🚀 ICYMI: Xverse Launched its Desktop Browser Extension
"Xverse, the leading self-custodial wallet for Bitcoin Web3, is proud to announce the launch of its new desktop browser extension. Available for Chrome and currently in beta testing, the extension enables more powerful applications in the Bitcoin ecosystem."

Read the full announcement here 👈

Builder Spotlight: Wow Labz
Advait Danke is the Project Lead for Pirates at Wow Labz, one of India's leading turnkey product development companies. Wow Labz is setting out to create a play-and-earn game based on Stacks. In this discussion, we cover the challenges of building a game on the blockchain based in randomness, how their work will help to shape the Stacks ecosystem, the distinction between Web2 and Web3, and more. 👇

Step Aside, Ethereum: Blockchain Project Stacks Wants to Bring Smart Contracts to Bitcoin
(source: Coindesk)

"Blockchain project Stacks has published a whitepaper showing how a new digital asset called “Stacks bitcoin” (sBTC) can be used to make Bitcoin fully programmable."

"Unlike Ethereum or Solana where developers can conjure up all manner of algorithmic machinations – think six-figure gorilla avatars – Bitcoin’s simpler scripting language limits what Bitcoin developers can create on the platform. Stacks, an existing smart contract platform, wants to break through those limitations by introducing a new digital asset derived from Bitcoin" Read the full article

🚀 Even more builders will soon start building on #Bitcoin
☑️ Clarity Stacks smart contract camp starting tomorrow. Join the next cohort or self-paced course here.
☑️ Web3startuplab Stacks startups cohort 3 applications opened. Register here.
☑️ Stacks Startups accelerator deadline closing soon. Register here

🎉 Stacks Hackathon Winners
Congratulations to the following three projects for winning prizes during the last Stacks Clarity Smart Contract hackathon.

🥇 1st place: Votr
🥈 2nd place: Defi-arkadiko-compound
🥉 3rd place: All or nothing

Start building on Bitcoin & get funded
Below are the top Stacks Critical Bounties that we’re ready to fund today, should a qualified party apply to work on them.

1️⃣ Clarity Smart-contracts that specifically leverage Stacks 2.1 unlocks (Continuous Stacking, Topping Off, Improved Bridging)
2️⃣ Stacks Libraries, SDKs, and associated documentation for Rust, C, GoLang, Java, Python, Clojure
3️⃣ Stacks integrations for Dune, Nansen, Token Terminal, and/or other multi-chain on-chain analytics platforms

Read the full blog post on all winning projects 👇

"sBTC is the ability to participate in an application ecosystem where you are not leaving the #Bitcoin ecosystem in a way. Ultimately @Stacks is a Bitcoin layer."

⭐️ Trust Machinesco’s Engineering Partner Igor S. about sBTC

Full Hiro Systems video available here 👇

🗞 ICYMI: The Stacks Monthly Newsletter
The Stacks ecosystem closed out 2022 with one of the biggest quarters yet, officially voting in the Stacks 2.1 upgrade while two new whitepapers were published that outlined a vision for an even more complete Stacks Bitcoin layer.

In Q4, we also watched Clarity smart contracts grow over 100%, the network crossed 7 billion in total STX transferred, and we welcomed 84 new members to the talent pool, a growth of 44% from the previous quarter.

Read & Subscribe here 👇

What type of Stacks smart contract tutorial do you want our builders to work on? 🤔

⭐️ Last time, BowTiedDeployer taught the Stacks community how to integrate NFTs into a web application or game.
📺 Video available below 👇

👁‍🗨 Clarity Stacks smart contracts are decidable.

1️⃣ It makes analyzing the behavior of the code much more straight forward
2️⃣ It closes off classes of hacks, bugs, and exploits

Hiro Systems' Dev Advocate Max Efremov on Clarity's benefits.
Full video available down below 👇

📄DeSpread Report: sBTC (Stacks Bitcoin) — Unlocking Bitcoin to be a productive asset

[Table of Contents]
- Bitcoin and Financial Market
- Bitcoin Layers and $sBTC
- $sBTC Use Cases & Limitations

Read here: https://medium.com/despread-global/despread-report-sbtc-stacks-bitcoin-8eb11302ce76

Spread the word: https://twitter.com/DeSpreadTeam/status/1614860613607632898

🚨 Just in: Stacks Is the #1 Web3 Project on #Bitcoin For Second Year in a Row

The 2023 @ElectricCapital report measured this by developer activity. #Stacks is also a top-30 crypto project (at #28) as measured by total developers.

Explore the full report 👇

🚨 ALEX Introducing Trading Pool Introduction

ALEX takes every effort to ensure their AMM protocol stays relevant and is future-proof. The result is the Trading Pool, which implements Generalised Mean Equation and, with a suitable parameterisation, supports both risky pairs (i.e. xy=L), stable pairs (i.e. x+y=L) and any linear combination in-between (i.e. Curve). Read the full article here 👇

👁 sBTC Explained with Xverse
Although Stacks has made significant progress, there’s still no way to move BTC in and out of smart contracts in a fully trustless manner. This has been Bitcoin’s evasive “holy grail” issue for almost a decade. Enter sBTC: a non-custodial form of pegged Bitcoin with 100% Bitcoin finality.

The Stacks network's PoX connection to Bitcoin facilitates sBTC’s novel trustless peg design. Soon, users can convert BTC to sBTC for use in applications without involving centralized entities. Furthermore, users don’t pay any fees when converting between BTC and sBTC other than Bitcoin gas fees.

Read the full article 👈

🔄 Release the StableSwap - Arkadiko X ALEX
(source: Arkadiko Medium)

The fine folks at Alex are bringing Arkadiko the technology to create a new type of liquidity mechanism, a StableSwap pool. Such a pool is fundamental to the Arkadiko Protocol as it allows for low fee and low slippage swaps between USDA, Arkadiko’s Stablecoin and xUSD, a wrapped version of USDC custodied by Anchorage and issued by Tokensoft. The two stablecoins already exist on the Stacks blockchain but are not directly linked to each other. Thanks to the StableSwap pool, we’ll soon be able to swap between the two stablecoins.

Read more 👇

🎯 Hiro's Focus Areas for Q1 2023
It’s worth noting that the upcoming Stacks 2.1 upgrade took up a lot of the Hiro team’s bandwidth in Q4, so several of our Q4 projects will continue to be priorities in Q1. Those priorities include:

⭐️ API Microservices
⭐️ Subnets
⭐️ More Bitcoin Support Across Hiro Products
⭐️ Product R&D
⭐️ Network Support
⭐️ Docs

Read the full article 👇

📈 State of Stacks - Messari Report Q4 2022
⭐️ Stacks network average daily active users and addresses, increased by 76% and 42%, respectively, in Q4’22.
⭐️ Smart contracts deployed compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.8%.

State of #Stacks report by @MessariCrypto - full report available 👇

👁 Why Developers Should Build on Bitcoin in 2023
⭐️ Developers Are Heads Down Building
⭐️ Tooling Is Getting More Sophisticated
⭐️ Stacks 2.1 Is Coming
⭐️ Subnets Arrive in 2023
⭐️ More Big Network Unlocks on the Horizon

Read the full article by Hiro 👇

🚨This Week in sBTC with Andre.btc

✅ Andre.btc sBTC residency proposal finalized
📙 Go-To-Market plan
🖥 Engineering: sBTC bridge development & more

📅 Weekly updates: View the first update down below. Updates will soon expand in size as activities to successfully launch sBTC increase 👇

The Weekly Stack - Gamma's newsletter
Featured Artists & Collections
Stacks Parrot Radio 📻🦜
We love seeing NFT projects go beyond art — and Stacks Parrots has done just that with the STX Parrot Radio, now available on iOS & Android!

Parrot Radio is the first Web3 music player on Stacks, supporting all audio and audio-visual NFTs. If you’re a Stacks Parrot holder, you’ll get lifetime access to the app. Check it out! 🎶
Read the full article 👇

📺 Stacker Chats with Stacks creator Muneeb Ali is Back
Tune in for weekly insights about Building on Bitcoin!

In this episode, Muneeb Ali and Gina Abrams talk about how sBTC (via Stacks) makes building on Bitcoin more decentralized.

They also discuss why's there is a need for a separate gas token ($STX) to make a decentralized building on Bitcoin future work.

Watch here 👇