Stacks, Prominent Bitcoin Layer-2 Project, Activates Long-Awaited 'Nakamoto' Upgrade

Stacks, a layer-2 blockchain project atop Bitcoin, confirmed on Tuesday the activation of its Nakamoto upgrade, designed to make transactions faster.

The project’s official account on X posted that “Stacks transactions once confirmed are now at least as irreversible as Bitcoin’s,” and that there is a “significant reduction in transaction times.”

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Stacks, co-founded by Muneeb Ali, a Princeton-educated computer scientist who also serves as CEO of the Bitcoin-focused development firm Trust Machines, is seen as one of the oldest and most credible efforts building layer-2 networks atop the Bitcoin blockchain – no small claim given that more than 80 such projects have sprung up over the past couple years.

Ali told CoinDesk earlier this year that he saw Bitcoin as the “apex predator” in the blockchain industry – despite the far-greater success of so-called smart-contract blockchains like Ethereum and Solana that are designed for greater programmability, and have attracted entire ecos of applications devoted to things like decentralized finance (DeFi) and gaming.

The upgrade has been the centerpiece of Stack’s roadmap, with initial phases of the implementation began earlier this year, and then several delays before full activation.