Interpreting the Stacks Nakamoto upgrade: What are the opportunities for participation?

Author: Ignas, DeFi Researcher; Translation: Golden Finance xiaozou

The Bitcoin halving is done and Runes have been released. What's next? The Stacks Nakamoto upgrade.

Let's take a look at why this upgrade is important? What are the Stacks protocols that should be paid attention to?

The growing interest in the Bitcoin L2 narrative and several token-free protocols on Stacks make it a good target for attention. The upgrade will bring Bitcoin's finality and stronger MEV resistance, but these are boring technical contents that degens don't really care about.

Stacks was not fun before - the transaction speed was as slow as the Bitcoin network. If you have the patience to wait 10 minutes for a transaction, you can trade Ordinals, BRC20s, and Runes on Bitcoin. Stacks simply can’t compete with Bitcoin as a degen playground.

The Nakamoto upgrade of Staks is a fast block time of about 5 seconds, which makes DeFi and degen transactions on Stacks very exciting. The Nakamoto upgrade is launched today…but we have to wait until May 15-29 for the activation window. Then the real fun will begin.

It’s fun to launch new tokens on Stacks. The bad news is that because Stacks has its own development language, Clarity, there are not that many protocols to farm.

What’s the good news? That is, the limited number of protocols is an opportunity to cover the entire Stacks ecosystem, because funds only flow to a few protocols. In addition, the native development language prevents lazy forks. They will airdrop tokens shortly after the Nakomoto upgrade. Please be prepared.

Liquidity staking is the easiest way to participate in the Stacks ecosystem:

· LISA: Stake STX to exchange for LiSTX

· Stacking DAO: Stake STX to exchange for stSTX

Use STX liquidity staking derivatives in other protocols to get extra points:

· Bitflow: Stacks' Curve. Depositing STX/stSTX LP can get Bitflow points and 2.5 times Stacking points.

· ALEX: Offer LiSTX/STX LP to get 2.5x LISA points.

· Velar: Another decentralized exchange with a good APY.

· Arkadiko Protocol: Stacks' MakerDAO. Deposit stSTX as collateral and mint USDA stablecoins to earn 1.5x Staking points. (Note: Arkadiko DIKO tokens have been released)

· Zest Protocol: Lending. After suffering an "attack", it is currently suspended until May 5th.

The meme coins on Stacks have seen an increase in attention and trading volume, thanks to the upgraded 5-second block time. The two main meme coins are as follows:

· WELSH: The first meme coin, with a current market cap of $59 million.

· LEO: A cat meme coin, with a current market cap of $14 million.

Eventually, Stacks will launch a trust-minimized BTC bridge and sBTC wrapper 2-3 months after the Nakamoto upgrade. I hope Stacks will attract institutions and whales seeking BTC-related gains. It will bring TVL and increase the valuation of STX.