evolution of what we have talked about around DeFi,
what do you see now the future can be
with this SIP potentially being approved
and all of this growth coming into the ecosystem?
I mean, I think the future is really bright
for consumer payments with Stax.
We have SBTC that went through the hard cap last week.
5,000 Bitcoin is in our system.
We can compete directly with Lightning payments, but we're cheaper, faster, and better.
And even more so than that, we actually have things that you can do with your SBTC payments.
We have really amazing builders on the space right now where you can do DeFi loans via
granite or zest. You can take out different styles of positions for a stablecoin backed by Bitcoin
through Hermetica. There are so many things we can do with consumer apps and Stacks is really
going to be the rails that is built behind solid money like Bitcoin,
but stacks us the rail that makes it consumer forward every single day.
I love it.
That's a great segue over to Diego.
Thank you, Rena.
Diego, on the Bitflow side, again, fresh off the town hall,
what are your thoughts? What are you guys feeling at Bitflow as a team of what this SIP proposal could mean, not just for you guys, but also for the greater ecosystem that you've been building in for a couple of years now?
Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Val.
It's exciting. And a couple of years is almost close to four now.
And I know Stacks is almost six. So Stacks has been the last six years building this foundation and I love what's on the SIP as well, which is the narrative from tech to traction. The infrastructure is ready. Now we drive users liquidity, adoption and real world impact on Bitcoin. It has been years in the lab.
It's been battle tested.
We've been part of that Bitcoin grade security.
And now the machines are running.
It's time to flywheel is to turn.
And for us, from a builder perspective, there's a lot.
I mean, this is a massive quality of life upgrade for the Stacks builder.
It's not only unified execution, which I think is very important for us builders, but also the sustainable funding.
And on top of that, you got all to have sort of an operation-focused entity
that's going to absorb the talent across the ecosystem, Hero Foundation, Bitcoin L2 Labs.
It's going to reduce the sort of friction that we have so that more builders can collaborate.
And with Biflo, like the DeFi liquidity, we all know it's a chicken and egg.
We need liquidity. We need TVL. And we need users, but we need incentives as well. So early stage support for DeFi protocols is key to bootstrapping TVL to direct deployments in stack native vaults as well, such as stacks and SDBCC and builders get this real liquidity support. Users get better rates.
And builders get this real liquidity support. Users get better rates. And the other thing that I'm super excited is also the exchange listing, the SIP10 integration support across centralized exchanges and also wallets such as Ledger, for example. And again, it reduced frictions to onboarding users.
users. And then the other part that we can't never forget is security. We have a dedicated
having a dedicated budget to security bounties audits, experts, cyber security allocated to
white hat engagements, protocol audits, all of that. It's been a big burden on builders.
You guys know that's probably one of the highest expense when building a protocol like this.
We want to be safe.
We want our users to be safe.
We want to have everything in place. We want to have professional-grade plans and apps and infrastructure that we can trust and then that we feel comfortable and we can rest our heads in a pillow at night and go to sleep.
go to sleep um and coming from a marketing background the marketing kol campaigns that
this is also going to open up to it's going to allow us as builders to tap into this ecosystem
level marketing event support influence and activations branding etc educational material
there's there's a lot i mean um it's a little bit overwhelming for the user to read it all
It's a little bit overwhelming for the user to read it all.
I think that there's one, there's something for everyone in this September.
Agreed, agreed, agreed.
Everyone, I see your questions coming in.
So give me just a few more minutes to get some perspectives from some of the builders that are taking time out of their day to join us.
And then I will start bringing people up as well from the community.
So appreciate you.
See you.
Just keep requesting or put your hand up and we'll bring you up here shortly.
Rubis, I believe you were the first Twitter thread or Twitter poster that I saw during
the town hall.
What are your raw thoughts?
What has you feeling this sip as it comes out?
Yeah, thanks for having me up.
As a long time, you know, Stacks supporters,
particularly the last kind of like 18 months or two years,
building on Stacks is absolutely an understatement
to say this is huge.
It is a complete and utter game changer
for the whole ecosystem in terms of liquidity and support. The two big problems that Stacks had were funding
and operations. This solves both of them. And I love the whole phrase of go big or go home,
we're now playing to win. The base and the foundation has been built over many years.
There is a real genuine community here. It's not been bought.
It's not been like a lot of these new L2s that pop up and provide grants
and fake volume, et cetera.
This is a real community that's been built up over a period of time,
a long period of time, with real support.
And this is just going to make things so much easier for everyone,
so much cleaner, so much quicker.
And yeah, I think the proof is in the pudding.
The tech is here, the community is here, and now it's time to go big and go for the glory shot of the top 10, definitely.
I couldn't agree more.
Go big or go home.
Take the Bitcoin bet, as you will. Mitchell, it is a pleasure to have you on today's AMAs. You are extremely busy at the foundation, so I do want to make sure you get a few comments in. I mean, fresh off of the town hall, any immediate reaction? Then I have a quick question for you.
off of the town hall, any immediate reaction?
Then I have a quick question for you.
No, no, I'm just excited to, again,
like I mentioned on the town hall itself,
just eliminating any barriers, any friction,
any things that can slow us down
and enable me, my team, others,
whoever joins and leads the endowment
and the new ops entity to just help builders unencumbered.
I mean, it's just like use your imagination and look at some of the things that we've accomplished
as an ecosystem on so little with so many difficulties in our way.
And yet we figured out how to make that happen.
So now I think we get to take all that we've learned and the ways that we've sort of sharpened ourselves and figured
those things out and now just pour a bunch more resources on it. So that's for me what I'm feeling
and I think is just really exciting if you really sit down and think about using, you know,
use your imagination on going from having all these blockers and difficulties to not having them and on top of that, having more capital.
It really opens up the floodgates.
And Niamh also mentioned, you know, a traditional tech company gets a significant amount of capital.
It's a big growth phase for them.
And we are unique that we have, you know have these two different routes that we're going.
We've got over 5,000 BTC on one.
So AMA and others who couldn't join are pushing DeFi above and beyond.
That's growing.
And then we're talking about this proposal that will put additional capital along with other upgrades and push that roadmap even further.
I mean, it's a trifecta, if you will, that go big, go home.
input on this proposal so that anyone who does, they have any comments, they have any
suggestions, what is that process they can go through?
And again, audience, I have questions come through.
I've got questions myself for the stage, and then I'll bring everyone up as well.
But Mitchell.
Kyle, if you could repeat your question, I kind of got every other word there for a minute.
Maybe the Vegas Wi-Fi is coming at you.
It likely is.
We hit the 777 jackpot winner, cut out my audio. That said, what is...
I can hear you great now. Hit me.
Perfect. Perfect. All right. Well, that said, what is the process for the community to provide
input, provide feedback, comments, questions, and suggestions? What does that look like for
those who this might be their first time going through?
Totally. No, that's a great question. We don't want to take that for granted because there's always new people in the community.
So number one, I would say the best thing to do is engage on the forum.
Forum is going to be the place where all the authors are going to be the most present.
I think obviously there'll be conversation on social media, Twitter and other
places. I think it's less of a guarantee that that is always going to be seen. There's just so much
all over the place. I think if you have something refined and there's a thought that you really want
to express, the forum is the place to go. So that's number one. There's really no rules in terms of like what
you're allowed to provide feedback on or how, you know, our one ask is maybe just be nice, you know.
A lot of authors put a lot of time into the SIP and, you know, there's always respectful ways to
ask questions or to probe at something or to disagree with one another. So I mentioned that, you know, kind of follow the community code of conduct.
Otherwise, you know, there will be future sessions as well.
So we'll have more AMAs like this, maybe smaller groups, any of the working groups as well.
So big shout out to, by the way, to the Stacks DeFi working group.
Big shout out, by the way, to the Stacks DeFi working group.
They meet every Thursday.
They meet every Thursday.
And again, a lot of the SIP is based on them and other chats with other builders and other
working groups and so forth.
So I would say that just given the magnitude of this proposal, just about every working
group and community meeting over the next couple of weeks as we sort of work through
this feedback and then, you know,
potentially move toward a vote would be a good place to engage. And then if you don't get an
answer you're looking for there, you know, any of the authors that are in the SIP are potentially
good to reach out to, though I think it's most beneficial if you just, again, do it in public
on the forum. If you have a question, probably someone else has the same question. Yeah. And then,
so after we get through that review and commentary period, it's pretty simple. It'll
work like any other SIP. We'll, again, we'll lock in the voting dates. We'll, big shout out to Mike
Cohen. We'll use stx.eco to vote again. So it's the same process that if you voted before, you
will all be familiar with. Yeah. And then as that moves forward, there's some other things that you can find in the
SIP that are specifically called out as sort of some next steps and action items.
One of the things I'll call out is, you know, there's a committee to select the key holders
for the endowment.
So that's something we want community input on and sort of nominations and figuring all
that out.
So I think that covers it for now. But yeah, just
if you remember one thing from all I said, jump to the forum, leave your comments,
and someone will come along and answer it and we'll move the conversation forward.
Thank you, Mitchell. We did just pin a tweet up at the top as well to give you a little bit more linkage to that as well for those listening.
Jack, I want to come over to you. Feedback, thoughts, raw off the AMA. What are you thinking?
GM, everybody. This is a love letter to the community, to be honest. Like, if you've been
in this space for a while, i've had a chance to read through
this sip almost everything we've ever asked and addressed as a community is being addressed in
this sip so you can liken stacks and its journey so far into a boxer who is like fighting in his
match with one hand tied behind his back because, you know, he's just trying to do everything right.
And that's one of the reasons I'm so proud to be a part of this community
because Stacks does try to do things the right way.
And our competitors have not faced these same challenges.
And so that's manifested on the community side is you know when marketing when
moon when lambo you know why can't this happen now and this and that and so this sip shows that
you know everyone has worked very hard to find solutions and you know people who've been around
a long time know that you know i've been sayingacks is a top five token coin since I've been
here. It's just too obvious. And this is the fuel that allows that to happen. This is massively,
massively bullish. You know, if you look at that roadmap that came out last week, I was on cloud
nine, right? Like, it's like, oh yeah, this,
this is what's up. This is, this is going to make it happen. And the roadmap's like a supercharger
for the engine of the stacks machine. And this is the oxygen that powers that supercharger to
really push this into high gear. So yes, by all means on the community side, we have to be involved because this is a decentralized community.
And we are the best community in this space by far.
Stacks has something that no one else can buy.
Believe me, if other ventures could take and create their own Stacks community via funds, via a raise, I don't even
know how you put a price tag on it. It would be impossible. And now that's one of the hardest
challenges. And we have this organically. That's one of the blessings as to how we grew like we
grew. It was very organic and over time. And now it's time time now we can supercharge all of this we have the tech
stack we have the best layer in the game and now we can actually make things happen in a way that
we haven't been able to before so um in short i am i am super bullish on this i'm very excited
and um yes we'll we'll be making a lot of content around this
because this is one of the single most important events that has transpired in my time here.
This is right up there with, you know, SBTC. It's right up there with Nakamoto. It's up there. So
extremely excited and, you know, just so much respect and love for
everyone who's put this together and on behalf of the community you know thanks for for listening
and thanks for hearing us and let's do this let's go win i'm with alex like we don't want to be
second best we don't have to be second best let's just knock this out the park
jack i put me in the ring coach my goodness i'll just add a quick comment like
this was such amazing to hear and we literally some of us when we did the groundwork for coming
up the sip we literally made a list of everything that people have been complaining about which is
a bottleneck something we want
to improve and we're like let's make an exhaustive list and then make sure the proposal addresses
everything so it's so amazing to see someone recognize that look everything that we've been
asking for is literally in this like this this is it i couldn't agree more and jack
I couldn't agree more. Jack, thank you. I feel more inspired listening to you than the full town hall. That is words of kindness and gratitude for sure. around the roadmap. As Manim mentioned, the community listened, the community spoke,
the community heard, and the community put forward what was said. If you haven't done so already,
I encourage you to go back and watch last week's town hall, but also read the roadmaps that were
given on the DeFi side by Rina on behalf of the DeFi Working Group and then also by Adriano on the technical side
on behalf of Bitcoin L2 Labs as well.
So definitely check out those roadmaps as well.
That said, I got one more person I want to get comments from
and then we're bringing everybody up to hear from you as well.
Peace, love, music.
Your thoughts.
Good morning, guys.
And yeah, hard to follow the legend of stacks legend and purveyor of amazing analogies jack benswich um but uh who's actually in the same house as me around the
corner in another room i was gonna ask i heard a little woohoo in the background there i didn't
know if jack was was the one commenting but it sounds like excitement in the room.
Yeah, I got GPSC with me.
I got Rosar with me in the room here as well.
Say hi, guys.
Hi, guys.
And yeah, I mean, I don't think there's anything I can say that hasn't already been said.
And I'm super bullish about this development.
I'm very, very excited about this step forward.
I think we also, it's clear that Stacks has been paying attention to what the community has been
asking for and has really very, very carefully and meticulously taken steps to address that.
But it also kind of had to happen on this timeline. Stacks is doing
it right. There's so many things that have been delivered over and over again in the last six
months. It's insane how many steps Stacks has been taking. And this is just another step. I mean,
it's like, how can you guys keep coming up with more and more bullish stuff to
come out with on a weekly basis? I can't keep up with the news on all of this stuff. It's really
amazing. And I'm super excited about it. I'm very encouraged. I do have, I mean, I think that
there's a lot to unpack as far as how the governance model will work
and everything.
It's all very new.
So, I mean, there's a lot to iron out with it, but I think that it's a huge step in the
right direction.
And so the best thing about Stacks is proof of transfer mechanism and how that ties the
ecosystem to Bitcoin directly and all that can be built off of that. The second best thing
about Stacks is the community and all of the people here working together and driving things
forward together. And this is just going to be a huge force multiplier to that effort that's
already here at the grassroots level. So I'm just super excited about this announcement,
the endowment and what that potential, it adds to the growth of the ecosystem. I could not be
more bullish on Stacks than I am right now. Thank you so much. Peace, love music and shout
out to everyone in the room. Rosar, before I get to you, Peace Love Music mentioned one thing, and I do want to ask Lior a quick question.
Lior, are there already specific plans on how the potential new resources could be distributed across the ecosystem,
such as grant programs or other initiatives to support builders?
programs or other initiatives to support builders? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, as you already
Yeah, absolutely.
noted, this SIP is obviously very early and still in draft form. And there's still a lot to be
determined in terms of the governance process, in terms of how, you know, the bylaws will be
structured. So, you know, I would say TBD in terms of a lot of the details. But what I'm really excited about is how, you know, as Maneem mentioned, like identifying all of the key areas that, you know, are really of high importance and concern for all community members.
for the whole ecosystem.
So user incentives, liquidity programs,
adding additional funding for core development
to unlock a lot of the big initiatives
for the Satoshi upgrades, developer grants
to get funding to existing developers
that have been doing some great work in the Stacks ecosystem,
but also to attract new developers into this ecosystem
because that is really the
only way that we can have meaningful and organic growth and just a couple other areas as well i
think will be super high impact you know just more marketing and adoption so we can have more higher
value campaigns to drive more exposure and eyeballs to stacks as well as business development you know
we need to make sure that we pursue high value integrations, whether it's with stable coins, bridges, wallets. We're kind of at the phase
where we just need more distribution. The tech is in a great place, especially after the launch of
SBTC and the Nakamoto upgrade. Not to say that we can rest on our laurels. There's still a very
ambitious new product roadmap that I think will touch a lot of pain points
that a lot of Bitcoin holders are feeling.
But yeah, we just need more wood to add to the fire
to, as we've been saying, accelerate this flywheel of growth.
Absolutely.
Rosar, comments, questions, what you got?
Hey, Rosar's sharing my mic, sorry. Yeah, mic sorry yeah yeah okay no worries we got a lot
of feedback if we don't uh yeah first off just i want to say like this is amazing i think this is
everything we've all been been hoping for and asking for and working for uh you know with our
own projects and our own time and we're just you know super enthusiastic about it like super
bullish on it super excited to see where it goes um I didn't really, I mean, I guess I do have some
questions. It's not always easy to put them into a quick, quick, you know, quick format since I
know there's a stop a lot still to.
