beincrypto.com
Bitcoin smart contract protocol Stacks has seen a surge in activity in recent weeks. As a result, its native STX token has more than doubled over the past week.
The Bitcoin Ordinal inscription craze has created at least one major beneficiary in the Stacks protocol.
Stacks enables developers to write smart contracts for the Bitcoin network. Furthermore, projects in the Stacks ecosystem are trying to capitalize on the current hype for Ordinals.
Ordinal inscriptions are similar to nonfungible tokens (NFTs). They can be inscribed into one Satoshi, the smallest denomination of a Bitcoin, and remain permanently on the blockchain. Ordinal’s official documentation labeled the individual assets as “digital artifacts” rather than NFTs.
Additionally, more than 150,000 Ordinals have been inscribed over the past few weeks, according to Dune Analytics.
Stacks co-founder, Muneeb Ali, told the Defiant that the Ordinals craze and protocol interest increasing was not a coincidence. “What has been missing is that young, enthusiastic developer community that is actually building things, shipping stuff,” he said.
Stacks and BTC Long-Term Potential
On Feb. 21, Ali predicted that Ordinals and activity from Bitcoin layers “give a clear path for long-term Bitcoin security,” rather than mining.
He also predicted that if the demand to transact on the Bitcoin network continues, there could be some parallels to the growth of Ethereum scaling solutions such as layer-2.
In an interview on Feb. 9, he commented that Ethereum is a $500 billion network with an equivalent $500 billion dApp ecosystem. But Bitcoin has a $1 trillion network value with very few apps, “that’s the market opportunity.”
Furthermore, Stacks is developing a trustless bridge for Bitcoin to be ported into the protocol’s DeFi ecosystem.
According to its website, the sBTC token will allow BTC to become the foundation for a more secure web3 “by enabling trustless writing to Bitcoin and the movement of Bitcoin in and out of Bitcoin layers.”
STX Price Surges
The protocol’s native STX token has been on fire as a result. STX has made a whopping 130% over the past week and is up 15.8% on the day. As a result, STX was trading at $0.791 at the time of press.
Despite those massive gains, STX is still deep in the bear market territory. The token remains down 77% from its December 2021 all-time high of $3.39.