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Stacks as the Leading Bitcoin L2 & Looking at 2024
Recorded: Dec. 7, 2023 Duration: 0:44:18Space Recording
Full Transcription
I'm your host today, Kyle Ellicott.
If this is your first time joining us here on the Crypto Internet Show, we'll get started
in just about 30 seconds as our speakers make their way to the stage.
We're waiting for one more.
But welcome wherever you may be tuning in from around the world.
So good morning, good day, good evening, good afternoon.
We're very excited to have you here today to talk about what's happening amongst Bitcoin
Layer 2s or Bitcoin L2s as they may be referred today and specifically what's happening in
the Stacks ecosystem in regards to the Bitcoin L2s.
And also looking ahead to 2024 because it is that time of the year as we are in the early
days of December looking towards 2024 and what may be coming and starting to get out those
early predictions for next year.
And again, if this is your first time joining us, what the format is, is we've got a rockstar
panel of speakers from within the Stacks community to share their thoughts and insights, answer
some questions.
We're going to have a little bit of a dialogue.
I've got a ton of good questions queued up for each and every one of them.
And if we have enough time towards the end, I'll open up the floor for some Q&A.
So if you have questions in and during the conversation, just hold them tight.
And as soon as I get the chance to, I will throw out there to raise your hand.
We'll bring one or two of you up on stage, maybe a few more if we have time to ask those
in real time.
With that said, again, I'm your host, Kyle Ellican, and welcome to this week's Crypto Internet
show.
This is our regular series talking about everything Stacks, the broader ecosystem, and building
on Bitcoin layers.
And as I mentioned earlier, we're going to be specifically talking today about L2s, Layer
2s, scaling solutions, but specific around protocols and that of Stacks and what's happening
within the Stacks ecosystem as a leading Bitcoin L2 amongst the many that are starting to release
here in Q4 2023 and also what's to come for the industry at large next year in 2024.
I'm joined by three.
We've got one more speaker who will be joining us in just a moment.
I want to make sure they get a quick 10-second introduction all around.
And then I've got some headlines.
I want to make sure everyone gets out and hears about today as a ton of news has just hit
the newsstand moments ago before we jumped on this call.
So, Kenny, a quick introduction for those who may not know you.
Hey, yeah, thanks, Kyle.
My name's Kenny.
I am the developer advocate at the Stacks Foundation.
And so I focus on developer education, community outreach, running events, workshops, all that
kind of good stuff.
Wonderful.
Andre.
Yeah.
Hey, everyone.
Andre here.
I am the SBTC resident at the Stacks Foundation focused on product and partnerships for SBTC.
It's been a busy week this week.
So excited to be here today and talk to you all the good stuff happening in the ecosystem.
Awesome.
Last but not least, Dylan.
Hey, I'm Dylan, the CEO of Bitflow Finance.
We're building a decentralized exchange for Bitcoiners.
Awesome.
And we have Jacob joining your co-founder as well.
Or excuse me.
Jacob from Hermetica, who's joining right now.
Not your co-founder, Dylan, but still a good individual to work with nonetheless.
So, all right, everyone.
Before we get started, a huge list of headlines that need to be talked about throughout the
Bitcoin ecosystem, starting from one of the most recent.
Jack Dorsey just made an announcement about Block's open hardware wallet called BitKey.
Tons of news and excitement around additional hardware wallets.
We have one here in the Stacks ecosystem, Ryder.
If you haven't checked it out, please do.
We also have some funding news.
Swan just announced a $205 million institutional division that they'll be opening up around
the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Meanwhile, is looking to do $100 million Bitcoin private credit fund.
So, a ton of capital coming towards the ecosystem.
Also, just noticed that Best in Shot announced OPI, their Open Protocol Indexer, one of the early
open source indexing clients for BRC20 and Meta protocols on Bitcoin.
Alex dropped their new bridge, the Xlink bridge.
We also had some massive investors drop theses on why they think not only Bitcoin L2s, but
Stacks and the broader Bitcoin ecosystem has a unique opportunity ahead of them, starting
now looking up towards the halving event in 2024 and beyond.
That was from Portal VC, shout out, and also to North Rock Digital and Hal Press.
Copper and Figment had some major announcements.
And with that, Andre, let's start with you on those last two pieces of news.
Figment, Copper, huge companies, very well noted and established within the Web3 ecosystem,
had some headlines around Stacks.
Talk to us a little bit about what those were this week.
Yeah, sure thing.
Well, first off, I'll start out with Figment.
So, Figment yesterday announced that they would be supporting Stacks, rolling Stacks out to
their network of clients.
But importantly, they will become a signer on the Nakamoto upgrade.
So, this was a really big unlock for Stacks this week.
I think a large part of our focus has been on the Nakamoto upgrade, working with partners
to really make sure that we have a really diverse and decentralized validator set of, so, you
know, basically signers on the network to, you know, to validate new Stacks blocks and
sign SBTC transactions.
And so, you know, Figment's going to be joining, basically offering infrastructure for that Stacks
ecosystem, basically to make it easy for users to be able to, institutional users specifically,
really as their focus, to be able to stack and participate in Stacks consensus in that way.
So, yeah, we're really excited to have them as part of the ecosystem, you know, have had the
opportunity to work closely with them over the past several months.
They've really been engaged, you know, finding ways to help to support the ecosystem.
And yeah, it was great to see that news come out yesterday.
Andre, real quick, to kind of reset the table for those who may be joining for the first time,
but also getting new to the Stacks ecosystem and may have not heard of terms like the Nakamoto
upgrade or SBTC.
Can you give us a quick 60, maybe 90 seconds?
I know it's already doing 30, so maybe a quick pitch on what those two things are and how
they're relevant to Stacks as an L2.
Yeah, sure thing.
So I know we've covered it a lot on these Twitter spaces, but the TLDR is that Stacks is in the
middle of a major network upgrade coming out towards the middle of next year, where basically
the Stacks network will start to behave much more like a Bitcoin L2.
So it'll receive 100% of the rework resistance, inheriting Bitcoin's security properties.
It'll have the ability to really process transactions in a more efficient way.
We'll be able to bring down the transaction latency.
So really providing like a true scalability solution for Bitcoin.
And then lastly, it's providing a really easy way to move Bitcoin onto the Stacks layer 2.
And so that is the SBTC protocol.
And so when I talk about basically signers on the network validating these transactions,
that's really what they're doing.
They have a role in enabling the movement of Bitcoin onto the Stacks layer.
And it's done in a decentralized and permissionless way through this validator network.
So that's the infrastructure that Figment is going to be providing, Copper as well.
And yeah, that's been a big part of our focus this year, sort of like lining up those sorts
of partnerships.
That's huge.
And can you go down the Copper integration or excuse me, the Copper announcement for just
a second?
We covered Figment, but you mentioned Copper supporting on the infrastructure level.
What does that announcement mean for those building and Stacks?
Yeah, well, I think this announcement in particular was big for builders.
So they announced support for SIP10.
So that means that they'll be supporting, I believe, the Alex token and the Deco token.
So it basically means if you're building a startup on Stacks and you release a token, you now have
institutional custody support for it.
All right, all right, all right.
Here we go.
That's exciting.
That said, Andre, what is the latest beyond that from a technical level around SBTC?
You produce by far the best in the game, the best in the industry newsletter covering all
that's happening throughout SBTC and its development.
About a month ago, there was a awesome event, Bitcoin Unleashed, that took place in London
following a incredible hackathon in partnership with Easy A, getting developers that SBTC test
net, uh, for the first time in their hands and being able to integrate, uh, since then,
maybe three, four weeks later, what's latest, what's happening on a technical level with SBTC?
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, so, uh, you teed me up, you teed me up great for it.
So about a month ago, a month and a half, we, we released the SBTC test net.
This was really the first opportunity for the SBTC working group to begin to test the
deposit and withdrawal functionality for SBTC.
Um, and so since then we've been doing a lot of testing.
So, you know, we have a, an incentivized test that program where we've been working with users
and developers to really stress test the system, make sure that everything is working smoothly.
Um, and so, you know, we've had, uh, I believe over a hundred users, 150 users involved with
this.
Um, I see, I know, uh, Jacob is on, on the stage here as well, her Medica, uh, and, and Dylan,
both, both, uh, these projects have been involved in that test net program.
So they, they were two of the early, um, startups to actually deploy on the SBTC test net.
So, you know, definitely want to turn over to them and, and get their feedback for, you
know, how, how it's been going for them.
Um, but yeah, so that, that was a major milestone that we had, um, early this year.
And right now everyone, uh, is really focused on some of these upcoming milestones for Nakamoto.
So, uh, another thing is that we, we just recently had the launch of the Nakamoto.
So basically bringing the node online, that's our internal code name for it.
Um, and right now we are focused on, uh, continuing development on this.
Uh, so we should have, um, you know, a test net out for Nakamoto, uh, code, code complete,
uh, very soon.
Um, so that's really the, the main priority right now.
And, um, yeah, I think as we go into next year, continuing to, uh, have a focus on testing,
um, ensuring that the system is, uh, secure and resilient and, and we're having that sort
of, um, testing in place is going to be an important part of having a successful launch.
Um, and yeah, all, all, uh, all eyes are focused on Nakamoto right now.
Very cool.
And I, Kenny, I want to come to you in just a moment around the technicals, uh, drill
down of, to Andre's point, but Dylan, Jacob, you're on the spotlight, uh, Andre TG up there.
You both respectively had had the chance to do early integrations, uh, with SBTC.
Dylan, let's start with you.
What has been your experience thus far, uh, with the integration process, uh, in its early
days?
Yeah, it's been great.
You know, everybody wants to take their Bitcoin and, uh, turn it into more Bitcoin.
So it's awesome, uh, for people to use SBTC and experience.
What it's like to start with testnet Bitcoin, put it to work in our stable swap pools with
different flavors of Bitcoin on the stacks L2, uh, and then earn, you know, that Bitcoin
yield on top of it.
And, uh, it's, it's been, it's been a great catalyst for us as well.
We have over 18,000 signups on our wait list and yeah, I'm, I'm just really pumped for SBTC
to go live.
So, uh, it's, it's been great.
18,000.
Yes, sir.
Wow.
Okay.
All right.
That's, that's exciting news.
Andre, this is even bigger headlines than we already discussed.
So, uh, we'll add that to the roster.
Dylan, that said, uh, all positive news.
Let's take it down a notch as a team that had chance to do an early integration.
What were some of those lessons learned as we've got a lot of builders on this call right
now that are looking towards possibly integrating, uh, SBTC into their application.
So maybe what advice would you have again, lessons learned in that process and Jacob,
get ready.
You're getting a similar question here in a moment.
Yeah.
Well, I guess one of the things that I, uh, that we worked through was about the SIP
10 token and making sure that that was able to integrate with our decks because you, in
order to add liquidity, it's gotta be a SIP 10 token.
So, um, that was one concern because it wasn't actually explicitly stated, uh, in the SBTC
contract, but it is, uh, inferred.
So, um, that actually ended up working out, but more additionally, one thing we're looking
into that, uh, we're pretty excited about is transaction bundling as well.
So where, where it can be a Bitcoin transaction that, uh, allows you to add liquidity to, uh,
the stable swap pools on the stack cell too.
So those are some of the technical challenges that, uh, you know, we're working through and,
uh, excited to, to, to bring to market.
And if there are any other founders out there that want to, um, chat with us about that.
Yeah.
Happy to, happy to talk.
Awesome.
Jacob, same, same question to start with, you know, what was some of your experience having
that early access to SBTC to integrate into, uh, Hermetica and then we'll get into the
lessons learned.
Yeah, I think we, we've seen a tremendous amount of demand or interest from folks to
like test the app and play around with SBTC.
It's been great experience so far working also with, with the foundation and, and all
the people involved.
We got over 150 people testing the app, um, got good feedback.
I think the onboarding into SBTC with the bridge is pretty smooth.
We're obviously looking at up leveling as Dylan said, the user experience so we can actually
have one Bitcoin transaction that deposits into our vaults commit reveal is the, is the
buzzword, which is not yet fully baked yet for the dev release.
So we're looking forward to that, but overall it's been fantastic experience.
It's, it's a SIP 10 token, so it's not really difficult to integrate at all.
Um, for anybody that's looking to build for the SBTC, it's, it's super easy.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, that said it's super easy.
I'm going to push it further because nothing is easy.
Everything has a process to it and this is its early days, right?
We're in that test net and that developer release right now.
So what were some of those lessons learned or, or advice you would give to founders listening
on this call that may be integrating it for the first time in the coming weeks to the
teases that, uh, Andre just gave out.
Yeah.
I don't know if there's really a lot of, um, advice that I would give it's, it's a SIP
10 token.
So it's a fungible token that you can integrate as any other token that is out there on stacks
for us.
It was really just switching out the asset that is being transferred was literally a couple
lines of code.
Um, so from a technical perspective, it's really, isn't that complicated.
I think it really comes down to a nice UI UX, uh, the user experience with the bridge is
okay.
I think at this point, which is what we expect in the early days of the, of the release.
I think once we mature more and we allow for commit reveal and other more advanced technologies
to come on online, I think the user experience can be super smooth and, uh, and seamless
and really is a full a hundred percent Bitcoin experience, which we're very much looking forward
to Kyle.
I can't just add if it, if it's easy, it must be because of all of the stellar documentation
prepared by Kenny over there.
Just, uh, you know, really making really detailed, uh, guides on how to integrate this.
So, um, yeah, I'm sure that plays a big part of it too.
Kenny, the novelist you're, you're up to any comments.
Uh, on your authorship, uh, and your writing abilities to Andre's, uh, comments.
Yeah, I, uh, would love to take credit for all of that, but the truth of it is that the
documentation has been very much a team effort between me and the core engineers.
Definitely cannot take the credit for that.
I got to give the credit to the core team working on Nakamoto and SBTC because they've
just been absolutely cranking things out and helping me to understand what's going on so
that I can write good tutorials and communicate it to builders.
So huge shout out to them.
Cause they're really the, they're the behind the scenes brains that they never get to come
up on the Twitter spaces.
They don't get to be out in the public eye, but they are the ones actually building all
this stuff.
And ultimately they're the brains behind all of it.
So huge shout out to them.
Absolutely.
Shout out, shout out, shout out, uh, team effort.
And thank you, Kenny, for doing that.
I'm sure all of them appreciate cause they're all listening, uh, as well.
So, uh, hopefully someone takes you out for a nice coffee, uh, for, for saying all that,
uh, that said, Kenny, I do want to drill down a little bit behind the scenes on the
technicals.
There's a few things when it comes to the Nakamoto release that have been pushed out
on Twitter and also have been included in a lot of your documentation as well.
And that is, uh, this, uh, this OP drop, what is OP drop?
What are OP codes?
What is that in relevance to stacks and the recent upgrades?
Yeah.
So op codes in Bitcoin are really the best way to think about them are they're the functions
in the very minimalistic language that, uh, that is script for Bitcoin.
And they can be thought of as ways to basically lock and unlock different transactions for
Bitcoin.
So Bitcoin is really just a ledger of different transactions and transactions are just pieces
of data that we send to the network and the network can say, yes, these are legit or no,
they aren't.
And the way that they determine that is by these OP codes operating on these different
pieces of data and seeing if they match or don't match.
So OP drop specifically is an OP code that will do exactly what it sounds like.
And it will drop a certain piece of data from what's called a stack.
And a stack is just a collection of data and functions that get sent to the Bitcoin network
that compose a transaction.
So OP drop in the context of SBTC, the reason it's helpful is because, um, an, an, another
explored avenue of integrating SBTC used an OP code called OP return, and this is used in
other protocols as well.
And what this basically does, the basic use case of OP return is it marks a transaction as
unspendable.
And the primary use case is just to input arbitrary data into the chain.
And so what that meant was that if we wanted to have an SBTC transaction where somebody
wanted to take their Bitcoin and convert it into SBTC, we had to do that in two separate
Bitcoin transactions and it had to work in a specific flow.
And so what that meant for external entities such as exchanges or wallets was that they
had to have knowledge of the SBTC system and specifically in how it worked in order to
construct those transactions correctly, which is one, a huge pain and two, going to limit
adoption.
And so what OP drop does is it allows us to instead embed the stacks address that we want
the SBTC to be minted to directly in the original transaction.
And then what it does is it will drop that piece of data and then parse the transactions
as the network views it as valid still.
But the SBTC, excuse me, the stacks nodes that are going to be running the new SBTC system,
they can still read that data and they can detect it and say, okay, this is supposed
to go to the specific stacks address.
So the real benefit of that is that now what we can do is instead of having to do things
in two separate transactions, we can actually do now from the user facing side is an SBTC
app can use a Bitcoin wallet like leather and they can just have somebody on a, as me as
a user, all I have to do is I have to send a Bitcoin transaction with this specific amount
and that can then take that amount of Bitcoin, convert it to SBTC and deposit it directly
into a contract.
So to make this a little bit more concrete, we can use the example of Zest, who I think
right now are one of the most exciting projects building on SBTC in addition to the founders
that we have here.
And I've talked to them a little bit about what they're planning on integrating.
And they basically do decentralized institutional borrowing and lending on Bitcoin and they're
going to be integrating SBTC, but what you can do specifically in the context of Zest with
OpDrop is I, as a user, all I have to do is initiate a Bitcoin transaction, one single
Bitcoin transaction.
I don't have to really deal with stacks at all.
And because of this OpDrop functionality, I can then deposit that Bitcoin directly into
a liquidity pool on the Zest and on the SBTC and on the stack side.
But all I'm doing is initiating a Bitcoin transaction.
And so that's the real benefit that OpDrop unlocks.
Perfect.
That was actually a perfect explanation.
Thank you, Kenny.
And speaking of transactions, there's also been a ton of discussion around Nakamoto's release
and reduction of transaction speed, specifically from 10 plus minutes or on the upwards of 90
minutes in some cases, down to five seconds.
Can you explain a little bit of how that works, but also the impact that's going to have on
an L2, especially in the Bitcoin space?
Yeah, so I'll start.
I'll answer the second question first, as far as impact, because I think this has really
been not only one of the things that has sort of slowed Bitcoin adoption compared to
other chains, but has also been one of the biggest criticisms of Bitcoin and specifically
its viability in the future, is that we're seeing other chains like Solana pop up that
are focused very heavily on transaction speed and ease of use by users.
And we're seeing those gain a lot of traction just for the simple fact that users have certain
expectations about transaction speed.
And most people just aren't willing to deal with the Bitcoin block times in order to do
that.
So one of the solutions that kind of emerged for this was obviously Lightning.
But one, Lightning doesn't expand functionality, so it may be good for direct peer-to-peer payments,
but it doesn't necessarily help us when we want to create a decentralized financial product.
And then two, we've also seen Lightning run into issues where it hasn't performed as well
as people expected it to in a high fee environment that we're seeing now with the rise of ordinals.
And so we have to look at, okay, what are some other L2 options that can sort of have the
best of both worlds where they're connected tightly to Bitcoin, but they also have these
fast transaction times.
Because what I think we're going to see in the future is that as we start to see Bitcoin
grow in adoption, I think we're going to have this inverse relationship where the more
adoption we have, the less people are going to use it on the L1.
And what that looks like right now, excuse me, most people think that that means that it's
going to be that people are going to use Bitcoin with custodial solutions.
And the whole point of Stacks and the SBTC project is to avoid that so that we can have
a good user experience while having it also be decentralized.
So that's, I think, the impact that we'll see.
And then with all that being said, and some of the comments that Andre had mentioned around
the upgrade of SBTC, or excuse me, the advancements of SBTC, why is now that time
to start building on Bitcoin?
I mean, we're in the last month of 2023.
We've had a wild year when it comes to new integrations, new tool, infrastructural tooling
to some new token standards and protocols themselves.
With all this said, why now?
Why is this the moment to start building on Bitcoin?
I think we're at a really good combination.
This sort of influx point of there's a huge blue ocean opportunity to build on Bitcoin,
which has really always been the case.
But the difficult part is that the market and the environment hasn't really been there
to facilitate that kind of building.
And I think we're starting to reach the point where we now have the combination of the blue
ocean opportunity where recently the market cap of Bitcoin is, I think, close to 4x that
of Ethereum's right now.
But the app ecosystem is still almost non-existent.
But now we are starting to see this rise in interest and in funding and in just this idea
of innovation on Bitcoin in general.
And so we're kind of at this perfect inflection point right now where there's a huge opportunity,
but the market is also at a point where it's finally ready for that opportunity.
And Andre, to that point, you and I have talked a little bit offline about these recent
investor theses that were released respectfully earlier this week with Portal VC and last week
with Hal Press and North Rock Digital.
Having studied those and you and I having discussions as investors offline, similar question.
Why is now the time to be building on Bitcoin and why do you think these investors are putting
out their opinion on the Bitcoin thesis?
Yes, it's been great to see those investor theses start to come out.
I think it's been very validating for those of us in the Stacks ecosystem that have kind
of seen this coming over the past few years and to see others really starting to invest more
in the space.
And I think especially it's great to see that it wasn't just limited to like a Bitcoin thesis.
I think it's easy to have that, but also really getting very specific around the Bitcoin L2
thesis.
And so there's a couple of things that stood out to me from both Hal Press and the Portal
thesis that also came out.
But one is really, you know, around Stacks' dominant position as like the general purpose
Bitcoin L2.
And so they gave a great breakdown of some of the upcoming catalysts that enable that, the
ways that we're looking at making that user experience really closely connected to Bitcoin
to improve Bitcoin's usability in these ways.
Because, you know, I think that we're in this period right now where we have this sort of
structurally higher fee market for Bitcoin due to everything that's happening on the L1
with ordinals, inscriptions and the like.
I think that these higher fees are here to stay.
And just a quick thing, Andre, I looked at the stats today.
Sorry to interrupt you, but I looked at the stats today.
Bitcoin fees right now are up almost, I think, year over year, 260% according to YCharts.
Just an FYI on that.
Yeah, absolutely.
So if I go to mempool.space right now, you know, like it varies.
But, you know, over the weekend, I saw that it was over 100 sats per vbyte.
I have seen these fees increase, you know, over 100x year to date to your point, Kyle.
And so, you know, I think that Kenny did a good job of sort of summarizing this.
But, you know, given this higher fee market for Bitcoin, there is now a necessity to invest more
on the layer two for these sorts of applications because users just can't afford to pay the sort
of fee market that we're in.
And so the fees are driving the necessity to this.
But I think that we can also talk about some of the specific unique things that Stacks enables,
like having a more expressive execution environment for Bitcoin that is a significant improvement
over what you can do on the L1.
And so when we start to think about some of the potential use cases for layer two Bitcoin
via SBTC, the ability to have, you know, some of these DeFi applications, the ability
to like have an AMM, for example, isn't really possible on the Bitcoin L1 because of the limited
scripting language.
We're starting to see that on Stacks.
You know, Bitflow has their AMM that's on Testnet right now.
Alex has theirs also.
So, you know, and so, you know, we're starting to see these use cases for Bitcoin where you
can start to make your Bitcoin productive and earn a yield on it and deploy it in some
of these applications that I think that there is a lot of pent up demand for this sort of
activity with your Bitcoin and to use with your Bitcoin.
And, you know, I think that, you know, as we go into next year, things are looking very,
you know, very exciting, very bullish for the Bitcoin and Bitcoin layers ecosystem.
I think there's going to be a ton of continued innovation and adoption.
I think we'll see more of these startups launching.
And, you know, the thesis here has never been stronger and more clear.
And so I think we're going to continue to ride this momentum into the new year with many more
applications launching.
And yes, it's an exciting time to be building the ecosystem.
Absolutely.
I think Mani put out a example around the fee structures, a tweet actually about the fee
structures in relevance to, you know, an example of someone looking to spend, say, $100 in BTC
and being required to pay $50 of that in fees and how that would start to bring the transaction
into question if you're paying 50% of what you're trying to send into fees.
And that then drives the need for scaling solutions and for L2s, along with purpose-driven
protocols in the future as well, as we know that some of those
are being worked on.
And Andre, I'm throwing it right back to you.
You teed it up.
So it's coming right back.
2024.
What are your predictions when it comes to the general themes throughout Web3 and within
the Bitcoin ecosystem, things that you are excited or expect to see?
We've got the halving about four-ish months into the new year.
We've got artificial intelligence, which is becoming a rising theme.
Being talked across the industry, SBTC, Nakamoto to come out on mainnet as well.
What are your predictions going into 2024?
Yeah, it's a great question.
I can start to just like rattle off a sum, but I think this is a good idea to kind of like
go into more detail on.
And I think the first is that we're going to see the TVL, the total value locked of Bitcoin
applications, you know, let's call it reach, you know, call it 10 billion in 2024.
I think that's like a number that I could see both in terms of like new opportunities around
yeah, like just deploying your Bitcoin, earning a yield on it.
So we'll start to see the TVL massively increase.
I may even be undercutting it there too.
I think that we'll see more Bitcoin projects in the top 100 market cap when you go to like
CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap.
So Stacks is the dominant one right now.
And, you know, but we've seen already, for example, the BRC20 meme coin gain a lot of hype
and attention this past week.
So I think that we're going to see more tokens on Bitcoin start to creep their way into the
top place there.
More startups launching on Bitcoin.
I think we're going to see a thriving DeFi ecosystem on Bitcoin.
And so, you know, really kind of like bringing these on-chain DeFi services, I think that
we'll see a, you know, we'll see more Bitcoin stable coins, both on the L1 and the L2.
And that's, that is going to unlock a lot of on-chain volume.
Um, and there will be applications built around those, uh, stable swap protocols, for example.
Um, so, so yeah, there's a ton there.
Um, really good question.
Um, and yeah.
Well, you'd see, you'd see Dylan up too perfectly.
So Dylan, same question to you.
And now you've got to tease a little bit more of what Andre threw out for you, but what
are your predictions for 2024?
For the industry as a whole, and then the Bitcoin ecosystem?
Yeah, I liked what Andre said about how the fees are, are here to stay.
Um, you know, if you think about, uh, just everyone that maybe is even on the sidelines
right now, waiting for fees to go down a little bit.
And then as soon as they do, you see probably new, uh, collections being deployed on ordinals,
right?
And it feels like the Bitcoin fee market is, is a lot more sustainable now since ordinals.
Um, and I like something that Dan had, Dan held said, uh, maybe a few months ago, but
it just should be obvious to anybody with a pulse that Bitcoin is going to scale in layers.
And, um, and so I think that's why it's, I'm just really excited to be building at the
intersection of L1 and L2 right now.
Jacob, same question.
Yeah.
I mean, a lot have been said already.
I think that the Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem is going to be thriving.
I think also in terms of price, I think we're looking at a raging bull market from what I
can see.
I think central banks are just starting to print again, and that's always great for, for
the Bitcoin price.
So I expect a lot of euphoria.
I think we got a glimpse of it this week, um, to come online and, and really get interested
in what we're building.
And apart from that, I also think that we're obviously talking about stacks here, but, uh,
there will be many other L2s coming online.
BitVM is probably going to be built out fully and allow potentially for rollups, which is super
exciting.
So, you know, a real renaissance of building on Bitcoin.
Hey, Kenny, how do you feel about additional L2s?
Uh, and some of these purpose-driven L2s that are starting to emerge, uh, in terms of the
Bitcoin ecosystem as a whole, uh, Jacob mentioned BitVM.
We've seen a number of others out there.
We've got, uh, uh, of course, Lightning, Rootstock, uh, Liquid, and many others in all
various, uh, variations of side chains and the like.
But, uh, what is your perspective of how these, uh, could add potential value to Bitcoin layers
in 24 and beyond?
Yeah, I think overall, the more experimentation and the more innovation we have at the L2,
the better.
Um, this is, again, a sign of kind of what I was talking about earlier of we're at this
inflection point where we've got this blue ocean of opportunity, then people are starting
to realize that and see that opportunity.
And they're also starting to realize the pitfalls of, you know, sort of an L1 only ethos in
the Bitcoin community.
And so the more experimentation we have, the better.
And then, you know, that's why we, that's why the free market is so great.
We can have all these people build all these different solutions and the market gets to
decide which one's the best.
We do our part as builders and communicators to build what we think is the best technology
suited for the, to solve the problems that we need to solve.
We communicate those as best we can and we let the market take it from there.
And so the more experimentation and the more innovation we have, the more we can all learn
from each other.
For some L2 solutions that we want to build on where we've got this backup mechanism in
place that does live on the L1.
And so innovations like SBTC combined with things like DLCs and BitVM, they will more
than likely allow us to just improve on stacks as an L2 and on SBTC as a protocol and just
get, just get better and better over time, more decentralized, more trust minimized, more
secure for people that are, you know, needing something that is completely decentralized and
as trust minimized as possible.
So yeah, more innovation, the better, in my opinion.
And Kenny, those that are looking to begin their journey of building on Bitcoin on the
L2 and stacks and like, where can they go?
What are the resources?
What are kind of those starting points that you provide guidance on for those today that
are listening and those in the future to begin their journey and contributing to the Bitcoin
ecosystem?
Yeah, the best place that I can send people right now would probably be a free course that
I created called Bitcoin Primer, and that's at Bitcoinprimer.dev.
It's currently being updated in order to add in some stuff dealing with SBTC and Nakamoto,
but of course, that's all work in progress.
And so doing my best to align the release of that with the release of SBTC and Nakamoto so
people can hit the ground running there.
The other place that I would send people if they're just unfamiliar with how stacks works
in general is the docs, and those are just at docs.stacks.co.
Same caveat applies there.
Those are currently being updated.
Nakamoto is a massive upgrade to how everything works.
SBTC is a huge protocol release, and so there's a lot of updates coming in the future, but those
are a great place to start right now to get people up and running and familiar with how
things work.
Andre, similarly around SBTC and the Nakamoto release, or if they want to get involved in some
of the testnet and developer releases of SBTC.
Yeah, absolutely.
So we will be rolling out a second cohort with some more tasks for the SBTC testnet.
You can go to sbtc.tech slash developer release.
That's where you can go ahead and sign up there, and we'll be sending out more information
about that in the upcoming weeks and months.
This is going to be, as I mentioned, very important as we get closer to the launch of
Nakamoto and SBTC.
So definitely pay close attention there.
And yeah, I guess other than that, follow along on Bitcoin rights.
That's where I publish regular updates on Nakamoto and SBTC status updates.
Um, so, you know, we're posting more there, uh, that's where you can follow along.
Awesome.
Jacob, same question.
Where can people go to learn more about Hermetica and get involved in Bitcoin DeFi and learn more
on your integration of SBTC?
Yeah.
I mean, we are here on Nak, so you can find us at Hermetica FI.
If you really want to get up-to-date information of what we're building, you can sign up for a
wait list, which is Hermetica dot FI.
We send out weekly newsletters, um, talking about what we're building, talking about also
some news in the, in the industry.
So that's probably the best place to really keep, um, keep up with what we're doing.
And then now we have a discord.
You can jump in there.
You can ask us questions.
You can obviously check out the app beta dot Hermetica dot FI and shoot me a DM and ask
questions.
Always happy to chat.
Thank you, Jacob.
Dylan, same.
Yeah, you can, uh, you can go to bitflow dot finance.
Uh, you might want to add some alerts onto our Twitter accounts as well.
This is going to be a pretty, pretty big month for us.
Uh, I feel like stacks in its own is about to have a moment and it just feels like a very
great time for us to, to launch.
So, um, we've got two or three major products launching, uh, this month we'll be launching
our AMMs, uh, our atomic swaps to help you go between layer one and layer two.
Um, and, um, and also a brand new BRC 20 marketplace might be launching pretty soon.
Um, so yeah, very excited as well.
And then, uh, the stacking down, which is not us, but that's something that we're looking
to support.
I think there'll be launching pretty soon as well, which is going to be great for the TVL
on stacks.
So set your alerts, uh, a lot of alpha just dropped, but it's going to be an exciting month.
Dylan dropping the alpha at closing remarks.
Impressive.
There you go, everybody.
Make sure to sign up for Bitcoin rights.
Make sure also to check in and sign up, uh, uh, to Kenny's developer program and building
on Bitcoin program.
Check out her Medica Biflow and follow all the alpha that Dylan just dropped in terms of headlines,
uh, as well, and make sure to check out some of those announcements we talked about earlier
in the show and also the Hal Press portal VC theses.
If you're looking to learn more about the Bitcoin ecosystem and some of those opportunities that
Andre mentioned earlier, uh, today as well around SBTC Nakamoto and other protocols in
the existing ecosystem.
Uh, that said a huge, thank you everyone for tuning into this week's crypto internet show.
If you would like to tune in live, ask questions or join the conversation, be sure to follow
stacks on Twitter slash X and tune in every week at our regular time, 5.
PM Eastern on Wednesdays.
Also next week, huge shout out and promotion for the yearly stackies, the holiday event of
the year.
This is the time we talk about everything that's happening in the Bitcoin ecosystem, hand out
some fun awards to all of the community members and developers, builders, founders, investors,
everybody, uh, gets a chance to be celebrated and participate in all of the development that has
happened over the last year.
Myself and maybe one other co-host, I'll leave that special guest out for the moment, but, uh,
they are jolly, maybe have a beard or two, uh, wear a red coat now and then, uh, Santa Claus,
if you will, nonetheless, we'll be co-hosting that drop some poetry and some Christmas stories and
holiday cheer for all, uh, please join us next week.
It'll be taking place here on, uh, X slash Twitter as well with that.
I'm your host, everyone have a wonderful day until next time.
Talk to you soon.
Take care.
