According to CryptoPotato, Stacks (STX) prices have surged more than 30% in the past few hours, reaching an all-time high of $3.65 before slightly cooling off. The token climbed from an intraday low of $2.75 on March 20 and has made an impressive 125% gain since the beginning of the year. Stacks enables developers to write smart contracts for the Bitcoin network and gained popularity in 2023 during the Ordinal Inscriptions craze.
The significant price increase is driven by the approval of a major upgrade to the Stacks protocol called Nakamoto. On March 20, the Stacks Foundation announced that the upgrade had been approved following a community and governance vote with a resounding majority in favor. Over 2,700 accounts voted for the Nakamoto release, with more than 150 million STX tokens from nearly 400 accounts voting in favor of the upgrade. The Nakamoto testnet is set to go live on March 25th, with mainnet activation expected in the last two weeks of May. The upgrade will enhance block times and network security, making transactions on Stacks as irreversible as Bitcoin's.
Stacks co-founder Muneeb Ali stated on March 20 that around $200 million in BTC yields will go out to users this year at current levels, adding that 'Stacks (STX) is the only digital asset with a native BTC yield.' Other altcoins have also experienced double-digit surges, including Ethereum, Solana, THORChain (RUNE), Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, FLOKI, and PEPE.