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Stacks Townhall
Recorded: Feb. 5, 2026 Duration: 0:49:42Space Recording
Short Summary
The Stacks Town Hall unveiled exciting developments, including the reboot of the grants program and the launch of the dual stacking protocol, which has already attracted over $100 million in value. With significant regulatory shifts in Asia and a focus on institutional adoption, the Stacks ecosystem is poised for growth and innovation in 2026.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Hello, hello everybody.
We are just getting kicked off here and are waiting for a few of our speakers to join
the stage.
So in about 60 seconds, I'll go ahead and start us off.
And we've got an exciting town hall for everybody today. So in about 45 seconds, I'll kick us off
and we'll get started. Thank you. all right all right good morning good evening good afternoon everyone wherever you may be
tuning in from around the world welcome back to our stacks town Town Hall. This is the January edition.
This is a monthly town hall that we host here
to talk about everything happening across the Stacks
in the greater Bitcoin industry.
We know that there are a lot of developments happening,
a lot of great applications and builders and partnerships
pushing this side of the industry
forward. And we want to bring everyone together to provide the latest updates and also bring to
light all the great work that is happening across the wider ecosystem. So during today's town hall,
just like those previous, you'll hear from some of those builders, some of those founders of teams that have built applications supporting
the ecosystems and its growth. You'll hear from executives from across the ecosystem at Stax Labs,
the endowment, Stax Asia Foundation, myself, and many others as well, who will be sharing
different insights of all that is happening to give you the latest in one hour's time that's happening across the Stacks ecosystem from the last month and looking ahead to the next month as well.
I'm your host today, Kyle Ellicott. Everything discussed here today is for educational purposes only. It is not financial advice. Please do your own research.
advice, please do your own research. That said, we have had a lot happen since December's town
hall and the Stackies. A shout out to the entire ecosystem and community for participating in
another wonderful Stackies award and show in December before the holidays. Since then,
we've had a chance to float around the ecosystem and the industry to see what is necessary to push Bitcoin forward in terms of its productivity and its utility as well. And you've seen a lot of those headlines. We're going to dive a little deeper into what each of those means during today's town hall.
hall. That said, I think we've got our first few speakers up. We're just making sure that one
gets on stage here in just a moment. Meneve, I see you. Welcome to the stage. Also seeing some very
friendly faces out in the crowd that we haven't had here in some time. So it is a pleasure to see
you all back. Meneve, we want to get you on stage here if you have a moment. Looks like you might be restarting that. We'll have you back here in just a moment as well.
ecosystem, but also in relevancy to Asia. We talked a lot about what was happening across
Japan and a lot of the big regulatory and policy changes that Japan was making to support the
entire world of digital assets. And we are now starting to see that play out with everything
from the ETF approvals to deduction of taxes to treating digital assets
like that of stocks and investment trusts as well. So a lot of big activity and that starts
to open up the world of over two dozen publicly traded companies that have been discussing
adding digital assets to their balance sheet in addition to 2.5 million Bitcoin that sits on a greater scale
across public equities and ETFs to enter into the Bitcoin side of the industry and be productive
for the first time and move from idle to productive capital, which is super exciting.
So that said, I think I'm going to jump right into Alex, if we can bring him up to a speaker.
If not, one other thing I will announce if you haven't
already checked out the orange envelope and that primer on Japan. Again, a thank you to the entire
team for putting that together. Also in Korea, we had some massive movements across South Korea
and Thailand and Vietnam. In South Korea, we had a lift of the corporate ban from participating in
the investment of digital assets. And so now all entities and individuals, retail and institution
in South Korea are able to participate in the entire digital asset space. Something that we
haven't seen for almost nine years. Today, actually, is the official release of that band.
And now we are going to start to see both public companies. Thank you. Well, that was fun.
Finishing out our little musical transition,
companies in South Korea will now be able to participate
into the entire digital asset space. There's also a lot of work around stablecoins, both Japan,
South Korea, and Hong Kong. Hong Kong just announced that they will begin licensing
out the ability for Asia's megabanks and financial institutions to support stablecoins. We're also starting to
see that open up in South Korea with the digital one and also more efforts across Japan. We have
similar happenings in Vietnam with an entire framework to open up licensing and regulation around exchanges based in the country. And one of the top five,
number four to be specific, countries for all of digital assets with over 30 million
users. All right, that's your daily update on what's happening across Asia in the digital
asset space. I believe we do now have our speakers. It looks like we have
Maniv and we have Alex. Just waiting for both of them to jump up on stage. I appreciate you all.
I mean, I'm here assuming you can hear me. You just probably can't see me because Twitter never
works. I can. Welcome back. Welcome back. Thank you for jumping in. I just see you as a listener. So Alex, since
Manif may or may not be a speaker based on Twitter, not working at the moment.
I think I'm here as well. Can you hear me?
Oh, this is wonderful. Perfect. You're both here. Okay. Well, that said, I'll stop talking.
Manif, I can hear you. Can you hear me? If so, why don't you jump in? Give us a little commentary
on what's happening.
I can definitely hear you.
Happy to jump in.
Hey, everybody.
So I think I just tweeted this out as well,
that it's clearly a bear market out there,
not just because of the price action,
but I think it's because of the morale as well.
A lot of people, a lot of sort of like, you know,
pretty important people in the industry seem to be leaving.
But I think the sentiment for people who are working at Stacks
seem to be quite different.
People are extremely excited.
There are sort of like new things that we've been working on,
which are pretty focused. And we're actually seeing a lot of sort of like demand for that
out in the market as well. And I'll try to, obviously, you know, some things are still in
development and more details will come out. But basically at a high level, what we're noticing is that, you know,
when Bitcoin price is actually appreciating a lot,
you know, people are just holding it as an investment.
But in the recent years,
as sort of like price is just sort of like going up and down
in a certain range.
There's a lot of interest, especially from institutions in doing something with the Bitcoin.
And I think that's where we are sort of like hitting, I would call it early product market fit,
where a lot of institutions are actually coming to us about helping them in deploying their BDC.
And I think some of those
things are very, very exciting because these are large institutions. They're very sophisticated
parties. They're sitting on a lot of Bitcoin as well. And I think if Stacks could be the way
where this Bitcoin actually gets deployed on chain, that's a huge win for us. Because what that does
is the side order effect of that is that institutions are not going to deploy their capital until everything is above a certain sort of like professional grade, right?
That means you're going to see more custodians doing integrations, which by the way, shout out to Fireblocks.
That news is already out, so we can more openly talk about it.
So the Fireblocks integration is a great sign of it, right?
So that basically means other custodians like Fireblocks
would integrate us.
But it's not just integration with custodians,
it's actually integrations with the internal piping
of how these institutions work
so that they can actually deploy capital.
And that's really important.
Why?
Because I think if you look at where a lot of Bitcoin is sitting these days,
by far it's institutions that are actually holding and controlling a lot of this Bitcoin.
So that becomes sort of like the way to get more usage.
And then your typical sort of like retail investors,
everyday users, they kind of follow that
because the institutional usage, what it does,
it basically makes all of the ecosystem
kind of like professional grade, right?
Like it gets integrated everywhere.
The security level goes up.
The liquidity level goes up.
The usage goes up. And
I think that's a path that we are very excited about because we're seeing genuine interest from
these institutions. Let me pause there and see if Alex wants to add. Yeah, I think that's all
entirely correct. And I think everyone's probably seen the different reports and things. And yeah,
the 90% of flows come from the institutional.
And I think just, you know, the thing that's cool about this in particular is like,
this is part of just what we're seeing with the like integration of Bitcoin
more and more into the financial system, right?
And this also is like kind of a huge pivot for Stacks, I think,
especially, you know, because of our regulatory history and just the focus, we have very traditionally been entirely focused on, hey, how do we bring in builders and then to bring in is concentrated in a smaller group, it becomes,
all right, how do we actually take advantage of everything we did around SIP 31 and of the kind
of regulatory clarity that we've established to really take more ownership over like the end-to-end
stack and experience and produce things in a way that like really works for these larger ones, knowing that once they come in and bring all of the liquidity
and the professional and the capabilities in,
then sort of the longer tail of both users and builders
will come in and follow that.
And so as we've been interviewing CMOs,
which yes, we are absolutely still working on this,
but again, we're really kind of very focused on how do we get someone
who is absolutely the right fit for us and very high quality.
There's actually a little bit of an advantage for us here too right now,
given the number of crypto projects that are sort of going away.
There's more talent that's becoming available right now, I think,
which is kind of great for us.
But I think the key thing is, and I'll just say, like, we're really not looking for like,
you know, there was obviously a lot of talk over, you know, what someone is.
And while we want someone who is very crypto native and gets it and uses it and believes
in what we're doing, you know, we're also not looking for like a retail degen meme maker.
I think we want someone who knows how to leverage that side of it
and work with some of the folks in our community
who are very good at that kind of thing and can really magnify it.
But fundamentally, this is, you know, we need someone here
and are going to find someone who is able to really handle
the end-to-end of this and really just help architect, okay, how do we
actually take this next version of Stacks to the market in a way that gets everyone who needs to
really understand it and buy in and bring in the tens of billions of dollars of Bitcoin that's out
there and wants to activate, and that we are really the truly best and only option for them
on how to do it.
And this aligns to some of the product development stuff, obviously,
that I wrote up on the forum back at the end of December on it.
And so there will be much more on this soon,
but I'll just say I'm really excited about the stuff that we're aligning around here
and what it's going to mean.
But it's also, you know, it's definitely like requiring, I think,
the team at Labs that we built out there to exercise some new muscles that have not been
traditional for us in a really kind of exciting and fun way, but also it's a lot of work on it.
So I'm excited to share more with you guys on that soon.
Yeah. So I think just to build up on that. so one of the things, so what does that sort of like mean, right?
Like I think what that means is that there is going to be like increased focus from people from labs or generally in the ecosystem where we can see stuff that's like kind of like more in our control, right?
Like if you're talking to these large institutions,
and I do think there is a change in the market
and we are sort of like responding to that change,
that they're effectively,
if you look at our sort of like, you know,
long-term vision,
that is to create a thriving on-chain Bitcoin economy, right?
And there are different parts of that economy.
But some parts of that economy.
But some parts of that are actually, there's more market demand for it today. So our focus is naturally going to be towards the areas where there's market demand today, right? So people are
kind of like pulling the product out of us because they want certain things, right? Like, so people are kind of like pulling the product out of us because they want
certain things, right? So that helps with increased focus. And right now, that is effectively these
institutions who are sitting on very large amounts of Bitcoin and they want to deploy it in certain
ways, but they have a bunch of requirements, right? Like they have requirements around what type of
custodian support is there. Self-custody is a is a is a big part of it and i think having like that tight feedback loop
with actual large users these are in the at the end of the day just users is actually very
clarifying it's very clarifying for the bd teams it's very clarifying for the product team it's
very clarifying for quarter gulpers because now now everyone knows and has a much more direct line
with what do these customers want,
what type of BD deals.
Terms are there, requirements are there,
and they can be taken to the product teams
and the people who are actually building
the open source core infrastructure.
So it's a very tight loop,
and it feels a lot more in our control
that if we do XYZ, these institutions would deploy X amount of capital.
And that's great because that forms the top of funnel.
A lot of Bitcoin capital actually moves,
and the tier one brand names also help a lot.
I like that these institutions are sort of like trusting this chain,
are actually using it.
And I think that is a huge booster to the dev ecosystem,
to the broader sort of like ecosystem as well,
because now you're seeing the liquidity,
now you're seeing the usage,
now you're seeing like, you know,
very serious institutions actually using the chain in major ways.
So that's, that's something that we are very excited about.
And in the coming months, really, really sort of like focused on.
Amazing. Thank you, Manib. Alex, anything else to add?
No, I think that's pretty good. As always, like I said, it's, it's,
there's a lot going on right now,
obviously a lot of turmoil in the space.
But I think ultimately it really does set stacks up better
given how much it's going to be washing out now
and how we've lived through the rare markets before.
This is kind of what we've always been built for.
We made some incredible advancements during the last one.
And so I actually feel like we're pretty well positioned right now.
Yeah, and I think one thing I would comment on is that in the last couple of days, you've seen posts
from Vitalik and effectively calling that the last five years that Ethereum is working on
for the L2 direction was kind of wrong and they're
trying to change it and they're trying to scale the l1 and i think it's important to address like
the implications uh for us over here so i think we're in a very sort of like different place
in the sense that bitcoin is never going to have smart contracts or scalability at the l1
right so the arguments in ethereum actually don't directly apply over here.
If anything, if there is a single chain that needs the L2,
it's Bitcoin, right?
Because it's very simple at the base layer
and it's always going to remain very, very simple.
So in many ways, I think what that means is that maybe
what the market is actually pointing towards
is that on the Bitcoin side,
there is room for one clear winner, like a single L2 effectively, that has all the liquidity, that has all the users.
for liquidity and so on because that's that is clearly a lesson right like the reason why uh
And people just go and use it for smart contracts, for scalability, for liquidity, and so on. Because that is clearly a lesson, right?
like 20 different l2s in ethereum are not working is because of liquidity fragmentation and ux issues
and so on and i think if if bitcoin but ethereum can actually scale on l1 right it already has
smart contracts on l1 and so on but bitcoin doesn't right so that it's it's if you look at
that with uh combined with the fact that other
Bitcoin L2 projects are actually struggling a lot like I'm not like it's not something
that you know we are happy about or anything but it's just the market reality that Stacks
is actually much stronger relatively compared to any other Bitcoin L2 or project out there.
But that's also a sign very similar to pointing towards that, you know, there's room for a
single big winner over here.
And I think Stacks is clearly the winning horse right now, and especially with the work
going on right now, because these institutions that we are talking about, they're not going
to go everywhere.
They're especially not going to go to small projects, right?
Like they're going to go to the blue chip project.
And once they come, their network effects.
That if all the large institutions are here,
then anybody else who wants to use Bitcoin would be like,
okay, this is the top L2.
This is where all the liquidity is.
And this is where all the major players are.
And we're just going to come and use that.
So I thought it was interesting that the ETH L2 thesis might be in trouble,
but that actually has no implications for the work we are doing
because we need one, at least one, really good L2 on Bitcoin.
Agreed, agreed.
Great words shared across.
Next up, I want to bring Rina to the stage. Talk to us a little bit about what's happening at the endowment. Rina, are you with us?
Hey there. Hey, Kyle. How are you?
Good, good. Stage is all yours.
I appreciate it. Well, thank you guys so much. I have a couple updates I want to give. I'm going to cover our treasury, what we're actively doing
to support teams, and then the reboot of the grants program going live next week.
So on the first note, I want to cover our treasury. As everyone is acutely aware,
markets are moving drastically and we're actively monitoring all of our positions and all of our
kind of logic for how we break out the long-term
treasury and short-term treasury. Essentially, we are still doing everything we can to one,
preserve capital, but make sure that our capital grows with us as our needs are drastically
shifting. We have, as mentioned in the end of year kind of December Treasury update, I have fully set
aside all of the funding needed to launch our grants program to launch the reboot of
an accelerator and to make sure that there is liquidity for DeFi and LPs and such.
So all of that has always been preserved and will continue to maintain, including during
these drastic market conditions.
The one thing I do want to address is
that many of you did see that I put out a tweet from the endowment about a recent position that
we are monitoring. There was a security, maybe vulnerability from the VALAR team, and the
endowment did publicly put money into VALAR on the PerpDex.
And that is a position that, one, I'm actively monitoring, working with the VALAR team,
and we'll be providing a transparency update to the community.
The second thing I kind of want to address is that with our capital, with the endowment,
we're trying to preserve as much maximum flexibility as we can and adapt our budget according to the needs of the ecosystem.
So we set out the pillars of the five categories that we're spending from operational, engineering
and security, BD and growth, and then, of course, marketing, go to market, and working
And then, of course, marketing, go-to-market, and working capital.
capital.
As teams come to us with different needs or different builds, we're being as flexible as we can to make sure that we're enabling the community as best we can.
Moving on to what we're actively doing.
So these are things that are already in place now that are a little bit behind the scenes, but how we're supporting our community.
So for first up, we are leaning hard in liquidity and growth enablement.
Most teams do struggle from the cold start problem of having sufficient LP capital for
loans to be taken out or swaps to be made or vaults to be launched.
And so over the last few months, what we have secured is we've brought in a new market maker who will be supporting the launch of Bitflow's new HODL MM for concentrated liquidity.
We have secured new LPs who will be shoring up the HBTC vault in partnership with Zest.
So very excited to see those go live.
to see those go live. And we've been working through just general better liquidity across
all of across the bit flow and such so that our spreads for swapping USDC X from AE USDC are
lower and more seamless. It's important to us to continue to support these cold start problems so
that more top of funnel can be activated by our marketing
teams, all of our builder teams and such. And then the most important message for today is that our
new ecosystem grants program will be going live next week. Applications will be opening on Monday.
We will have two tracks of grants to start. It will be builder grants that vary from milestone-based, based on impact, traction. But if your needs are a little bit more bespoke,
put it in the application because we will be reviewing every single one of them.
In addition, there is a getting started grant category. So if you're new and you have a proof
of concept and you just need a little bit of help to take it live with stacks, we'll be there. So
these grants are a little bit smaller. They cap
at $10,000, but they're a little bit less milestone-based. But I want to make sure that
we're encouraging creative and novel ideas with stacks every single time. From the grants categories,
I'll say that there is a balance of we'll be weighing from retail impact, institutional impact, what helps DeFi, what helps the BTC staking, what helps different facets of stacks like BNS.
So we're trying to be as wide range as possible, but still adhering to what ultimately creates long term value for our ecosystem based on our roadmap.
And then finally, the D- D grants program will continue to exist.
I know cohort three is wrapping up very soon. And after cohort three wraps up, I'll be meeting with
all of our community stewards on how we can even improve the program and get ready for cohort four.
So I want to make sure that people know that there's a grants program for everyone, and we really do want to do everything we can to support our builders.
And then lastly on that note is that as you've probably maybe graduated from a grants program, moving on to something more substantial,
there will be a reboot of the Stacks Accelerator, which is the investment arm of the endowment where we actively invest in our projects.
More to come on that, but I just want to say thank you so much.
Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Very exciting updates for where things are to come here in 2026.
Next up, Claire.
Yeah. Hey, everyone. Good to be here. Super exciting to hear about the new grants program.
On the foundation side, I have a few governance updates today and some info on the tools that
we're working on to make things a little easier for the ecosystem. So first up, hopefully most
of you guys have seen the new SIP tracker that was built by Zero Authority. If you haven't checked it out yet, it's a great
way to see exactly what's happening with all SIPs at a glance, and you don't have to do any
digging for information, whether it's like a current SIP or anything historical as well.
So I'll drop a link for that here soon. With this tracker, you're able to see historical info and vote outcomes for all previous SIPs. You can
review all the current drafts, see who authors are, and check the status of each SIP, which is
pretty cool. And then I think in addition, you can also see related discussions that are pulled
directly from the forum and GitHub, and they'll navigate you back to those destinations as well,
the forum and github and they'll navigate you back to those destinations as well and then find
resources on how sips work and how you can get more involved we really want to hear what you
think about the tracker itself so please share any feedback or ideas this is definitely v1 so
we're looking for engagement here the best spot to share any feedback is the forum. I'll drop a link for that
as well. And last but not least on that, a huge thank you to the Zero Authority team.
They spent a lot of time thinking about how to make this a community-centered resource,
and I think that shows. And on the topic of SIPs, there are four drafts currently being refined for the next phases of the SIP lifecycle, as well as several new drafts that were recently submitted.
So please go check those out and share feedback or questions with the authors.
And then a few other notes on governance tooling and some refinements that are happening.
The tracker is part of a bigger push to level up
governance. I know we've been talking about this a lot with you guys. We're working closely with
builders to solve for some things like visibility and access to information. The next resource that
you guys will see is an ecosystem directory and then a lot more to come after that. And on the
process side, actively right now,
there's a team working on SIP documentation
and making some updates there
and then reviewing the entire SIP lifecycle
to clear out any long-term bottlenecks that might exist.
And the ultimate goal here, again,
is just moving towards a model
where governance is a self-sustaining process.
Every new tool or refinement that we're working on is designed to give the community more direct ownership
and easier access to the resources that they need. And final note, I think today is SIP editors. We're
currently looking for more SIP editors to support the queue of drafts that we have coming through
this year. They're really huge for helping SIPs move through that life cycle, and we want to make sure that the
role is clear and supported. So if you're interested in becoming an editor or know somebody who would
be great for that, please reach out. It's pretty lightweight, actually, and we're here to support
those roles as well. So this will help us get those drafts
moving along as smoothly as possible. I will drop all these links for you guys. Let me know if you
have any questions. And with that, I'll hand it back to Kyle. Thank you so much, Claire. Appreciate
it. Again, a lot of excitement and opportunities for new builders and current builders alike
to participate in the growth of their projects and this ecosystem as well. Next up, Rick, are you with us?
Hey, can you hear me okay? Loud and clear. Absolutely wonderful. Well, thanks, Carl.
I wanted to give a quick marketing update. So I want to start off by shouting out everyone involved in the last
few webinars that we've done. Our Bitcoin Capital Markets webinars have been performing incredibly
well. I saw tens of thousands of people joining live on X and the lead generation of these has
been really strong and people are actively reaching out wanting to learn more about Stacks and that's
exactly the kind of momentum that we want to see.
We've also been working closely with key opinion leaders
who are very relevant to what Stacks is building.
And the goal here is simple.
I've mentioned this before,
but we're moving beyond their own ecosystem bubble.
And we want the next upgrades and product launches
for the teams in our ecosystem to reach entirely audiences,
real users in the broader crypto space
who are
ready to try out new things.
And so you can expect us to ramp up content and ambassador programs with these KOLs while
also continuing to work with voices that already defined this community.
People like the Diorg Media, Rubes, Jack, Algorithm and others, and always be community
led because especially now in an era of marketing with AI you'll see more and more places like
CoinMarketCap, Binance Square and others use community sentiment and high performing and
engaging posts from all of you founders, community leaders on X but also on Reddit and other places
to create AI summaries of how Stacks is doing. People use ChatGPT and Claude for their marketing
trends and their network reviews and so even though we're also working hard on our own generative engine optimization
with articles and third-party content, even more than ever, it's very important that one
of our biggest qualities in our ecosystem being an organic community shines and that's how
Stacks really stays on top. Also, I want to say that what really excites me is that we're
now having conversations with independent researchers and capital investment firms who
are generally bullish on the future of Stacks. And they're not just interested, but rather want
to co-create reports and content and amplification efforts with us. And that means Stacks will be
front and center with some of the biggest names in crypto research as we move along in 2022.
And that's a huge deal for Mindshare here.
And the reason for this, if you check out the blog on Stacks.co, you'll see pieces like Stacks 2026,
big ideas and deep dives on Stacks as institutional great Bitcoin infrastructure.
We're really claiming narratives right now from Bitcoin staking to
productive Bitcoin treasuries to the institutional grade primitives that we already have like
Circle, Grayskills, Grayskills, SDX Trust, partners like Brock Damon, Bitco. We're really creating
narratives that matter, especially in this market condition and Stacks has passed that
early growth stage. And so even like I said, even in these market conditions,
we're delivering and that resilience is something institutions
and users both pay a lot of attention to.
So over the next couple of months,
there's some exciting things on the horizon
and we're going to make a lot of noise beyond their own ecosystem
and make sure everyone on the world knows what Stacks is.
Love it. Thank you very much rick and a shout out to
stacks japan and the twitter handle that has just come back uh into the world as well
mentioning some of those community leaders uh as well next up shannon are you with us oh there you
are i am good to be here so um yeah a quick update on the event front. So as it pertains to virtuals,
we just wrapped up a very successful Bitcoin Capital Markets webinar series. It went through
December and January, and it generated over 140,000 views across the series, which is pretty
amazing and an all-time high for us. If you missed it, head over to Stacks YouTube to check it out.
amazing and an all-time high for us. If you missed it, head over to Stacks YouTube to check
it out. Definitely worth viewing those talks. We've also been continuing our Thai webinar series.
We've had Adriano, our CTO, Kyle, your host here, and Rina from Stacks Endowment as part of the
series. It's really great. It's geared towards an institutional audience, and it has truly been a
strong highlight for us. So check that out if you missed it.
But also thank you for tuning in.
Those have been great.
You can check it out on the Ty's Twitter account or on the Stacks calendar.
We are also very excited to showcase Stacks Builders this month on February 25th.
We're hosting a Builder Bash virtual event and are welcoming additional builders and have a ton that are already locked in for that date.
The event is live on Luma. We also have in the Stacks calendar and are excited for that.
In addition, we have several additional virtuals planned for March.
So stay tuned on those updates.
And then quickly on the in-person front, the Stacks BD team will be attending POMP's
Bitcoin Investor Week next week in New York City. It's the second year for this great event. We also
have Stacks at Consensus Hong Kong. That's on our radar for next week as well. And then Ileana on
the Stacks Labs team is producing a Pitch Your Biddle Builder event in Lisbon next Thursday.
is producing a Pitch Your Biddle Builder event in Lisbon next Thursday. Registration is live.
It's on the Stacks calendar and in Stacks Luma, but apply soon because it's definitely shaping
up to be a very full house there. Closing out February, Stacks will be at ETH Denver.
Rina will be speaking at the TIE's Innovate Denver event on February 18th. Jonas is also going to be there on Stacks Labs side,
attending on the BDE front. And Stacks is hosting a Denver edition of Pitch Your Biddle.
It is the same day as the Innovate Denver event. It's attracting Bitcoin builders,
and Kenny Rogers on the Stacks Labs team will be there to mentor builders on site.
This one's also close to being sold out.
So if you'd like to apply or see the information, go to Stacks Luma or the Stacks calendar to apply.
That's it. Back over to you, Kyle. Thanks.
Awesome. Thank you so much, Shannon.
Next up, we've got Kenny, speaking of developers.
Hey, yeah, we've got a lot going on in the DevRel world right now,
so I'll try to be quick, but first on the technical front.
If you're a builder and you haven't seen the new cookbook section
of the docs, definitely go check that out.
This is going to be an ever-growing library of different code snippets,
example contracts, things like that that are going to be really good to learn from.
Also kind of related to documentation, putting a lot of thought and effort into how we can make the developer experience on Stacks more AI and VibeCoder friendly.
So working on a starter kit and a cloud code plugin for that, if you are interested in that stuff, definitely recommend checking out the developer office hours here in just a little over an hour on the Stacks devs account. I'll be
giving a demo and kind of going into how that works. And then more on the programming side of
things. We've got a lot going on right now. Working with a partner talent protocol to bring in a bunch
of new builders into the ecosystem. We also have a lot going on on DoraHacks for our competitions.
We just recently wrapped up a USDCX challenge
congratulations to the winner, Flow Vault for that one
we are launching an X402 challenge
and then also the really big one which is coming and launching in March
is our big Biddle Battle Tournament
so $20,000 in prizes for that one
that one's going to be really exciting
in addition to the in-person events we got at Pitcher Biddle
by the way those are also going to be AI vibe coding focused we're going to be really exciting. In addition to the in-person events we got at Pitcher Biddle, by the way, those are also going to be AI vibe coding focused.
We're going to be looking at some practical techniques for that,
so don't feel like you have to be super technical to sign up for those
if you are going to be in Lisbon or Denver.
And then finally, I wanted to share just a little bit about how we're thinking
about these hackathons and competitions and events going forward.
With AI coding, the old model of just pay people to build things
doesn't really work well anymore.
We need to kind of think further about how we're approaching these challenges.
And so a lot of these are really being treated as sort of a starting point
for developers.
One thing that we're trying to put a lot of effort into is how are we then
providing those developers with a pathway for what they can do next
after the challenges and competitions?
So we're working really closely with the endowment right now as well to
kind of provide an on-ramp and a path forward to get those builders into the
early program the endowment was talking about there.
Huge Kenny, thank you so much. Next up, Andre, talk to us a little bit about what's happening on the
product and growth side of the ecosystem. Sure thing, Andre, talk to us a little bit about what's happening on the product and growth
side of the ecosystem. Sure thing. Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Kyle. It's great to be here
as always. So quick product update. I'll talk briefly about sort of what's happened over the
past few months and where we're heading as an ecosystem. I guess first, really to set the
context, Stacks Labs really got off to a hot start last year in Q4, shipping
new products and really just executing well across the board. I think that we really leveled up our
engineering as an ecosystem, breaking down silos for cross-team collaboration that really helped
us be more efficient. And as a result, we had a couple of key product launches that are really
helping to accelerate the growth of the Stacks Network.
So the first is that we launched the dual stacking protocol.
It's an institutional Bitcoin yield product.
It allows you to make your Bitcoin productive
and start earning yield by securing the Stacks Network and staking STX.
There's been a really strong market response to this.
We had over 100 million in program value in the first three months,
and we continue to get really positive feedback
from different investors and institutions.
You can go ahead and check it out.
Go to app.stacks.co, where we built a comprehensive dashboard
where you can manage your dual staking position,
check out the calculator,
project what your estimated yields are going to be,
and it just really guides you through the flow of how to get started.
And moving forward, we're really looking to build on the success of this product this year. So
we're planning to roll out some key features like unilateral exit for Bitcoin. We've been doing a
lot of research and development into that and can really continue to scale this product
through new institutional partnerships
that even Alex were alluding to earlier.
So feel free to stay tuned for more updates on this soon.
Another quick update is at the end of Q4,
we also launched USDCX.
It's the first regulated stablecoin on Stax.
Huge shout out to our partner Circle.
They've been really excellent to work with on this,
really leaning in to help to accelerate the growth.
In just over one month,
we've achieved over $8.6 million in TVL,
and really focusing on migrating AEUSDC into USDCX.
So we'll be consolidating liquidity around this new asset. And we're
continuing to scale this through ongoing DeFi deployment. So USDCX is now available on Zest,
Granite, and Bitflow. We'll continue to see new integrations this year, especially with some
exciting product launches from the DeFi apps. The first concentrated liquidity decks on Bitflow
will be rolling out as well as some institutional yield vaults for SBDC that Hermetica is launching that we've talked about here in the
past. So really just continuing to grow the liquidity for that and really using it as a tool
for many of our DeFi applications. You can start minting USDCX onboarding to Stacks by going to bridge.stacks.co.
So yeah, lots of different projects
that are sort of ongoing
and I think really positioning us well
for continued growth going into 2026.
Thanks, Kyle.
Thanks so much, Andre.
Next up, Adriano, do we have you on the stage?
I know we're having some technical
difficulties with today's town hall just wanted to see if you're there
nope maybe we'll give you just a minute to to join back up here on stage with us if you're able to
suit. All right. It looks like we may have lost Adriano. So we'll give him just a few more minutes
to join up on stage. So far, there's been a ton discussed today. I mean, if you are a builder
looking to build in the world of Web3, digital assets, stablecoins,
Bitcoin, Bitcoin DeFi.
As the team has mentioned throughout today, there's a ton of new opportunities existing
and starting now, today, and that are going to be rolling out here in the coming months
as well.
Everything from that reboot of the Stacks Accelerator
and seeing that continue to grow and expand,
supporting those early stage teams
to the new grants program, to D-grants,
to a lot of the efforts that Kenny
and the entire DevRel group are putting forward
in helping to onboard anyone that's looking
to enter into this industry for the first time
or really sharpen their skills
even further in this new world of vibe coding or AI supported coding as well. And I know we talked
a little bit about from Andre to Kenny and even Rina touched on this as well, is the stablecoin environment in USDC.
There is a lot of excitement around how some of the AI agents that are being developed
may use stablecoins like USDC and others for payments,
and how that could be supportive to the Stacks ecosystem
and also the underlining infrastructure as well.
That said, I'm going to check to see one more time
if Adriano is able to join us,
as my update is not nearly as awesome as his is.
All right.
Well, I think we're going to maybe keep moving on here
as Adriano is not able to join us today, but we will have him back up or maybe we'll get him
on the DeFi show later in the week to kind of cover what he was going to talk about here on
today's town hall. Due to some of the technical issues that we're experiencing with X today,
those that we had to start, I think we're going to come to a close for today's
town hall. There's so much more that is going to be announced here in the coming weeks,
as everyone has alluded to. And a big shout out to the entire ecosystem for all of the work on
the Fireblocks announcement that was released yesterday and also to the grants program,
the reboot of, excuse me, the
continuation of dGrants and the upcoming Stacks Accelerator and all of the product along with
the governance and all of the continued support that everyone is putting forth. And a big thank
you to all of you in the community as well for continuing to support, grow, and engage across the Stacks ecosystem. I am going to see if we have maybe one question in the Stacks thread
to see here if we can bring one up.
One second, everybody.
All right.
Let's see.
Looks like I was able to get to most of those in the thread.
Again, I know that there was a question about special announcements.
We will have more to come.
I think there was a ton already given today, but we will come to a close and very excited
to look forward to what comes in February as we wrap up January and look towards the next month here on the Stacks
ecosystem. Again, thank you everybody for tuning in to this month's Town Hall. Again, this is our
monthly series where we talk about everything that's happening across the Stacks and the wider
Bitcoin industry and share with you the latest developments to keep you updated on all of the momentum.
Everything discussed here today was for educational purposes only and not financial advice. Please do
your own research. That said, everyone have a wonderful day, wonderful evening, wherever you
may be tuning in from around the world. And we'll see you back here next month. Keep building,
everybody. Take care. Bye-bye. Thank you.
