Stacks Begins 2-Step Rollout of Major ‘Nakamoto’ Overhaul

Named after Bitcoin’s anonymous founder, Nakamoto, an upgrade for Stacks is planned. This change aims to separate Stacks’ block production timeline from Bitcoin’s. Despite having a greater transaction capacity than Bitcoin (around 7 transactions per second), Stacks initially matched Bitcoin’s block production rate, resulting in network congestion, as explained by Stacks’ creator Muneeb Ali to CoinDesk.

Nakamoto is set to unveil a novel method for creating Stacks blocks, revising its unique proof-of-transfer consensus mechanism starting today. New “validators” will gradually emerge to authenticate “tenures” of transactions. Initially, this process is considered a trial run before the complete activation in May. According to Stacks developers, announced on X, this phase is primarily for preparation and testing purposes. (For more technical insights, refer to this article.)

For casual users of Stacks, the developers recommend checking you’re using an updated wallet, which in many cases should happen automatically. For those who stake their STX tokens, the instantiation on Monday automatically unlocked those tokens, which can then be restaked when Nakamoto-compliant pools come online, likely sometime next week.

Approximately $1.3 billion in STX tokens are currently being held in on-chain staking, accounting for around one-third of the total circulating supply worth $4.2 billion. This makes it one of the largest interest-bearing pools linked to bitcoin. In the last 24 hours, STX has experienced a surge of over 16%, reaching approximately $2.90 – a first for this token to enter the top 25 tokens in terms of market capitalization.

See also: Bitcoin L2s Are Poised to Break Out, Stacks Creator Says