Stacks Price Today

The current real-time Stacks price is $1.66 . STX price has plummeted by 8.81% in the last day and decreased by 26.46% in the last seven days. It’s important to note that the current Stacks market capitalization is $2,498,959,590. The maximum supply is 1,818,000,000.00 STX coins, with a circulating supply of 1,505,799,153.81. STX is ranked #50 in terms of market cap.

Stacks Explained

Stacks (STX) is a smart contract layer for the Bitcoin network. The project enables the creation, hosting, and execution of smart contract-based Decentralized Applications (dApps) on the Bitcoin network. The Stacks team selected Bitcoin due to its uptime, decentralization, and uncompromising security.

Although the Stacks network is a layer connected to the Bitcoin blockchain, its native STX token is required to pay transaction fees and deploy smart contracts. Moreover, STX was approved by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Muneeb Ali founded Stacks with the mainnet launching in 2021. Stacks raised around $50 million following the release of its whitepaper in 2017. 

The Mechanics of Stacks

As Stacks utilizes the Bitcoin network for its base layer, the project's scalability and throughput are limited by its parent network, which is notoriously slow with a 10-minute block time. However, Stacks has built a system that breaks each large Bitcoin block into smaller Microblocks, which speeds up processing, enabling the network to exceed Bitcoin's transfer speed limits. 

Because Stacks is tied to Bitcoin, the network has inherited Bitcoin's SHA-256-based Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism, which uses crypto mining to validate transactions. You can temporarily lock STX to secure the network, validate transactions, and earn Bitcoin mining rewards. 

As many validators already operate on the Bitcoin network, Stacks' smart contracts are highly secure and should maintain a consistent uptime. 

The project has also implemented a custom consensus model dubbed Proof-of-Transfer (PoX). People can commit Bitcoin to two secure wallet addresses to get a chance to mine a Stacks block and earn STX tokens. People who commit more Bitcoin will have a higher chance of being selected to mint a Stacks block. The current reward rate is 500 STX ($590) per block.

What Makes Stacks Unique

Stacks is designed to augment the Bitcoin blockchain, enabling it to be used for broader applications. The project functions similarly to Ethereum Layer 2 solutions, like Polygon, which processes transactions on its own network before settling them on the parent network. 

The idea of a Bitcoin layer two is exciting, but the primary role of Stacks is to bring smart contract support to the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin is an ideal base layer for smart contract execution and hosting as it's the most transparent, decentralized, and secure cryptocurrency network. 

On top of bringing new capabilities to the Bitcoin network, Stacks also introduced a custom smart contract programming language called Clarity. While other languages, like the Ethereum network's Solidity, only support pre-programmed conditions for transactions, Clarity allows users to create custom conditions, vastly expanding what it's possible for developers to create. 

Stacks Price History

Investors first had the opportunity to purchase STX in late 2019, when the asset was publically launched at $0.213, an 84.56% discount compared to today's valuation. For almost one year after its launch, there was little demand for STX, causing the asset to trade around $0.10 to $0.15 until late 2020.C

Positive market sentiment resulting from the bull run and the launch of the Stacks 2.0 mainnet led to the token exploding throughout 2021, hitting $2.6961 in April. STX then crashed, falling to $0.6034 in June. However, the market resurged in late 2021, leading STX to hit a high of $2.90 in December. 

Due to profit-taking from investors, a pandemic, and mass uncertainty within financial markets, STX fell sharply in 2022, eventually dropping as low as $0.2155 by the end of the year. Entering 2023, STX had momentum, rising to $1.1593 in March before falling back toward around $0.50 until mid-October. 

Coming into 2024, STX performed favorably. The market was recovering, and there was increased demand for Bitcoin smart contracts, leading STX to achieve an all-time high of $3.6467 in late March. However, STX didn't have enough traction to maintain its valuation and now trades at $1.66 .