Stacks Unlocks Fast Blocks and ‘Bitcoin Finality’ With Nakamoto Upgrade

Stacks, a top Bitcoin Layer 2, has shipped its long-awaited Nakamoto upgrade.

The Nakamoto upgrade went live on Oct. 29, with the Stacks Foundation touting it as reducing block times from 10 minutes to between five and 10 seconds.

The upgrade also introduces “Bitcoin Finality,” which the foundation said makes Stacks transactions as irreversible as those executed on the Bitcoin blockchain.

“Going forward, Stacks can no longer fork on its own,” the foundation said. “Once a transaction is confirmed, reversing it is at least as hard as reversing a Bitcoin transaction.”

The foundation added that Nakamoto provides a technical foundation for the launch of sBTC — a non-custodial BTC-backed token — later this year.

The foundation described sBTC as a programmable token backed by BTC. The token both provides a vehicle for users to bridge the value of their BTC onto Stacks for use in smart contracts, and allows smart contracts to send sBTC to a Bitcoin address to burn the sBTC token directly from Stacks.

Stacks estimated it will launch sBTC within the next four to six weeks alongside incentives to bootstrap sBTC’s growth.

The price of STX is down 4.7% over the past 24 hours, according to The Defiant’s crypto price feeds.

Competition in Bitcoin’s sidechain ecosystem

Stacks is seeking to compete in the increasingly competitive ecosystem of Bitcoin Layer 2s and sidechains.

Stacks currently ranks as the third-largest Bitcoin L2 or sidechain with a total value locked (TVL) of $220.2 million and a market share of 12.25%, falling short of rivals offering Ethereum Virtual Machine smart contracts, according to DeFi Llama.

Core is the largest Bitcoin L2 with $585.4 million, followed by Bitlayer with $285.8 million — both of which are buoyed by popular EVM lending and BTC protocols.

By contrast, Stacks uses a bespoke programming and smart contract language, Clarity, meaning code written for EVM cannot be easily ported over to the network.

Muneeb Ali, co-creator of Stacks, told The Defiant that Stacks will seek out integrations with other non-EVM blockchains, including Solana, Aptos, and Near Protocol.