You know an ecosystem is truly blossoming when it’s actually hard to compile quarterly updates and make them fit in a single email. It’s always amazing to see just how much gets done toward our mission of building a user-owned internet on Bitcoin every 3 months.

I’m thankful for the many long days and late nights I see from the PBC team and from community members throughout the world as we collectively push toward the launch of Stacks 2.0. It will be an incredible moment for the Stacks ecosystem as well the crypto industry, as we bring a world of new possibilities to Bitcoin via apps and smart contracts.

While I know we’re all looking ahead at Stacks 2.0, it’s important to take a moment to celebrate what’s been done recently. Here are some of my favorite recent highlights (please don’t miss many more below):

• Full Proof-of-Transfer went live on testnet: The Krypton testnet is now nearly identical to the Stacks 2.0 mainnet that will launch, meaning you can test Stacking (earning Bitcoin), mining, and smart contracts around Bitcoin in previously impossible ways.

• Ecosystem Decentralization: Two new independent entities joined the Stacks ecosystem: Freehold, which provides new ways to organize communities, and Daemon, which supports STX miners and the Asia market. Further, Blockstack PBC transferred 100 Million STX to the Stacks Foundation to support its independent work and to further decentralize the ecosystem.

• Stacks Brand & upcoming shift to Hiro: We are thrilled to have a beautiful new Stacks brand for the ecosystem & cryptocurrency. Further, Blockstack PBC will become Hiro to help further differentiate itself from the project while signaling a narrowed focus on developer tools. 

• Growth: Since January, over 27,000 new faces have joined one of the Stacks community Telegrams, while online brand reach grew nearly 4x (3.8) from 368.8 million to 1.4 billion over the same period last year. The Blockstack community participated in 40+ virtual events worldwide in Q3 and saw the official Meetup community surpass 10k+ members. Over 5,500 people attended our two signature events, Redefine Summit and FuturePROOF, while 24 AMAs took place in China, Korea, Indonesia, Turkey, Russia, Spain, the US, and more.

• Partnerships: Last quarter we brought in valuable new partners to the ecosystem like Chainlink, Blockdaemon, and Arweave, for oracles, infrastructure, and smart contract collaboration. We’re looking forward to several more partners and use cases this quarter.

• Stacking Earnings Model: Earlier this month, we released a comprehensive model that allows users to estimate potential earnings based on various assumptions and variables, such as participation rate, the number of miners, transaction fees, as well as others.

If you take one thing away from this message, it’s buckle up! The time between now and mainnet should be filled with plenty of opportunities to get involved with events, ecosystem entities, and the Stacks community. The Blockstack PBC (soon Hiro Systems PBC) team has moved out of Slack and onto Discord full time to be closer to the community on a daily basis, so please connect with us there if you haven’t already.

Last, but not least, look out for information on the Stacks 2.0 launch event soon. 

Muneeb Ali
CEO, Blockstack PBC (soon Hiro)
@muneeb 

Don’t miss town hall on October 30th at 9am ET/1pm UTC. → Register

Over the past few months, we worked with the community to establish branding that visually captures the spirit of the ecosystem and we were thrilled to unveil the brand system for Stacks. The Stacks blockchain and Stacks (STX) cryptocurrency are the fundamental building blocks upon which a vibrant ecosystem is growing and now we have a brand that unites us.

Blockstack PBC Is Becoming Hiro, Celebrating its Cypherpunk Roots and Developer Community

Blockstack PBC will soon become Hiro Systems PBC, or 'Hiro' (pronounced he·ro), and our primary focus will narrow to providing developers the tools they need to build a new internet on Bitcoin. This change will come as our work on the Stacks 2.0 public infrastructure winds down after launch and the Stacks ecosystem continues to decentralize and grow. The change to Hiro is both a signal of our commitment to developers, as well as a practical change designed to shift focus (previously often put on Blockstack PBC) to the Stacks ecosystem. → Learn More

In early October, Blockstack Co-Founder, Muneeb Ali published a comprehensive model that allowed users to estimate potential earnings based on various assumptions and variables, such as participation rate, the number of miners, transaction fees, as well as others. Coupled with the implementation of Stacking on the testnet, we’re seeing a lot of excitement about this type of novel value-creation mechanism. → Stacking Calculator

Feature Press & Interviews

• During Q3, The Stacks ecosystem saw four major announcements including the launch of new independent entities: Daemon Technologies and Freehold. The Stacks Foundation also announced its grants program, which was covered in an exclusive with CoinDesk and the launch of Krypton was covered in ZDNet and others.
• CoinTelgraph: Blockstack (PBC) CEO Says Bitcoin Is a Better DeFi Solution Than Most Think
• Blockstack was featured in Fox Business following the notorious Twitter hack that compromised the security of notable personalities including Barack Obama, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates. Muneeb Ali commented on the  dangers of centralized social media and the general nature of cryptocurrencies, to remind the world that what this community is building will fundamentally change how apps work.
• Muneeb Ali and Aaron Blankstein were featured on the Hidden Forces and Hackernoon podcasts where Muneeb spoke with Hidden Forces to discuss the Twitter hack and how Blockstack’s protocols offer solutions for security and privacy issues on the internet today. Aaron spoke with Hackernoon in a joint interview with the Algorand team to discuss the launch of Clarity and what improvements it offers to smart contracts.
• Muneeb also spoke at LiveChain and was published in a lineup amongst other key industry leaders. Muneeb spoke about building a future-proof business and overcoming key challenges that entrepreneurs face.

Decentralization and Partnerships

Daemon Technologies Launch

Last quarter, we welcomed a new Asia-based entity, Daemon Technologies, to the Stacks ecosystem. Headquartered in Hong Kong, it will serve as an important entry point and hub for the Stacks Ecosystem in Asia, while further decentralizing the ecosystem. Daemon’s Founder and CEO, Xan Ditkoff, has been on the ground in Hong Kong, researching, preparing, and launching Daemon Technologies. Daemon plans to experiment with software that leverages the Proof-of-Transfer infrastructure of the upcoming Stacks 2.0 chain, including an open-source mining bot. → Learn More

Freehold: Empowering The Stacks Community

In September, yet another entity joined the Stacks Ecosystem. Freehold, founded by former Blockstack PBC Head of Growth, Patrick Stanley, will be taking on the role of empowering tightly knit communities to collaborate on open protocols, starting with Stacks. Freehold is the ‘Contribution Entity’ as outlined in the Stacks ecosystem’s path to decentralization. Freehold’s initial goal is to advance ideas and projects in the space by first encouraging active contributions to the ecosystem. Members will later be able to earn rewards by completing various challenges related to community building. To learn more or get involved with Freehold, go to joinfreehold.com.

Chainlink: Stacks 2.0 + Chainlink Oracle Technology

Blockstack PBC and Chainlink announced that they are joining forces to integrate Chainlink as the preferred oracle solution for the Clarity smart contract language. The initial integration will revolve around integrating Chainlink’s widely used Price Feeds, but will likely evolve into a generalized oracle solution for Stacks 2.0. → Learn More

Blockdaemon to Provide Robust Node Tools for Stacks 2.0

In August, we announced a partnership with Blockdaemon to provide a seamless path to running a Stacks 2.0 node. Blockdaemon makes it possible for users to directly launch Stacks 2.0 nodes with just a few clicks via their marketplace → Learn More

Clarity Arweave Bounty & Integration

Last month, Blockstack and Arweave teamed up to host a bounty for a compiler that would allow Clarity smart contracts to run on the Smartweave platform. The bounty was a success! Arto Bendiken built Sworn, a compiler that parses .clar files and translates them into an equivalent SmartWeave program in the form of JavaScript code. 

The core theme of engineering related work in Q3 continued to be Stacks 2.0. 

PoX Mining & Stacking (Krypton Phase of Testnet)

September 24th marked one of the most significant milestones yet on the path towards the launch of Stacks 2.0: Phase 3 of the Testnet (Krypton), including a full implementation of Proof-of-Transfer (PoX), was made live on the testnet. This means that developers and miners are able to interact with the full PoX mechanism, and users can experiment with Stacking rewards. It also means that over 90% of the design for Stacks 2.0 from our whitepapers have now been implemented! → Learn More

Transaction Signing with Blockstack Connect

At the end of July, a brand new version of Blockstack Connect went live for developers who want to build apps that sign transactions with Clarity smart contracts on the Stacks 2.0 Testnet. This is mission critical infrastructure for nurturing a vibrant and versatile dApp ecosystem. We’re looking for feedback from developers on specifically how this release satisfies their immediate development and testing needs. → Learn More and Try It Out

• The Stacks community organized over 40 virtual events in Q3
• The official Meetup community surpassed 10k+ members
• Over 5,500 people attended our two signature events, Redefine Summit and FuturePROOF
• 24 AMAs took place in China, Korea, Indonesia, Turkey, Russia, Spain, the US, and more.
• Community engagement has more than doubled since the move to Discord, there are almost 200 of you on each townhall
• Town halls regularly see more than 200 of you each month
• Local Telegram communities grew from 10 to 24 communities worldwide and since January, over 27,000 new people have joined one

Stacks Hackathon Series & Clarity Hack Winners

This summer we announced the Stacks Hackathon Series to incentivize robust experimentation and development on the Stacks 2.0 testnet. The first event in the series was Clarity Hack, a month-long sprint to produce powerful smart contracts written in the new Clarity programming language. The results exceeded all expectations, and there were a multitude of fully-fledged, useful, open-source smart contracts including an adaptive currency, a library for uint-256 numeric values, and even a crowdfunding mechanism! → Winners

→ The Stacks 2.0 Hackathon is still ongoing with HacksStacks and HackDefi!

App Progress & Community Contributions

Stacks 2.0: Several community members are building tools for mining and stacking on Stacks 2.0. These projects include:

• Cerebro Wallet, which will integrate Stacking
• Stacked Sats: A non-custodial delegation service
• Stackulator: An app for calculating earnings from STX mining & stacking
• SpeedSpend: First collectible NFT & gambling app on Stacks 2.0 Testnet
• StacksPack: Guides for running a node on raspberry pi

Clarity:

• Clarity.tools by Terje Norderhaug
• Clarity Video series initiative led by Harini and Friedger

Consumer Apps & Products:

• Ryder: Secure, wearable hardware wallet
• Full Pravica communications suite

Interoperability, Community Collab

• SkySpaces app that integrates Blockstack with Sia (also a Sia Hackathon grand prize winner!)

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Forward-looking statements
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