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HashKey Cloud said on Sept. 7 that it had joined Stacks as a launch partner for self-custodial Bitcoin staking.
Summary
HashKey Cloud joined Stacks as a Genesis Bond participant and an sBTC signer operator officially. The institutional Genesis Bond is scheduled to launch around September 10, according to Stacks developers. Bonded Bitcoin remains timelocked on Bitcoin while participants pair it with locked STX tokens separately. HashKey Cloud says its staking infrastructure spans more than 40 different blockchain networks globally today. sBTC signers coordinate Bitcoin deposits and withdrawals using a threshold-based approval system collectively onchain today. The agreement gives the infrastructure provider two roles: participating in the inaugural Genesis Bond and joining the signer network securing sBTC.
HashKey Cloud operates under HashKey Holding Limited. Stacks founder Muneeb Ali presented the collaboration during the HashKey Cloud and Cactus Custody “Yield on Trust” event in Hong Kong.
The company says its node and staking infrastructure covers more than 40 blockchain networks. Stacks reported that HashKey Cloud manages about HK$29 billion in staked assets. These figures come from the companies and were not independently audited for the partnership announcement.
HashKey Cloud will participate in the first Genesis Bond HashKey Cloud will join the first institutional cohort using Stacks’ new Protocol Bond system. Stacks said in an official announcement that the Genesis Bond was expected to begin around Sept. 10.
The launch date remains an estimate. Stacks has not announced an exact activation time, final capacity or participant allocations. Technical or operational conditions could also alter the schedule.
The first cohort includes institutional participants such as digital asset manager 21Shares and UTXO Management, a subsidiary of Bitcoin treasury company Nakamoto Inc. The Genesis Bond is intended to demonstrate how institutions can earn BTC-denominated rewards without transferring their Bitcoin to a centralized custodian.
Bitcoin committed to the product remains visible on its base blockchain. The arrangement should allow observers to inspect the relevant timelock transactions without relying exclusively on reports from Stacks or participating institutions.
The phrase “Bitcoin staking” requires context. Bitcoin uses proof-of-work and does not support staking through its native consensus system. The Genesis Bond does not change Bitcoin’s consensus rules.
Stacks instead uses Proof of Transfer, commonly called PoX. Stacks miners commit BTC while competing to produce blocks. The protocol distributes part of that Bitcoin to qualifying participants as rewards.
Bitcoin remains under the holder’s keys Stacks’ PoX-5 design introduces a Protocol Bond that connects two separate commitments. The participant timelocks BTC on Bitcoin’s base layer and locks a corresponding amount of STX on Stacks.
According to the project’s technical documentation, a bond lasts 12 Stacks reward cycles, or approximately six months. The Bitcoin remains in a wallet controlled by the holder’s keys rather than moving to a centralized custodian or wrapped asset.
The participant must also lock STX through a signer-manager contract. The two positions are cryptographically associated and operate together for the bond term.
PoX-5 permits only one active staking position for each Stacks principal. A participant cannot use the same principal for an STX-only position and a Protocol Bond simultaneously. The protocol also prevents one principal from holding two concurrent bonds.
The documentation allows early withdrawal. However, participants leaving before the scheduled end of a term forfeit their remaining rewards for that cycle. Recovering the BTC principal still requires the holder’s signature.
Rewards initially accrue as sBTC. A participant may request native BTC by supplying a Bitcoin payout address, provided the selected signer manager supports base-layer withdrawals.
Native BTC settlement is not available under every configuration. If the withdrawal cannot be processed within the participant’s maximum transaction-fee setting, the payment falls back to sBTC.
As crypto.news reported, Stacks is targeting an annualized Bitcoin yield near 3% during the initial phase. The rate is a protocol target, not a guaranteed return. Actual rewards may vary with miner commitments, available capacity and network conditions.
HashKey Cloud will help secure sBTC transfers HashKey Cloud will also operate as a signer for sBTC, the Bitcoin-backed asset used within the Stacks ecosystem. Stacks previously confirmed that HashKey Cloud, Ankr and The Tie had joined the signer set.
sBTC is designed to represent BTC on Stacks at a one-to-one ratio. Users can deploy it within Stacks applications while the underlying Bitcoin remains governed by the network’s signer system.
Signers collectively authorize deposits and withdrawals between Bitcoin and Stacks. No individual signer can independently move the BTC backing sBTC.
Stacks said the system maintained a 70% approval threshold throughout the latest signer rotation. Operations such as withdrawals require approval representing at least 70% of participating signer weight.
Adding HashKey Cloud brings an Asia-based infrastructure provider into the signer group. Stacks described the expansion as improving institutional access and distributing operating responsibility across additional companies and regions.
Those benefits remain Stacks’ assessment. A larger signer set does not remove every technical or governance risk associated with sBTC.
Users still depend on enough signers remaining available and following the protocol correctly. Software failures, signer outages or coordination problems could delay deposits and withdrawals. Smart-contract faults could also affect services built around sBTC.
Self-custody reduces exposure to a single custodian, but it does not eliminate risks arising from Stacks contracts, wallet software, signer managers or the sBTC system.
Genesis Bond access will remain limited initially Stacks plans to introduce Protocol Bonds in stages. Initial Genesis Bond access focuses on institutions and professional market participants rather than unrestricted retail participation.
The project’s staking guidance says bond capacity will be allocated to approved partners during the bootstrap phase. Some capacity may become available through selected pooling providers.
Wallet compatibility is another requirement. Leather and Xverse support PoX-5 functions, while Ledger users need Stacks application version 0.26.15 or later for transactions carrying the new spending conditions.
Participants must also consider the prepare phase at the end of each reward cycle. During the final 100 Bitcoin blocks, the protocol rejects new staking transactions, position updates and withdrawal requests.
HashKey Cloud has not disclosed how much BTC or STX it plans to commit. The company also has not published participation fees, customer eligibility requirements or a list of supported jurisdictions.
Its announcement cautioned that Bitcoin staking services may be unavailable in some regions because of local laws. HashKey Cloud did not guarantee any investment return.
The Genesis Bond’s expected launch is the next event to watch. Confirmation of the activation time, committed Bitcoin, participating institutions and available capacity would provide the first measurable evidence of demand for the product.
Xverse launched Bitcoin staking through sBTC on Stacks on Sept. 7, making the feature available in version 2.9 of its self-custodial wallet. In its official launch announcement, Xverse said users can put existing bitcoin to work and receive additional bitcoin through the fee-efficient sBTC representation on Stacks.
The product does not lock native BTC directly on the Bitcoin base layer. Xverse’s technical overview says participants use sBTC, which is backed one-for-one by bitcoin held through the Stacks signer system, and pair it with STX. That structure introduces different risks from simply holding BTC in a wallet.
Staking pairs sBTC with a smaller STX position A position combines sBTC with STX worth roughly 5% of the deposited sBTC, according to Xverse. The STX is neither a fee nor collateral; it establishes eligibility and links the position to a Stacks identity. The bitcoin-denominated rewards accrue to the sBTC side rather than the STX balance.
Xverse said users can obtain an STX shortfall inside the staking flow. Each participant receives one position per bond and may add sBTC or STX before the bond begins. Once it is active, the position remains fixed unless the user withdraws the sBTC or waits for maturity.
Rewards target about 3% but can vary The protocol targets an annual percentage yield of roughly 3%, with distributions arriving in sBTC about once every two weeks. The realized return depends on the bitcoin committed by Stacks miners and the amount deposited alongside it, so the target is not a guaranteed rate.
Each bond runs for six months. Before registration, users can withdraw both assets. After a bond starts, sBTC can be removed early, but the paired STX remains locked until maturity. Xverse also warns that the staking contracts are new and that sBTC depends on its signer set and continued peg to bitcoin.
The launch opens retail access to the Genesis Bond Xverse’s rollout gives wallet users pooled access to the Stacks Genesis Bond without meeting a large standalone minimum. BlockchainReporter previously reported that 21Shares joined the same Bitcoin staking program as an institutional participant. The two developments involve different access channels: 21Shares supplied capital to the bond, while Xverse now offers a wallet interface for individual positions.
The Genesis Bond is scheduled to begin near Bitcoin block 966,350, which Xverse estimated around Sept. 10 in Stacks reward cycle 143. The precise timing remains block-dependent. Later bonds are expected to open roughly monthly, but available capacity and deposit windows may close before a scheduled start.
AUTHOR
Jide Idowu is a skilled freelance writer with expertise in blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, and digital finance. Known for his ability to break down complex topics into clear, engaging content, Jide crafts articles, blog posts, and analyses that resonate with both beginners and seasoned professionals. His work spans a wide range of subjects, from emerging crypto trends to in-depth explorations of blockchain innovations. With a keen eye for detail and a passion for educating readers, Jide is a reliable voice in the rapidly evolving world of digital assets.
Bitcoin has become one of the world’s largest pools of digital capital, yet only a small fraction participates in onchain financial activity.
Summary
Stacks plans to use self-custodial Bitcoin Staking as an entry point for BTC holders, targeting roughly 3% annualized rewards paid in Bitcoin. Its roadmap moves from attracting Bitcoin capital to scaling network infrastructure and expanding into lending, trading, perpetual markets and programmable BTC. StackingDAO, Bitflow, Zest Protocol and Hermetica are developing liquid staking, trading, credit and yield products that could give staked and Bitcoin-linked capital more uses across the ecosystem. Other crypto ecosystems built large economies around staking, lending and decentralized trading. Bitcoin, by comparison, still lacks a universally accepted home where holders can put BTC to work without taking on custody, bridge or foreign-chain risks.
That is the problem Bitcoin-native finance is trying to solve.
The term describes a financial system built around Bitcoin as the productive asset, with services such as staking, lending, borrowing and trading anchored to Bitcoin rather than requiring holders to move their wealth into another blockchain economy. Stacks is pursuing that model through a 2026 roadmap built around three connected stages: attract Bitcoin capital with self-custodial yield, scale the infrastructure needed to support greater activity, then expand the financial applications available to that capital.
The official roadmap is currently presented as a 2026 plan rather than a formal roadmap extending through 2030. Its direction, however, describes a longer-term effort to build lending, trading, programmable capital and other financial services around Bitcoin. The central question for the coming years is whether Stacks can turn that roadmap into the ecosystem where BTC holders move from passive ownership to active financial use.
Bitcoin Staking could become the entry point for idle BTC Many Bitcoin projects have tried to make BTC productive, but each approach introduces different trade-offs.
Core already offers self-custodial Bitcoin staking using Bitcoin’s CheckLockTimeVerify timelocks, but rewards are paid in CORE. Babylon also keeps staked BTC native to Bitcoin, but its security model includes slashing, meaning delegated BTC can face penalties if protocol security conditions are violated.
Stacks is proposing a different combination. Under its Bitcoin Staking design, participants create a protocol bond by locking BTC on Bitcoin Layer 1 and pairing it with STX worth approximately 5% of the BTC position. The BTC remains under the participant’s keys, while the paired STX secures access to staking capacity. The current target yield is approximately 3% annualized and paid in Bitcoin.
The source of that yield is Proof of Transfer, or PoX, the consensus mechanism Stacks has operated since January 2021. Stacks miners commit BTC as they compete to produce blocks and receive STX rewards. The BTC committed by miners then flows to eligible participants. Stacks says the mechanism has distributed more than 4,200 BTC since launch.
That gives the planned product an economic structure different from staking systems funded entirely through new token issuance. The reward pool comes from BTC spent by miners as part of Stacks block production rather than from creating a new reward token or lending participants’ Bitcoin to borrowers.
The product is not yet established at scale. As of July 16, 2026, PoX-5 was operating on a private testnet with integration partners testing bonding, reward distribution and exits ahead of a public testnet and potential mainnet activation. Mainnet still depends on the Stacks governance process and successful testing.
That distinction matters. Bitcoin Staking could become the top of the Stacks capital funnel, but the thesis remains dependent on execution.
The roadmap moves from capital to infrastructure and finance Attracting BTC is only the first step. A Bitcoin-native financial system also needs enough performance, liquidity and application depth to give holders reasons to keep using their capital after earning an initial yield.
The Stacks roadmap organizes that process into three phases. Bitcoin Staking anchors capital. Infrastructure improvements prepare the network for greater DeFi and automated activity. The final phase expands Bitcoin-native finance across lending, trading and programmable capital. The workstreams are progressing concurrently rather than waiting for each previous phase to finish.
On performance, Stacks core developers are targeting a 100-fold improvement in throughput through efforts including Clarity Wasm. The roadmap also calls for continued core improvements and optimization of the sBTC bridge. Stacks has separately set a goal of supporting up to 10,000 active AI agents as programmable financial activity grows.
The longer-term financial layer includes self-custodial Bitcoin lending, trading, perpetual markets and programmable BTC that software agents can use. The roadmap also explores allowing sBTC to pay transaction fees, which could reduce the need for users or automated agents to acquire a separate gas asset before interacting with applications.
For institutions and large Bitcoin holders, that combination matters because yield alone may not justify moving substantial capital into a new financial environment.
StackingDAO, Bitflow, Zest and Hermetica build the next layer The wider Stacks ecosystem is already assembling several of the financial primitives needed to move BTC beyond a single staking product.
StackingDAO provides the liquid staking layer. It currently operates liquid Stacking products for STX and has outlined plans for a Bitcoin liquid staking token as Bitcoin Staking develops. A BTC liquid staking token, or BTC LST, would represent an underlying yield-producing Bitcoin position while remaining usable elsewhere in DeFi.
The role is comparable in structure to the function liquid staking tokens serve in Ethereum’s DeFi economy. Without a liquid representation, staked capital remains harder to use elsewhere. With one, the same economic position can potentially provide liquidity, serve as collateral or participate in additional financial strategies.
Bitflow supplies another necessary piece: markets where Bitcoin-linked assets can trade and find liquidity.
The protocol operates a decentralized exchange and aggregator on Stacks and has introduced HODLMM, a concentrated-liquidity engine designed for more capital-efficient markets. A future BTC LST would need liquid trading venues to maintain an effective market and provide holders with practical entry and exit routes.
Zest Protocol adds credit markets. Its existing Stacks market allows users to lend Bitcoin-linked assets and borrow against collateral, while its planned Bitcoin Collateral Vaults aim to let users borrow stablecoins against BTC without moving their Bitcoin off Layer 1. Zest says those vaults are scheduled to launch in 2026 and are designed around self-custodial Bitcoin collateral rather than a conventional wrapped-BTC structure.
Hermetica provides yield products and a Bitcoin-linked monetary layer through hBTC and USDh. The hBTC vault deploys BTC exposure into onchain strategies including lending, staking and basis strategies, with realized profits accounted for in Bitcoin terms. Hermetica describes the product as redeemable for native BTC, while its current documentation shows that withdrawals remain subject to protocol cooldowns and Bitcoin settlement times.
Its USDh product provides a Bitcoin-backed synthetic dollar that can serve as a stable asset within the same financial environment. Hermetica’s hBTC documentation describes a strategy that can use BTC-linked collateral in lending markets and deploy borrowed stablecoins into additional yield opportunities, connecting Bitcoin collateral, credit and stable liquidity within one system.
Together, these protocols illustrate what comes after Bitcoin Staking.
From Bitcoin yield to a Bitcoin-native financial economy Ethereum and Solana showed how staking can become more than a standalone yield product. Once users begin earning on an asset, demand can develop for liquid staking, collateral markets, decentralized exchanges and structured strategies that make the staked capital more useful.
Stacks is attempting to build a similar progression around Bitcoin without simply copying another chain’s security and custody model.
Its strategy starts with a product designed to keep BTC on Bitcoin L1 while generating BTC-denominated rewards. The roadmap then connects that capital to faster infrastructure and an ecosystem spanning liquid staking, trading, credit and yield products.
Bitcoin-native finance will not be defined by one staking product. It will be defined by whether Bitcoin can function as productive capital across staking, lending, liquidity and programmable applications without forcing holders to abandon the properties that made them choose Bitcoin in the first place.
Stacks is building toward that outcome. Bitcoin Staking is intended to open the door. The ecosystem developing behind it will determine how far the capital travels once it enters.
FAQ How is Stacks Bitcoin Staking different from other self-custodial options? Stacks’ proposed design combines three features: rewards denominated in BTC, no protocol-level slashing of Bitcoin principal and an early exit mechanism that returns BTC while forfeiting remaining rewards. Core also offers self-custodial staking but pays rewards in CORE, while Babylon’s security model includes BTC slashing. Stacks Bitcoin Staking remains in testing and has not yet established a mainnet operating record.
What is Bitcoin-native finance? Bitcoin-native finance is a financial ecosystem where Bitcoin serves as the productive asset across activities such as staking, lending, borrowing, trading and structured strategies, with infrastructure anchored to Bitcoin rather than requiring holders to move entirely into another blockchain economy.
How does Bitcoin Staking on Stacks work? The current design requires participants to lock BTC on Bitcoin L1 and pair it with STX worth approximately 5% of the BTC position. The two assets form a protocol bond. BTC committed by Stacks miners through Proof of Transfer funds Bitcoin-denominated rewards, with a current target of approximately 3% annualized yield during the planned bootstrap phase.
What is a Bitcoin liquid staking token? A Bitcoin liquid staking token represents an underlying staked or yield-producing BTC position while remaining transferable and potentially usable in DeFi. It can allow holders to maintain exposure to staking rewards while using the liquid token for trading, liquidity or collateral. StackingDAO has outlined plans to develop a BTC LST as Bitcoin Staking on Stacks develops.
21Shares, the digital asset manager behind the world’s largest suite of cryptocurrency exchange-traded products, is joining the Stacks Genesis Bond, the inaugural institutional cohort for Bitcoin Staking on Stacks. The firm’s announcement on September 3 said it will stake its own Bitcoin treasury holdings through the bond ahead of its September 10 launch.
An Institutional Test for Bitcoin Staking The Genesis Bond is designed to demonstrate Bitcoin Staking end-to-end with institutional participants and infrastructure providers before the mechanism opens more broadly. 21Shares oversees more than $6.5 billion in assets under management across more than 60 crypto ETPs globally, and its participation links Bitcoin-native yield to the traditional investment ecosystem.
By committing its treasury, the manager is not simply observing the rollout. It will participate directly in Bitcoin Staking on Stacks, a move that frames the bond as a working proof for how institutions can put idle Bitcoin to use while retaining control of the underlying asset.
How the Genesis Bond Works Bitcoin Staking lets holders earn rewards paid in Bitcoin while their Bitcoin remains on the Bitcoin blockchain. In the bond structure, participating Bitcoin is locked for a fixed term with an early exit option, and the full amount is returned when the term ends. Holders do not need to move their Bitcoin to another network or hand it to a third party to earn rewards.
The first Stacks Genesis Bond bonding period is expected to begin in October, following the September 10 launch of the bond itself. Until then the program remains a demonstration for institutions and professional investors rather than a broadly available product, and the mechanics are being tested in a controlled setting before wider rollout.
Productive Bitcoin Gains Institutional Traction Interest in productive Bitcoin has been building across the Stacks ecosystem, with liquid staking providers such as Stacking DAO preparing stBTC for the same upcoming release. 21Shares’ participation adds a large, regulated asset manager to that institutional push.
The company did not disclose the size of the Bitcoin stake it will commit or the yield it expects. Those details, along with the full roster of the Genesis cohort, remain to be confirmed as the launch approaches.
AUTHOR
Mushumir Butt is a seasoned crypto journalist with over three years of experience reporting on the world of blockchain and cryptocurrency. At Blockchain Reporter, he delivers insightful news, in‐depth project reviews, and precise price analysis and predictions. With a strong background in SEO and digital marketing, Mushumir excels at breaking down complex trends into clear, accessible content, ensuring readers stay ahead in the fast‐paced crypto space.
Forget vibes-based investing as a joke. The Stacks ecosystem just made it a product.
The Stacks Vibe Index went live in early September 2026, offering a real-time sentiment dashboard that pulls data from roughly a dozen community channels across Discord, Telegram, and X. Built by Vibewatch, a community intelligence platform, the tool distills all that chatter into a single score designed to tell you whether the Stacks community is feeling optimistic, anxious, or somewhere in between.
The dashboard is accessible at stacks.vibewatch.io and already features data from several prominent Stacks projects, including Bitflow, StackingDAO, HermeticaFi, and ZestProtocol.
How it works and who’s behind it Vibewatch was founded by Brandon Marshall and funded through a $10,000 grant from the Stacks Endowment, announced back in July 2026.
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The platform aggregates text-based sentiment from multiple community hubs, then processes it into a composite score alongside thematic highlights.
Beyond the live dashboard, Vibewatch publishes weekly in-depth sentiment reports. The first edition dropped on August 24, 2026, breaking down the top themes and most influential voices across participating communities.
The tool also supports API and MCP access through the x402stacks endpoint, which means AI agents can query the sentiment data programmatically.
Why sentiment tools matter for layer-2 ecosystems Traditional market sentiment indices in crypto tend to focus on Bitcoin or Ethereum, pulling from broad social media mentions and trading volume. They’re useful for macro reads but nearly useless for understanding what’s happening inside a specific ecosystem.
The timing is notable too. Stacks has been navigating several significant developments in 2026, including the PoX-5 rollout and broader Bitcoin staking initiatives.
The bigger picture for community-driven analytics Vibewatch plans to extend free subscriptions to Stacks ecosystem partners, effectively embedding its sentiment data into the operational toolkit of projects building on the network.
For investors watching the Stacks ecosystem specifically, the Vibe Index adds a new data point to the due diligence process. Rather than relying solely on TVL figures, transaction counts, or token price action, stakeholders can now cross-reference those hard metrics against the qualitative temperature of the community.
For the Stacks ecosystem, which reported growth metrics in Q2 2026 that suggested expanding developer and user activity, having a dedicated sentiment layer is a maturity signal.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
In brief OpenClaw shipped version 2026.8.1, branded OpenClaw 2.0, built by 933 contributors including 569 first-timers. The update rebuilds the browser app, adds shared multiplayer cloud sessions, moves session storage and implements features clearly aimed at enterprise buyers. It lands as Nous Research's Hermes Agent keeps stealing users frustrated with OpenClaw's setup headaches. OpenClaw shipped its biggest update ever over the weekend. The team calls it OpenClaw 2.0. They also called it "accidental," which, fine, we'll get to that.
The release notes touch installation, messaging, memory, skills, models, automations, the browser, native apps, plugins, and security—basically everything a user should know.
Myriad: When will OpenAI release GPT-6? Click to make your prediction.Per the announcement post, 933 contributors, 569 of them first-timers, contributed to the project with more than 16,000 pull requests. That's roughly half of every PR OpenClaw has ever merged, shipped in a single release.
What OpenClaw actually is, for the uninitiatedOpenClaw is a self-hosted, open-source framework that turns an LLM into an agent that doesn't go away when you close the tab. It lives on your machine, wakes up on its own schedule, and talks to you over WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, or Signal instead of waiting politely in a chat window. Give it permission and it'll touch your email, your calendar, your files, your shell.
Austrian developer Peter Steinberger built it after stepping back from his company PSPDFKit. His project gained a record 147,000 GitHub stars in weeks and started a whole ecosystem of spin-offs and one deeply strange AI-only social network called Moltbook.
Steinberger joined OpenAI in February to run its personal-agent push. OpenClaw itself did not join OpenAI. It moved into its own nonprofit, the OpenClaw Foundation, with OpenAI listed as one partner among Microsoft, GitHub, Nvidia, Atlassian, and Tencent. Independent, allegedly.
Why "accidentally" is the right wordThe plan for this Openclaw update was actually kind of small and focused on simplifying installation and rebuilding the browser app. That's it.
Then the team actually tried to do it properly, touching memory, models, plugins, messaging, and security. Before this release, OpenClaw had shipped 106 releases in 230 days—basically daily. Going seven weeks without shipping anything was, by their own admission, not normal.
They spent that extra time making sure existing installs wouldn't break on upgrade, which is pretty normal if you have used Openclaw before. Hence the flashing warning in the release notes about backing up sessions before you touch the new SQLite storage.
So “accidental” is not a marketing line. It's the team admitting scope creep in public. Two small fixes—onboarding, browser—pulled in everything else because everything else touched the same code they were already rewriting.
Hannes Rudolph, Openclaw’s Community Manager, frames it as OpenClaw eating its own dog food: once the team started running its own workflow through multiplayer sessions, the gaps in the old single-user design became too obvious to leave alone. So they didn't. That's how you get 16,000 pull requests instead of two.
What's actually newSetup now starts by checking what you already have—an existing Claude or ChatGPT subscription, an API key, a local Ollama model—before asking you to configure anything new. It tests if the model actually works before saving it, then dumps you straight into a real conversation instead of a settings screen nobody wanted to see.
The Control UI was rebuilt around chat instead of a separate overview dashboard, which puts it in the same visual family as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Files, Git diffs, pull-request status, a browser panel, and a terminal all live around the conversation now instead of forcing you to alt-tab through five different tools.
The team claims a simulated latency test cut initial JavaScript requests from 140 to 45 and startup time from 1.6 seconds to 575 milliseconds. Faster is faster; take the number for what it's worth.
The multiplayer pitchThe headline feature is shared cloud sessions—an agent's work becomes something a colleague can walk into mid-task without the context evaporating. Steinberger said on X that his own team ditched individual local coding harnesses for a shared setup at team.openclaw.ai, calling local harnesses "relics of the past."
Security caught up to match. OpenClaw 2.0 adds request-specific approvals, command permissions scoped to specific arguments, more complex things include Docker and Podman sandboxing, role-enforced execution, and a team-scoped Secret Store that can slot a credential into a request without ever showing it to the model.
The catch: sandboxing and approvals are still off by default. OpenClaw's own docs say one Gateway equals one trust domain, not a wall between people who don't trust each other. If your company needs actual tenant isolation, you're standing up separate Gateways—OpenClaw calls them "cells"—not flipping a switch.
The competition is heating upOpenClaw hasn't had the field to itself. Nous Research's Hermes Agent, first tagged in March, built its whole pitch around not being OpenClaw: procedural memory that turns successful workflows into reusable skills automatically, and security defaults that don't assume you're the only person who'll ever touch the machine.
OpenClaw splits a Gateway daemon from the agents it routes to. Hermes crams the conversation loop, tool dispatch, and memory into one agent class—messier to scale, simpler to reason about. The general verdict floating around all year: OpenClaw wins on ecosystem and channel breadth, Hermes wins on self-improvement and not shipping wide open by default.
OpenClaw 2.0's new sandboxing narrows that gap. It doesn't close it. The hardened settings still require someone to actually go turn them on.
How to get itExisting users update through the normal CLI path. Read the fine print first—sessions created after the SQLite migration won't show up if you downgrade later without a backup.
New users go through OpenClaw's setup guide, now with guided onboarding across Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone, iPad, and Android, plus staged imports for anyone jumping over from Claude, Codex, or Hermes itself.
It's still free, still MIT-licensed, still living at github.com/openclaw/openclaw.
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In brief OpenClaw shipped version 2026.8.1, branded OpenClaw 2.0, built by 933 contributors including 569 first-timers. The update rebuilds the browser app, adds shared multiplayer cloud sessions, moves session storage and implements features clearly aimed at enterprise buyers. It lands as Nous Research's Hermes Agent keeps stealing users frustrated with OpenClaw's setup headaches. OpenClaw shipped its biggest update ever over the weekend. The team calls it OpenClaw 2.0. They also called it "accidental," which, fine, we'll get to that.
The release notes touch installation, messaging, memory, skills, models, automations, the browser, native apps, plugins, and security—basically everything a user should know.
Myriad: When will OpenAI release GPT-6? Click to make your prediction.Per the announcement post, 933 contributors, 569 of them first-timers, contributed to the project with more than 16,000 pull requests. That's roughly half of every PR OpenClaw has ever merged, shipped in a single release.
What OpenClaw actually is, for the uninitiatedOpenClaw is a self-hosted, open-source framework that turns an LLM into an agent that doesn't go away when you close the tab. It lives on your machine, wakes up on its own schedule, and talks to you over WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, or Signal instead of waiting politely in a chat window. Give it permission and it'll touch your email, your calendar, your files, your shell.
Austrian developer Peter Steinberger built it after stepping back from his company PSPDFKit. His project gained a record 147,000 GitHub stars in weeks and started a whole ecosystem of spin-offs and one deeply strange AI-only social network called Moltbook.
Steinberger joined OpenAI in February to run its personal-agent push. OpenClaw itself did not join OpenAI. It moved into its own nonprofit, the OpenClaw Foundation, with OpenAI listed as one partner among Microsoft, GitHub, Nvidia, Atlassian, and Tencent. Independent, allegedly.
Why "accidentally" is the right wordThe plan for this Openclaw update was actually kind of small and focused on simplifying installation and rebuilding the browser app. That's it.
Then the team actually tried to do it properly, touching memory, models, plugins, messaging, and security. Before this release, OpenClaw had shipped 106 releases in 230 days—basically daily. Going seven weeks without shipping anything was, by their own admission, not normal.
They spent that extra time making sure existing installs wouldn't break on upgrade, which is pretty normal if you have used Openclaw before. Hence the flashing warning in the release notes about backing up sessions before you touch the new SQLite storage.
So “accidental” is not a marketing line. It's the team admitting scope creep in public. Two small fixes—onboarding, browser—pulled in everything else because everything else touched the same code they were already rewriting.
Hannes Rudolph, Openclaw’s Community Manager, frames it as OpenClaw eating its own dog food: once the team started running its own workflow through multiplayer sessions, the gaps in the old single-user design became too obvious to leave alone. So they didn't. That's how you get 16,000 pull requests instead of two.
What's actually newSetup now starts by checking what you already have—an existing Claude or ChatGPT subscription, an API key, a local Ollama model—before asking you to configure anything new. It tests if the model actually works before saving it, then dumps you straight into a real conversation instead of a settings screen nobody wanted to see.
The Control UI was rebuilt around chat instead of a separate overview dashboard, which puts it in the same visual family as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Files, Git diffs, pull-request status, a browser panel, and a terminal all live around the conversation now instead of forcing you to alt-tab through five different tools.
The team claims a simulated latency test cut initial JavaScript requests from 140 to 45 and startup time from 1.6 seconds to 575 milliseconds. Faster is faster; take the number for what it's worth.
The multiplayer pitchThe headline feature is shared cloud sessions—an agent's work becomes something a colleague can walk into mid-task without the context evaporating. Steinberger said on X that his own team ditched individual local coding harnesses for a shared setup at team.openclaw.ai, calling local harnesses "relics of the past."
Security caught up to match. OpenClaw 2.0 adds request-specific approvals, command permissions scoped to specific arguments, more complex things include Docker and Podman sandboxing, role-enforced execution, and a team-scoped Secret Store that can slot a credential into a request without ever showing it to the model.
The catch: sandboxing and approvals are still off by default. OpenClaw's own docs say one Gateway equals one trust domain, not a wall between people who don't trust each other. If your company needs actual tenant isolation, you're standing up separate Gateways—OpenClaw calls them "cells"—not flipping a switch.
The competition is heating upOpenClaw hasn't had the field to itself. Nous Research's Hermes Agent, first tagged in March, built its whole pitch around not being OpenClaw: procedural memory that turns successful workflows into reusable skills automatically, and security defaults that don't assume you're the only person who'll ever touch the machine.
OpenClaw splits a Gateway daemon from the agents it routes to. Hermes crams the conversation loop, tool dispatch, and memory into one agent class—messier to scale, simpler to reason about. The general verdict floating around all year: OpenClaw wins on ecosystem and channel breadth, Hermes wins on self-improvement and not shipping wide open by default.
OpenClaw 2.0's new sandboxing narrows that gap. It doesn't close it. The hardened settings still require someone to actually go turn them on.
How to get itExisting users update through the normal CLI path. Read the fine print first—sessions created after the SQLite migration won't show up if you downgrade later without a backup.
New users go through OpenClaw's setup guide, now with guided onboarding across Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone, iPad, and Android, plus staged imports for anyone jumping over from Claude, Codex, or Hermes itself.
It's still free, still MIT-licensed, still living at github.com/openclaw/openclaw.
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Oleg Nesterov is the founder and CEO of MindK, which builds AI agents and custom software for U.S. healthcare revenue cycle management.
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Healthcare revenue cycle management (RCM) is a solved problem if you believe stats from vendors. Eligibility runs 96% electronically by CAQH's count, and claims often move down standardized rails. Ads now sell AI in revenue cycle management as the path to an "autonomous" back office. But walk onto any billing floor, and you may see people log in to payer portals by hand, rekey data that already exists and work denials one at a time.
This is true for all tasks that require both judgment and keystrokes. Prior auth is only 40% fully electronic. Attachments sit at 24% in medical spaces and are falling. Appeals, follow-ups and exceptions often don't get a standard transaction at all. Every day, I talk to medical billers who verify benefits mostly by hand.
In this space, I've found that everything with a standard transaction gets automated, and everything that requires deciding and then acting gets a work queue and a person to sit in it.
AI arrived in revenue cycle management with a promise of change, but it did not reach execution.A coordination system tells a person what to do. An execution system does it. RCM leveraged the first for two decades and called it the second. The AI revolution promised to change all of that. According to MGMA, 68% of medical groups reported adding or expanding AI tools in 2025. In another MGMA poll with a different set of 260 respondents, 68% said AI had not led them to redesign a single role or change staffing.
The reason for this is in what these tools can actually do. Most RCM AI recommends. It scores a denial by the likelihood of overturn, drafts the appeal letter and flags a documentation gap before submission. Then it routes the task back to a person to log in and finish. The human still produces the keystrokes.
Coordination has real value. But it does not free your staff from logging in to up to 11 or more portals a day. Every forced login is software admitting it cannot take the action itself and handing it to someone who can. A single prior authorization can mean checking eligibility in portal one, submitting in portal two, reading status in portal three and documenting in an EHR that connects to none of them. This fully electronic process can still take, from what I've seen in the industry, 10 minutes or more of manual work.
This is why a practice can roll out AI across every function and end the year with the same number of billers logging in to the same portals. Anywhere a workflow ends with a human typing into a payer's website, the AI advised and a person executed.
You still can't out-appeal the payer's AI by hand.On the other side, payers have already automated decisions. According to the 2025 CAQH Index, more than half of health plans now use AI in administrative workflows, against roughly a quarter of providers. A denial engine reads a claim, applies current policy and returns a decision in seconds. On the provider side, the response is a person opening a portal, reading the denial reason, pulling the record and assembling an appeal by hand.
According to HFMA, up to 65% of denied claims are never reworked. There are more defensible denials than there are biller-hours to defend them, so the appeal window closes before anyone reaches the claim.
This is why "appeal more aggressively" is not a plan. A team that doubles its appeal volume by working nights still loses ground if denials arrive faster than any human queue can get through them.
The fix is an execution layer, and being 'agentic' does not automatically make it happen.The alternative is an execution layer that acts. It logs in to the portal, reads the denial or the policy, decides what the claim needs and takes the next step itself, up to and including placing the call to the payer. The work that used to end at a human can then end at a completed action.
A real execution layer works both ends of the denial. An "agentic" solution is not an execution layer unless it meets the following criteria:
• It must log in to portals and deal with credentials, two-factor authentication and session timeouts—the unglamorous 80% of the job.
• It must read explanation-of-benefits files, remittances, denial letters and payer policy PDFs—all of it unstructured, inconsistent and frequently scanned.
• It must decide, appeal, correct, resubmit or write off—under payer-specific rules that change every month.
• It must act, including on the phone. A meaningful share of payer work still ends in a phone call, and an agent that cannot call a payer does not help billers.
"Agentic" on a vendor's slide does not guarantee any of this. Most tools carrying the label still read and recommend, then hand the action back to your biller.
There is a test any buyer can run inside any demo: Count how many logins the product removes and ask whether it changes the org chart or simply hands your team a better queue. If the headcount and the logins look the same after you go live, you bought a dashboard with a new adjective.
The clock is ticking.There is a deadline attached to this. CMS-0057-F requires payers to expose FHIR APIs, including for prior authorization, by January 1, 2027. That converts execution from brittle screen-scraping into a clean engineering problem. Being ready to consume those APIs on day one is a huge opportunity. Given build lead times, that readiness is decided now, not in December 2026.
So, change the question you ask of AI in healthcare revenue cycle management. Stop grading it on what it knows and start grading it on what it closes. Your stack already has a nervous system. It is time it grew hands.
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Stacks is teasing another institutional participant joining its Bitcoin staking program this week, building on momentum from a protocol upgrade that lets big players earn yield on BTC without ever giving up custody of their coins.
The announcement, shared on social media, follows the platform’s PoX-5 upgrade that went live on July 29, 2026, and the onboarding of UTXO Management as the inaugural institutional staker back in late May. With a Genesis Bond launch expected in late August, Stacks appears to be stacking up commitments at a deliberate pace.
How Bitcoin staking on Stacks actually works Bitcoin holders lock their BTC on Layer 1 using a timelock script, meaning the coins never leave the Bitcoin blockchain. They then pair that locked Bitcoin with a small amount of STX, Stacks’ native token, creating what the protocol calls a “protocol bond.” The Bitcoin stays under the holder’s control the entire time.
The yield target sits at roughly 3% APY in BTC, paid out over six-month periods. That return comes from miner bids through the Proof-of-Transfer mechanism, not from lending or rehypothecation. The initial institutional capacity has been capped at approximately 3,000 BTC during what Stacks calls a “managed bootstrap phase.”
The PoX-5 upgrade and institutional infrastructure The PoX-5 hard fork passed its governance vote with over 99.99% approval in July 2026. The upgrade was codified through two Stacks Improvement Proposals, SIP-044 and SIP-045, and activated on July 29 to coincide with a Bitcoin block milestone.
Stacks integrated with Fireblocks in June 2026 to handle institutional custody requirements. UTXO Management, the asset management arm of Nakamoto Inc., became the first institution to commit BTC to the program on May 28, 2026, locking a portion of its Bitcoin holdings while keeping them on Layer 1.
Why institutions care about BTC-denominated yield The Genesis Bond, expected to launch in late August 2026, will serve as the first formal institutional Bitcoin bonding event on the platform, giving institutions a clear entry point with defined terms.
The cadence of announcements — one inaugural staker in May, infrastructure integrations in June, a protocol upgrade in July, and now a second institution ahead of the Genesis Bond in August — suggests Stacks is executing a deliberately sequenced rollout designed to build confidence before scaling up.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Stacks [STX] has been on the higher side of late, with the asset’s gains crossing well over 127% in the past few weeks alone, a pattern that has continued since the start of the day.
The rally, however, doesn’t appear to be sustainable, with the growing outflow of capital across the perpetual market and conditions on the chart pointing to overheated sentiment that could force the price even lower from its current level.
The flow of capital remains slim There’s been a growing capital concentration among short traders in the perpetual market, dictating the direction of flow for STX as likely being bearish.
Data shows that the Funding Rate has plummeted to about -0.1244% at the time of writing, which remains one of its steepest levels yet.
Source: CoinGlass A negative Funding Rate implies that there’s more capital concentration in short positions, with traders anticipating a further decline in price from the current level at which it trades. An aggressive negative rate hints that the downward pull could be strong.
Similarly, sellers have dominated STX’s perpetual market volume ratio. The Taker Buy/Sell Ratio, which details whether taker buyers or sellers are in control based on readings above or below 1, says the latter is in control.
The Taker Sell Ratio at the time of this analysis has fallen to 0.80, confirming that there has been growing short volume, despite the price yet to catch up.
The market is overpriced The Bollinger Band analysis of STX price found that, at the time, investors had overbought it, and the price was trading far above its fair value.
This happens when the price trades into the red line, or upper band, of the BB. At that time, the price was significantly above this zone. What follows is usually a decline, as demand begins to decline.
Likewise, the Relative Strength Index, which tracks the strength of price movements, has shown the same signal, as it crossed into its own overbought zone above 80.
Source: TradingView Using the Bollinger Band as a tracker, the present fair value for the price would be the mid-band level, which is the blue line, at the $0.15 price point on the chart. This could act as a support zone, as it historically does.
The upside is capped Using the one-month liquidation heatmap to analyze STX and identify cluster zones on the chart, which are areas of unfilled orders above and below the price, shows that there’s limited upside.
Cluster zones appear as shaded areas on the chart. Zones above the price can pull it higher, while zones below can attract it lower.
Source: CoinGlass At the moment, the cluster above remains minimal, suggesting that there’s a limit to how far the price could rally from this level. A move into the upward zone would then be followed by a decline in price, as the upward clusters are dominated by sell orders.
Final Summary STX faces growing selling pressure as negative Funding Rates and a low Taker Buy/Sell Ratio point to strong short-side positioning. Overbought momentum and limited liquidation clusters above the price suggest STX could struggle to extend its rally.
The cryptocurrency market staged a remarkable recovery last week, with several coins posting double-digit gains. Stacks (CRYPTO: STX), a Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) Layer-2 token, outperformed them all.
STX Doubles in ValueSTX exploded over 100% to become the market’s most successful cryptocurrency in the last seven days. The gains widened after a 6.45% uptick on Monday.
STX’s trading volume spiked 6.36% over the last 24 hours to $437.74 million, signaling strong buying interest.
The STX rally followed Bitcoin’s strong weekly gains, which lifted the cryptocurrency to $80,000 for the first time in more than three months.
STX is the native coin of Stacks, a layer-2 solution that helps the development of decentralized applications on the Bitcoin blockchain. Put simply, it helps unlock Bitcoin’s DeFi use cases.
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These Coins Also Returned A HandfulOfficial Trump (CRYPTO: TRUMP) ranked among last week’s biggest winners, with the President Donald Trump-themed memecoin surging 80% to become the market’s third-largest gainer.
PENGU, the native token of popular NFT brand Pudgy Penguins, jumped nearly 70% over the week, while frog-themed memecoin Pepe (CRYPTO: PEPE) lobbed 63%.
The overall cryptocurrency market expanded 24% in a week from $2.18 trillion to $2.72 trillion.
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Photo: Sebastian Duda on Shutterstock.com
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PANews reported on August 25 that, according to SoSoValue data, affected by combined factors including Bessent possibly deploying nearly $1 trillion in the TGA to buy bonds and the United States expanding economic sanctions against Iran, crypto market sectors resumed their upward trend. The Layer 2 sector stood out, rising 3.02% in 24 hours, with Polygon (POL) up 8.50%, Stacks (STX) up 4.76%, and Mantle (MNT) up 2.82%. Meanwhile, Bitcoin (BTC) rose 3.22%, touching $80,000 during the session; Ethereum (ETH) rose 2.38%, breaking back above $2,500 during the session.
In other sectors, the Layer 1 sector rose 2.21% in 24 hours, with Solana (SOL) up 6.14%; the CeFi sector rose 2.08%, with OKB (OKB) up 6.49%; the PayFi sector rose 1.97%, with Telcoin (TEL) up 7.81%; the Meme sector rose 0.44%, with dogwifhat (WIF) up 5.80%.
In addition, the DeFi sector fell 0.27%, but Ondo Finance (ONDO) was relatively resilient, rising 5.80%.
Ankr, the decentralized infrastructure provider, has been added to the sBTC signer set on Stacks, joining a small group of operators tasked with validating and securing Bitcoin-pegged transactions on the Layer 2 network.
For those unfamiliar with the setup: sBTC is a token on Stacks that’s pegged 1:1 to Bitcoin. The signer set is the group of operators who collectively approve the minting and movement of sBTC, functioning like a multi-signature committee that keeps the peg honest.
How the signer model works The initial sBTC signer set launched with 14 operators after one original nominee withdrew before go-live. Transactions require approval from at least 10 of those 14 signers, a threshold designed to balance security with operational efficiency.
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Signers aren’t chosen at random. Operators must meet strict criteria around uptime, geographic diversity, and technical capability.
sBTC deposits went live on mainnet on December 17, 2024, with withdrawal functionality expected to follow in March 2025.
What Ankr brings to the table Ankr operates a Bitcoin Secured Infrastructure platform that provides RPC services, validator solutions, and customizable tooling aimed at Bitcoin-related protocols.
“We’re thrilled to support Stacks and sBTC to build Bitcoin’s future.”
That’s Ankr Co-Founder and CEO Chandler Song, who framed the partnership as part of a broader push to extend Bitcoin’s utility beyond simple value transfer.
Ankr’s participation aligns with the Stacks Foundation’s “Best and the Brightest” campaign, an initiative that highlights key institutional supporters of sBTC.
The bigger picture for Bitcoin DeFi The sBTC signer model is designed to evolve over time. The current structure is intended as a stepping stone toward a more permissionless system, with plans to integrate signer selection with Stacks’ Proof of Transfer consensus mechanism, which itself is anchored to Bitcoin’s own blockchain.
Broader rotations within the sBTC signer set have been noted over time, with other institutional participants cycling in and out.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
There is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot in crypto: “secured by Bitcoin.” Stacks is now making a more specific, more verifiable claim: every transaction on its network settles with the same finality as a Bitcoin block, because it is literally anchored to one.
That is the functional output of the Nakamoto upgrade, a hard fork that activated on the Stacks network in late October 2024, around Bitcoin block 867,867. Since then, reversing a confirmed Stacks transaction requires reorging Bitcoin itself.
What the Nakamoto upgrade actually changed Before Nakamoto, Stacks processed transactions in its own block cadence, loosely coupled to Bitcoin but not bound to it at the state level. The upgrade restructured how Stacks organizes block production, tying each block tenure directly to a Bitcoin block.
The mechanics work like this: Stacks miners commit to a block at Bitcoin block N, and the state from that block gets written to Bitcoin at N+1. Once that next Bitcoin block arrives, all Stacks miners are required to build on that same chain tip. There is no fork path that bypasses Bitcoin’s ledger.
The result is what the Stacks ecosystem describes as 100% Bitcoin finality. Not probabilistic finality, not optimistic finality with a challenge window, but the same irreversibility guarantee that makes Bitcoin the benchmark for settlement in the first place.
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Stacks runs on a Proof-of-Transfer consensus model, where miners bid Bitcoin to earn the right to produce Stacks blocks. The Nakamoto upgrade extended that connection to the ledger level, so security and state settlement are now both rooted in Bitcoin’s chain.
Smart contracts on Stacks are written in Clarity, a decidable language that does not compile to bytecode, meaning the contract behavior can be fully analyzed before execution.
sBTC and what finality enables in practice The Nakamoto upgrade was the foundation. sBTC, which launched on mainnet in December 2024, is one of the first major products built on top of it.
sBTC is a Bitcoin-backed asset that lives on Stacks and inherits the same finality guarantee. It allows Bitcoin holders to move value into Stacks-based applications, including DeFi protocols and yield products, without wrapping through a centralized custodian or a bridging mechanism that introduces its own trust assumptions.
The finality guarantee matters here because it closes a specific attack surface. With weaker finality models, a sufficiently motivated adversary could in theory reverse a transaction after a user has already received funds on the other side of a bridge. On post-Nakamoto Stacks, that scenario requires the attacker to also reorg Bitcoin, which raises the cost of an attack to the level where it becomes economically irrational.
Bitcoin staking products are also part of the post-Nakamoto landscape, with users able to lock STX and earn Bitcoin yield through the Proof-of-Transfer mechanism. Those positions also sit under the same finality umbrella, meaning the staking records themselves carry the same settlement weight as any other confirmed Stacks transaction.
Where this lands in the competitive landscape There are several approaches to adding programmability near Bitcoin. Some use sidechains with federated or threshold multisig bridges. Some use rollup architectures that post state roots to Bitcoin but require sequencer trust in the interim. Some use payment channel networks optimized for specific use cases rather than general computation.
Stacks’ post-Nakamoto position is distinctive because the finality claim is not conditional. There is no “assuming the bridge operators are honest” caveat, no “after the challenge period” asterisk. The settlement guarantee derives from Bitcoin’s own block production.
Block times on Stacks are tied to Bitcoin’s roughly ten-minute cadence for tenure boundaries, though block production within a tenure is faster post-Nakamoto than it was before the upgrade.
STX, the native token used for transaction fees and staking, sits at the center of the economic model. Demand for block space on Stacks, which grows as more applications and assets settle through the network, feeds directly into demand for STX.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Bitcoin staking through Stacks is set to go live in about 19 days. The PoX-5 hardfork, scheduled to activate on the Stacks mainnet around July 29, 2026, will lay the technical groundwork for BTC holders to earn yield directly on their holdings without giving up custody of their coins.
How Bitcoin staking on Stacks actually works The system relies on Stacks’ Proof of Transfer (PoX) consensus mechanism, which has been operational since 2021. Under the new staking framework, participants lock BTC on Bitcoin’s layer 1 alongside STX tokens to form what Stacks calls “bonds.” Those bonds generate BTC rewards at an initial annual percentage yield of roughly 3%.
The BTC stays on Bitcoin’s base layer under your own custody, while the STX component ties the staking activity into the Stacks network’s economics. Neither asset needs to be wrapped, bridged to another chain, or deposited into a smart contract controlled by someone else.
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Previous iterations of this concept have already shown meaningful traction. Dual Stacking with sBTC, an earlier offering from the Stacks ecosystem, attracted over $100 million in user participation and facilitated substantial BTC payouts.
The rollout timeline and what comes next The July 29 hardfork is just the first domino. After PoX-5 activates, the next major milestone is the inaugural Genesis Bond event, scheduled for late August 2026. That event will mark the practical launch of the staking system, giving users their first opportunity to form bonds and begin earning rewards.
Stacks has been running the upgrade through public testnet phases and conducting thorough audits ahead of the mainnet activation. September 2026 carries additional milestones for Q3, though the Genesis Bond event in August represents the moment when the system transitions from theoretical to functional for real users with real capital.
Institutional interest and market positioning Institutional integrations are already underway, with partners like Fireblocks and UTXO Management involved from early phases of the rollout. Fireblocks is one of the most widely used institutional custody and settlement platforms in crypto. UTXO Management is a digital asset investment firm focused on the Bitcoin ecosystem.
The requirement to hold STX alongside BTC creates an interesting dynamic for Stacks’ native token. Every participant who wants to stake Bitcoin through this system also needs exposure to STX. The over $100 million that flowed into the earlier Dual Stacking program suggests there is genuine appetite for Bitcoin yield products within the Stacks community.
Competing yield products on Bitcoin typically involve either lending platforms, which carry counterparty risk, or wrapped Bitcoin on other chains, which introduces bridge risk. Stacks’ self-custodial approach sidesteps both of those concerns. The roughly 3% initial yield is lower than what some DeFi lending protocols offer on wrapped BTC, but comes with a fundamentally different risk profile.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Machines are now paying other machines in Bitcoin, and the receipts are sitting onchain for anyone to verify. AI agents built on Stacks, the Layer 2 blockchain anchored to Bitcoin, are autonomously earning, transferring, and transacting with Bitcoin-derived assets, no human required at any step of the process.
This is not a demo or a whitepaper promise. The AIBTC protocol reported more than 8,700 onchain transactions in the first quarter of 2026 alone, executed by over 150 deployed AI agents operating on the Stacks network.
How the machine economy actually works The agents themselves operate using sBTC, a Bitcoin-backed asset native to Stacks, as well as STX (the network’s native token) and USDCx. The x402-Stacks protocol handles the payment rails, enabling pay-per-request transactions between agents, which is effectively a billing system where software pays software for data or services at the moment of consumption.
Specific agents, identified onchain under names like Sonic Mast and Tiny Marten, have been autonomously accumulating and transacting in satoshis since February 2026. Their activity is publicly verifiable through their agent addresses, which provides a kind of live proof-of-concept that an agentic Bitcoin economy is already running.
The agents generate revenue through several mechanisms: running paid API endpoints, participating in DeFi staking on the Stacks ecosystem, and engaging in trading activity on decentralized exchanges. Bitflow, one of the leading DEXs on Stacks, added AI-specific tooling for automated trading strategies in Q2 2026, giving agents more surface area to operate across.
Growth that is hard to ignore According to Tenero Research, active agents on the Stacks network grew from 105 to 766 in a single week. The network’s stated target is 10,000 active agents.
Stacks has also been upgrading the underlying protocol to support the load. Improvements to programmability and transaction speeds have been rolled out to accommodate the growing agent population.
What this means for Bitcoin’s broader utility The emergence of AI agents as a user class on Stacks is significant precisely because agents have different requirements than human users. They operate continuously, they need micropayment capability (paying fractions of a cent for a single API call, for instance), and they cannot navigate browser-based interfaces or custodial onboarding flows.
Stacks’ differentiator is the Bitcoin connection itself. Agents holding and transacting in sBTC inherit Bitcoin’s liquidity depth and name recognition, which matters when the agents are interacting with counterparties who may care about the quality of the asset being transferred.
Either way, 8,700 Bitcoin-settled transactions executed by autonomous software in a single quarter is a data point that would have seemed implausible two years ago. The ledger does not lie about whether the transactions happened.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Stacks, the Bitcoin Layer 2 protocol, just landed its Token Transparency Framework report on Bloomberg Terminals. The filing, part of Blockworks’ standardized disclosure initiative, puts the project’s governance and financial data in front of more than 350,000 financial professionals who use Bloomberg daily.
What the Token Transparency Framework actually does Blockworks launched the Token Transparency Framework on June 18, 2025, as an open-source set of disclosure standards for onchain projects. Think of it as crypto’s attempt to build its own version of SEC filings, minus the SEC.
The framework asks participating protocols to report on several categories: quarterly financial disclosures, value accrual mechanisms, segmented revenue reports, and whether they maintain an investor relations hub.
As of August 18, 2026, the TTF page listed 111 total disclosures, with 93 of those marked as current. That translates to roughly a 9% adoption rate among tracked protocols.
Adoption has been heavily skewed toward Solana-based DeFi projects so far, which makes Stacks’ participation as a Bitcoin L2 somewhat distinctive. The protocol enables smart contracts and applications on Bitcoin’s base layer using its native token STX, occupying a different architectural niche than most of the projects already filing under TTF.
Why Bloomberg distribution matters Bloomberg Terminals remain the dominant information system in institutional finance. Portfolio managers, analysts, and traders across banks, hedge funds, and asset managers rely on them for real-time data and research. When crypto disclosures appear in that environment, they’re no longer sitting behind a protocol’s own website or a niche analytics dashboard. They’re living alongside earnings reports, bond pricing, and macroeconomic indicators.
Blockworks’ framework is essentially trying to translate crypto-native information into a format that institutional investors already know how to read. Adding Bloomberg distribution closes the last-mile problem: the data isn’t just standardized, it’s delivered to the desks where allocation decisions get made.
The broader transparency push in crypto The TTF’s 9% adoption rate among tracked protocols suggests the industry is still in early innings. The framework’s reporting categories address some of the most common institutional concerns about token investments. Value accrual mechanisms answer a fundamental question that traditional investors ask about any asset: where does the money come from, and how does it flow to token holders? Segmented revenue reports break down income sources, making it harder for projects to hide behind aggregate numbers that obscure whether actual economic activity supports the token’s valuation.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Stacks, a Bitcoin Layer-2 project, announced the launch of its Genesis Bond, a self-custodial Bitcoin yield mechanism, set to go live in 24 days. This new product aims to offer institutional investors a way to earn yield on Bitcoin while maintaining custody of their assets on Bitcoin Layer 1. The yield is generated through Stacks’ existing Proof of Transfer system, which has already distributed over 4,200 BTC to stakers since its inception. The announcement highlights a growing institutional interest in Bitcoin staking applications, potentially marking a significant development in the cryptocurrency’s use case for institutional stakeholders.
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Key Takeaways Markets appear to interpret the Genesis Bond launch as a positive development for Bitcoin, suggesting increased institutional interest. The self-custodial feature of the Genesis Bond indicates a focus on security and control for Bitcoin holders. The new product could indicate a broader acceptance of Bitcoin-denominated yield mechanisms within institutional finance. What to Watch Observers should monitor the impact of this launch on Bitcoin’s price, particularly if institutional participation materializes as expected. Key indicators include potential announcements from major financial institutions regarding their involvement with the Genesis Bond. Additionally, any regulatory responses from entities like the SEC or Commodity Futures Trading Commission could influence market sentiment and the broader acceptance of Bitcoin yield products.
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Term Structure
Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h August 17 2026 99.9% — — View market → August 17 2026 99.9% — — View market → August 17 2026 99.9% — — View market → August 17 2026 99.9% — — View market → August 17 2026 0.1% — — View market → August 17 2026 0.1% — — View market → August 17 2026 13% — — View market → August 17 2026 99.9% — — View market → August 17 2026 0.1% — — View market →
Stacks is rolling out what it calls the Genesis Bond, a new on-chain instrument that lets participants earn Bitcoin-denominated yield while keeping their BTC firmly planted on Bitcoin’s base layer. Enrollment opens September 10, 2026, at Bitcoin block 966,350.
Instead of locking your BTC into a bridge, wrapper, or some third-party custody arrangement, the Genesis Bond lets holders pair STX tokens with BTC and earn yield generated through Stacks’ Proof of Transfer consensus mechanism. The BTC never leaves layer 1.
How the Genesis Bond actually works The Genesis Bond is the inaugural product in Stacks’ broader Bitcoin Staking framework. The yield comes from miner bids through Proof of Transfer, or PoX, the consensus mechanism that underpins the Stacks network.
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In PoX, miners spend BTC to participate in block production on Stacks. That spent BTC gets distributed to participants who are stacking their STX tokens. The Genesis Bond extends this model by creating a formal pairing mechanism between STX and BTC, giving both tokens a defined role in the yield equation.
The initial phase is deliberately small. Stacks is targeting 100 to 200 BTC in total allocation, with participation limited to institutional and whitelisted participants.
The PoX-5 hard fork set the stage The Genesis Bond follows the PoX-5 hard fork, which activated around July 29, 2026, and laid the technical groundwork for Bitcoin Staking on Stacks.
The timeline shifted slightly from earlier expectations. Initial community consensus pointed to a late-August launch, but the team settled on the September 10 date tied to block 966,350.
Why institutions are paying attention The Genesis Bond takes a different approach by keeping BTC on the Bitcoin base layer. There’s no wrapping, no bridging, no handing your keys to a third party. The yield comes from a transparent, on-chain source: miners competing to produce Stacks blocks.
The 100 to 200 BTC cap in the initial phase suggests Stacks is courting a small group of sophisticated participants who can provide meaningful technical and operational feedback before the mechanism is opened to wider audiences.
What this means for the broader market For STX token holders, the Genesis Bond creates direct utility. Pairing STX with BTC in the bonding mechanism gives the token a functional role in yield generation, which is a different value proposition than pure governance or speculative upside.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Stacks, the Bitcoin layer-2 protocol that enables smart contracts on top of the world’s largest blockchain, has been highlighted by Bitfinex as a leading protocol in terms of actual Bitcoin usage. The recognition comes amid a broader push by the exchange to deepen its involvement in the Bitcoin layer-2 ecosystem.
Bitfinex’s engagement with Stacks goes well beyond a simple shoutout. The exchange listed the native STX token on April 8, 2025, and simultaneously took on the role of a network signer, meaning Bitfinex is actively helping to secure the Stacks blockchain itself.
What makes Stacks different Most layer-2 networks in crypto are built on Ethereum. Stacks took a different path entirely, anchoring itself to Bitcoin through a consensus mechanism called Proof-of-Transfer, or PoX. Miners on Stacks commit actual BTC to participate in block production, tying the network’s security directly to Bitcoin’s.
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That mechanism has resulted in more than 4,000 BTC moving on-chain through PoX since 2021. To put that in perspective, that’s roughly $400M worth of Bitcoin at current prices flowing through a single layer-2 protocol’s consensus engine.
Then there’s sBTC, a Bitcoin-backed asset that lives natively on Stacks. Deposits into sBTC surpassed 5,000 BTC as of late 2024, representing a separate and substantial pool of Bitcoin being actively used within the ecosystem.
The STX token itself serves multiple functions within this system. It powers transactions, enables governance participation, and allows holders to earn stacking rewards denominated in Bitcoin.
Why Bitfinex went deeper than a token listing As a network signer, Bitfinex contributes exchange-grade liquidity to the Stacks network and participates in its operational security. This requires ongoing infrastructure commitments and signals that Bitfinex views Bitcoin layer-2 solutions as strategically important to the exchange’s future.
The broader Bitcoin layer-2 landscape The 5,000-plus BTC sitting in sBTC deposits represents genuine demand for using Bitcoin in decentralized finance applications. Historically, Bitcoin holders who wanted DeFi exposure had to bridge their assets to Ethereum or other chains, introducing counterparty risk and complexity. sBTC offers a more native path, keeping users within Bitcoin’s economic orbit.
A February 2026 report from blockchain analytics firm Nansen examined the Stacks ecosystem’s liquidity profile and institutional integrations, underscoring the protocol’s growing relevance in the broader market.
Because stacking rewards are paid in BTC, there’s a natural correlation between STX participation rates and Bitcoin’s price movements. When Bitcoin appreciates, the dollar value of stacking rewards increases, which should theoretically make STX stacking more attractive and drive demand for the token.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Granite Protocol has been listed on Borrow on Bitcoin, adding another lending route for users who want to put Bitcoin-linked collateral to work without leaving the broader Bitcoin DeFi stack.
The listing centers on Granite’s Stacks-based lending market, where users can deposit sBTC collateral and borrow USDCx. The validated notes point to a variable borrow rate of 1.66% APR, along with features including isolated pools, soft liquidations, and no rehypothecation of user collateral.
The product is not available in the US, and that limitation matters.
Still, the listing is another sign that Bitcoin DeFi is becoming more specific. Instead of broad claims that Bitcoin can support DeFi one day, the market is now seeing comparison pages, lending markets, collateral routes, and user-facing products built around BTC-linked assets.
That does not mean Bitcoin DeFi has gone mainstream. It means the infrastructure is becoming easier to evaluate.
For more details, visit the official Granite platform.
TL;DR Granite Protocol has been listed on Borrow on Bitcoin. Users can deposit sBTC collateral on Stacks to borrow USDCx. The integration is a useful Bitcoin DeFi signal, but it should not be overstated as broad adoption. Bitcoin DeFi Needs Practical Products Bitcoin DeFi has always had a slightly awkward pitch.
Bitcoin is the largest crypto asset and the strongest store-of-value brand in the market, but most DeFi activity historically happened elsewhere. Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain, and newer Layer 2 ecosystems built the lending markets, DEXs, stablecoin systems, yield protocols, and composable financial apps.
Bitcoin had the capital. Other chains had the app layer.
Stacks has been one of the ecosystems trying to close that gap by giving Bitcoin holders more ways to interact with DeFi-style products while keeping the narrative tied to BTC.
Granite’s Borrow on Bitcoin listing fits that direction.
It gives users another way to compare borrowing options, collateral terms, and risk models in a Bitcoin-linked environment.
The 1.66% APR Detail Gets Attention A 1.66% variable borrow rate is the kind of number that immediately attracts attention, especially if traders compare it with higher borrowing costs in other markets.
But the rate should be treated carefully.
Borrow rates can change. They depend on utilization, available liquidity, risk parameters, market demand, and protocol design. A low advertised rate is useful, but it is not a guarantee that conditions will remain the same.
The more important point is that Bitcoin DeFi products are starting to compete on familiar lending-market terms.
Users can ask practical questions: What collateral do I deposit? What stablecoin can I borrow? What happens in liquidation? Is the pool isolated? Is collateral rehypothecated? What jurisdictions are supported? Where is the liquidity coming from?
Those are normal DeFi questions, and that is progress.
Bitcoin DeFi becomes real when users can compare products by actual risk and cost, not just by slogans.
Why Soft Liquidations Matter The soft liquidation feature is important because liquidation design shapes user experience.
In traditional DeFi lending, a sharp move against collateral can trigger liquidation. If the system is aggressive, users may lose more than expected or have little time to react. Softer liquidation mechanics are designed to reduce the shock, though the exact effect depends on protocol design.
For Bitcoin-backed borrowing, liquidation risk is one of the main barriers.
Bitcoin holders often do not want to sell BTC, but they may want liquidity. Borrowing against BTC-linked collateral offers that route, but a sudden BTC drawdown can put the position at risk.
A product that emphasizes soft liquidations is trying to make that borrowing experience less brutal.
That does not eliminate risk. It just changes how the protocol handles stress.
No Rehypothecation Is A Custody Signal Granite’s no-rehypothecation claim is also worth noting.
Rehypothecation became a dirty word after the last cycle’s lending failures, where users learned that “earn” and “borrow” products often involved hidden layers of counterparty risk. If collateral is reused, lent onward, or tied into opaque strategies, users may be exposed to risks they did not understand.
A protocol that does not rehypothecate collateral is making a clearer custody and risk claim.
That does not make the system risk-free. Smart contract risk, oracle risk, liquidity risk, liquidation risk, bridge risk, and governance risk can still exist. But it does address one of the biggest trust problems from centralized lending.
Bitcoin users are usually especially sensitive to custody assumptions, so that design detail matters.
A Small But Useful Bitcoin DeFi Step The right way to read this listing is measured.
Granite landing on Borrow on Bitcoin does not prove that Bitcoin DeFi has reached escape velocity. It does not mean BTC holders are suddenly moving in size to Stacks lending markets. It does not make Bitcoin an Ethereum-style DeFi ecosystem overnight.
But it does show continued product formation.
Comparison indexes, collateralized lending markets, stablecoin borrowing routes, and clearer risk terms are the kind of boring infrastructure that needs to exist before larger adoption becomes possible.
Bitcoin DeFi will not grow through one headline. It will grow if users find products that are cheaper, safer, clearer, and more useful than the alternatives.
Granite’s listing is one more test of whether that market is starting to form.
This article is based on Granite Protocol and Borrow on Bitcoin product materials.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
Stacks today activated the PoX-5 hardfork at Bitcoin block 960,230, successfully establishing the protocol foundation for Bitcoin Staking. The network upgrade completed without interruption, with core contributors verifying the activation following post-upgrade checks. Signers, node operators, and major exchange partners, including Binance, completed their migrations ahead of activation. The network is now operating under the new PoX-5 consensus rules, with ecosystem contributors continuing their planned rollout. PoX-5 is the first of the Satoshi Upgrades, a series of protocol releases that Stacks core contributors will detail in the coming weeks.
Block production continued consistently throughout the upgrade, with signers successfully moving over to the new consensus rules without interruption. Staking pool operators are completing their migrations now and expect stakers to be able to restake well ahead of the upcoming cycle, with no staking rewards lost in the transition.
With PoX-5 now live, the protocol foundation for Bitcoin Staking is in place, enabling Bitcoin holders to earn self-custodial BTC yield through Bitcoin Bonds while preserving existing rewards for STX-only stakers. The upgrade also simplifies the staking experience by removing cooldown cycles and streamlining pooled participation, creating the infrastructure for the next phase of Bitcoin-native finance.
“PoX-5 marks the first step in anchoring Bitcoin capital to Stacks, and I’m excited to see the network successfully transition as we look ahead to the first institutional Genesis bond. PoX-5 is an important first move as we share more details on the broader vision behind the Satoshi Upgrades later in August.” Muneeb Ali, Founder, Stacks
PoX-5 introduces Bitcoin Bonds at the protocol level, letting eligible participants pair BTC held on Bitcoin Layer 1 with STX on Stacks to earn self-custodial BTC yield. Participation will begin through a phased rollout, starting with the institutional Genesis Bond. Broader access will follow through selected staking pools as capacity expands.
Additional rollout updates, network health data, and Bitcoin Staking resources will be published here as new milestones are reached.
Whether you’re restaking today or following the rollout from the sidelines, thank you for helping build the next chapter of Bitcoin on Stacks.
About Stacks
Stacks is growing Bitcoin by turning idle Bitcoin into productive capital. The network enables self-custodial Bitcoin yield and a growing ecosystem of Bitcoin-native financial applications that settle on Bitcoin. Learn more at stacks.co.
@Stacks has officially activated the PoX-5 hardfork, a terminal upgrade to its Proof of Transfer consensus mechanism that deepens the relationship between $BTC and $STX. The activation marks a significant milestone for the network, laying the technical groundwork for self-custodial Bitcoin staking.
What PoX-5 Changes Stacks activated its PoX-5 hard fork at Bitcoin block 960,230, adding the consensus infrastructure for Bitcoin staking. The centrepiece of the upgrade is a new product called Bitcoin Bonds. The upgrade introduces Bitcoin Bonds, which allow users to lock $BTC on the Bitcoin network and pair it with $STX on Stacks to earn BTC-denominated yield while retaining control of their Bitcoin keys.
To participate, Bitcoin holders lock their BTC on the Bitcoin Layer 1 network using a timelock mechanism and pair it with STX. No bridging required. No custodial transfers. The initial bootstrap phase carries a capacity cap of 3,000 BTC, with a projected yield of around 3% APY paid in BTC and a minimum STX pairing ratio of 5%.
On the revenue distribution side, PoX-5 introduces a waterfall distribution model, with protocol bond holders sitting at the top of the payment queue and an initial target yield of roughly 3% APY. STX-only stakers receive 85% of any surplus revenue, while the protocol reserve fund absorbs the remaining 15%.
What Stakers Must Do Now All STX committed through the previous contract unlocks during the upgrade as staking moves to the new PoX-5 contract. Users must restake before Bitcoin block 962,050 to receive rewards during the first cycle after the hard fork. Solo stakers can restake once the upgrade becomes active, while pool participants must wait for their provider to update its infrastructure and reopen staking.
Holders who are not actively staking need not act. The hard fork does not create a new token and will not affect STX balances, wallet addresses, or private keys. Major exchanges are currently monitoring network stability before reopening deposits and withdrawals.
Following activation, Stacks plans to begin the Bitcoin staking rollout with the institutional Genesis Bond in late August before expanding capacity to additional participants. The PoX-5 codebase has been audited by Trail of Bits and Clarity Alliance, with additional review from Asymmetric Research.
Sources:
Crypto Briefing: Stacks activates PoX-5 upgrade to launch Bitcoin staking
PrimeXBT: Stacks activates PoX-5 hard fork, opening Bitcoin staking through Bitcoin Bonds
Stacks Official Blog: The Public PoX-5 Testnet Is Live
George Town, Cayman Islands, July 28th, 2026, Chainwire
Zest Protocol today announces Stacks Vaults, a new vault layer built on top of its lending markets. Stacks Vaults will let users deposit a single asset into an automated strategy that manages yield on their behalf. The first Stacks Vault will be built around stBTC, the liquid staking Bitcoin token Stacking DAO introduced recently.
Stacks Vaults marks the evolution of Zest Protocol from a lending market into yield infrastructure. Until now, earning optimized yield on Stacks required actively managing positions across markets. Stacks Vaults change that: a holder deposits once, selects a strategy, and the vault handles the mechanics in the background.
The first vault will be an stBTC looping vault. A holder will deposit stBTC, and the vault will use it as collateral to borrow sBTC, stake the borrowed Bitcoin into stBTC, and repeat the process to compound yield on top of the base Bitcoin Staking rewards. The holder maintains a single position while Zest Protocol manages the strategy automatically.
“Lending markets were the foundation. Vaults are what gets built on top,” said Tycho Onnasch, Founder, Zest Protocol. “With Stacks Vaults, a holder deposits a single asset and the strategy runs itself. The stBTC looping vault is the first, and it won’t be the last. Every yield source on Stacks becomes a strategy we can automate.”
The speed of this announcement is as significant as the product itself. Bitcoin Staking creates the base yield, stBTC carries that yield into the ecosystem as a liquid asset, and Stacks Vaults will be the first infrastructure built to put it to work. Additional vaults with different assets and strategies are expected to follow, each built on the same automated foundation.
Zest Protocol is the leading Bitcoin lending protocol on Stacks, with $70M deployed across its platform and a track record of over two years serving the Bitcoin-native finance ecosystem. The ZEST token went live in May 2026 in one of the most successful token launches of the year. Zest Protocol has spent years building the lending infrastructure that Bitcoin-native finance now runs on, and Stacks Vaults is the next layer in that stack.
Stacks Vaults and the stBTC looping vault will launch alongside stBTC before Stacks Bitcoin Staking goes live. Holders will be able to deposit sBTC or stBTC directly into the vault, while Zest Protocol automatically manages the looping strategy and continuously monitors the position. More details will be available at zestprotocol.com.
About Zest Protocol
Zest Protocol is a lending protocol built for Bitcoin, giving BTC holders ways to borrow, lend, and earn yield without leaving Bitcoin-native infrastructure. Learn more at zestprotocol.com.
About Stacks
Stacks is growing Bitcoin by turning idle Bitcoin into productive capital. The network enables self-custodial Bitcoin yield and a growing ecosystem of Bitcoin-native financial applications that settle on Bitcoin. Learn more at stacks.co.
@Binance has confirmed it will support the upcoming @Stacks hardfork, set to activate in roughly 279 $BTC blocks. The announcement was made by Stacks founder @Muneeb, who posted the exchange's commitment as the countdown to the network upgrade tightens ahead of a Thursday activation.
What the PoX-5 Upgrade Changes The hardfork, known as PoX-5, is scheduled for July 29 and follows a successful community vote with overwhelming support for SIP-044 and SIP-045. The upgrade brings trustless, self-custodial Bitcoin staking to the network. More broadly, the change represents a material architectural shift for the primary Bitcoin Layer-2, addressing two of the network's most significant limitations: transaction finality and programmable utility for $BTC.
The upgrade introduces Bitcoin Finality, which the Stacks Foundation says makes Stacks transactions as irreversible as those executed on the Bitcoin blockchain, meaning the network can no longer fork on its own. With this mechanism, transaction ordering and reversal on Stacks L2 are protected by all of Bitcoin's hash power, and fast blocks reduce settlement delay to a few seconds instead of Bitcoin's 10 to 40 minutes.
The Monitoring Tag and Market Concern $STX dropped to a six-year low driven by market concerns over the token's monitoring tag on Binance. The Stacks team indicated the tag change on Binance was likely tied to the upcoming PoX-5 hardfork, and that other major centralized exchange partners had already been notified and moved forward in support. According to the team, the tag will be removed once consensus-level changes on Binance are completed.
@Muneeb's comments suggest the broader market has yet to fully price in the significance of the architectural shift. Binance's formal commitment to supporting the hardfork mirrors the exchange's established pattern with Stacks upgrades, where trading of STX is not impacted during the network upgrade and Binance handles all technical requirements for users holding STX in their accounts.
With the activation window now measured in hours rather than days, attention turns to whether Binance's endorsement and the removal of the monitoring tag will stabilize sentiment around $STX heading into the upgrade.
Sources
AMBCrypto: Stacks STX crashes as PoX-5 testnet goes live
Binance: Support for Stacks STX Network Upgrade and Hard Fork
The Defiant: Stacks Unlocks Fast Blocks and Bitcoin Finality
Kripto para piyasaları yeni haftaya yükselişle başladı. Toplam piyasa değeri Asya işlemlerinde 2,3 trilyon dolara ulaşırken, Bitcoin 65.500 doları, Ethereum ise yedi haftanın zirvesi olan 1.960 doları test etti. Fakat yatırımcıların odağı fiyat hareketlerinden çok bu hafta açıklanacak kritik makroekonomik veriler ve blokzincir ağlarında gerçekleşecek büyük güncellemelere çevrilmiş durumda. FED’in faiz kararı, çekirdek PCE verisi ve üç önemli ağ yükseltmesi, piyasalarda volatiliteyi artırabilecek gelişmeler arasında gösteriliyor.
Bitcoin son yükselişine rağmen 66 bin dolar seviyesindeki güçlü direnci aşabilmiş değil. Ethereum da 2 Haziran’dan bu yana ilk kez 2.000 dolar sınırına yaklaşsa da bu bölgede satış baskısıyla karşılaşıyor. Bu nedenle yatırımcılar, hafta boyunca gelecek haber akışının mevcut yükseliş trendini destekleyip desteklemeyeceğini yakından izliyor.
FED kararı haftanın en kritik gündemi Haftanın en önemli gelişmesi çarşamba günü açıklanacak ABD Merkez Bankası (FED) faiz kararı olacak. Piyasaların genel beklentisi politika faizinin %3,75 seviyesinde sabit bırakılması yönünde.
Bununla birlikte beklentiler son günlerde değişmeye başladı. CME FedWatch verilerine göre faizlerin sabit kalma olasılığı %63,7’ye gerilerken, faiz artırımı ihtimali %36,3’e yükseldi. Bu tablo, yatırımcıların karar öncesinde daha temkinli hareket etmesine neden oluyor.
Faiz kararının ardından gözler bu kez FED Başkanı Kevin Warsh’ın basın toplantısına çevrilecek. Piyasalar, enflasyon ve yılın geri kalanına ilişkin verilecek mesajların Bitcoin başta olmak üzere riskli varlıkların yönünü etkileyebileceğini düşünüyor.
Perşembe günü açıklanacak ABD çekirdek PCE enflasyonu ile GSYH büyüme verisi de haftanın en önemli makro başlıkları arasında yer alıyor. Özellikle PCE verisi, FED’in gelecek toplantılarda izleyeceği politika açısından yakından takip ediliyor.
Ağ yükseltmeleri altcoinleri hareketlendirebilir Makro verilerin yanı sıra bu hafta kripto ekosisteminde üç önemli teknik gelişme yaşanacak.
Salı günü Zcash (ZEC) ağ yükseltmesi devreye alınacak.
Çarşamba günü ise Stacks (STX) hard forku ile Polygon (POL) Ithaca hard forku gerçekleşecek.
Bu tür güncellemeler yalnızca ilgili ağların teknik altyapısını etkilemiyor. Aynı zamanda yatırımcı ilgisini artırarak kısa vadede işlem hacmi ve fiyat hareketliliğini de destekleyebiliyor. Bu nedenle özellikle altcoin yatırımcılarının hafta boyunca bu gelişmeleri yakından izlemesi bekleniyor.
Piyasalar neden bu haftaya odaklandı? Kripto piyasaları son haftalarda belirli bir fiyat aralığında işlem görüyor. Bitcoin 66 bin doların üzerindeki direnç bölgesini aşmakta zorlanırken, Ethereum da uzun süredir 2.000 dolar seviyesinin altında hareket ediyor.
İşte tam da bu nedenle bu haftaki gelişmeler kritik önem taşıyor. FED’in faiz kararı, enflasyon verileri ve ağ yükseltmeleri birlikte değerlendirildiğinde, hem Bitcoin hem de altcoinlerde mevcut sıkışmanın hangi yöne kırılacağı konusunda belirleyici olabilir. Yatırımcılar da bu nedenle yalnızca fiyat grafiklerini değil, Washington’dan gelecek mesajları ve blokzincir ağlarında yaşanacak teknik gelişmeleri de yakından takip ediyor.
Bu içerik genel piyasa verilerine dayanır ve yatırım tavsiyesi değildir. Kendi araştırmanızı yapmanızı öneririz.
Son Dakika kripto para haberleri için hemen tıkla.
Konu ile ilgili yorumlarınızı bize yazabilirsiniz. Ayrıca, bu tarz bilgilendirici içeriklerin devamının gelmesini isterseniz, bizleri Telegram, Youtube ve Twitter kanallarımızdan takip edebilirsiniz.
On the 25th of July, Stacks [STX] experienced strong bearish pressure. After a long period of consolidation, bears finally took over the market, with STX losing the $0.16 support level.
As a result, the altcoin crashed to $0.13. STX has not dropped to such levels since mid-2020, marking a 6-year low. As of this writing, Stacks was trading around $0.138, after dropping by 6.2% on the daily charts.
Why is Stacks declining, though? STX dropped to a six-year low driven by market concerns over the token’s tag on Binance. The Stacks Endowment acknowledged the concern and said it was in contact with Binance to resolve the issue.
Importantly, the team posited that the change in tag on Binance was likely due to the upcoming PoX-5 hardfork. For that reason, the Stacks team informed other major CEX partners in time, who have since moved forward in support.
According to Reubs, the tag will be removed once consensus-level changes on Binance are completed. Although the team assured the community, the market did not receive the assurance positively, and sentiment flipped.
What about the PoX-5 hardfork? The Stacks PoX-5 hardfork is scheduled for the 29th of July. This follows a successful vote and overwhelming community support of SP 044 and SP 045.
The highly anticipated upgrade brings about trustless, self-custodial Bitcoin staking. Thus, the upgrade will allow users to earn BTC-dominated yield while still keeping their holdings under their own key.
Three days ago, the public PoX-5 testnet went live for builders to test their protocols ahead of the mainnet.
On-chain usage remains extremely weak Despite the rollout of the public testnet and market anticipation, Stacks’ on-chain activity has failed to keep up. In fact, the network’s on-chain activity has continued to decline.
According to Token Terminal data, daily active users plunged to 1.1k. The network recorded such a low user count in January 2026.
Source: Token Terminal The declining usage shows that the upcoming upgrade has not incentivized users to stay or attracted new users. Reduced network activity usually translates to lower demand for the native token and could lead to extended weakness for STX.
Can STX hold the pressure? The recent market concerns prompted traders to reduce exposure. As a result, the market structure weakened, thus further strengthening the downward momentum.
In fact, STX’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) formed a bearish crossover and plummeted into oversold territory.
Source: TradingView At 23, RSI indicated sellers had fully retaken control. Furthermore, the Spot Buy Sell Volume metric confirms this bearish flip.
The sell volume rose to 4.98 million while the buy volume dropped to 4.24 million. Previously, buyers had shown relative strength, pushing buy volume to 20.4 million.
Source: Coinalyze With sellers dominating the market, it warns of potentially extended weakness. Therefore, if sellers continue to dominate while network demand is weak, Stacks could drop below $0.13, with $0.1 as a critical support level.
However, if the concerns over the Binance tag are addressed, easing pressure, the altcoin could seek to reclaim $0.16.
Final Summary STX plunged to a 6-year low of $0.13 amid market concerns over the Binance tag. Stacks’ market structure remains bearish, with weak on-chain activity and seller dominance.
Most exchanges and partners have signaled readiness for the hard fork, though a few are still reviewing details and the upgrade has not yet activated.
The Stacks community approved SIP-045, the Bitcoin Staking upgrade, with more than 99% of votes cast in favor, Stacks co-creator Muneeb Ali said, setting up a hard fork targeted for around July 29 at roughly Bitcoin block 907,740.
The upgrade, formally "PoX-5: Bitcoin Staking and Emission Schedule Alignment," lets participants lock BTC in a timelocked contract on Bitcoin's base layer — under their own keys — and pair it with locked STX to earn yield paid in bitcoin. A companion proposal, SIP-044, which brings Clarity 6 and new staking post-conditions, passed alongside it. Voting opened July 6; hard-fork votes require at least 80% approval from stacked STX.
"Bitcoin is the world's most trusted asset precisely because of its design and safety principles on the L1," Ali said when the Bitcoin Staking whitepaper was published in May. "Holders can now earn yield denominated in BTC, trustlessly, while their Bitcoin stays exactly where it belongs."
How the Mechanism WorksStakers fund a timelocked UTXO on Bitcoin using OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY, pair it with an STX lock equal to at least 5% of the bond, and commit for roughly six months. The Stacks contract verifies the Bitcoin-side lock with an SPV proof — no custodian or trusted bridge. Yield comes from the BTC that miners already bid through Proof of Transfer: paired bonds get a target of about 3% APY in BTC, STX-only stackers take 85% of the excess, and 15% builds a reserve that buffers shortfalls. There is no slashing; principal returns in full when the timelock expires.
The bootstrap phase caps capacity at 3,000 BTC, managed by the Stacks Endowment with whitelisted partners and about 10% open to pools. A public testnet went live this week, and a "Genesis Bond" is targeted for late August.
SIP-045 also reverses April's emissions cut, restoring the STX coinbase to 1,000 STX per Bitcoin block from 500 — a meaningful supply increase bundled with the staking mechanism.
Yield Without Leaving BitcoinStacks has distributed more than 4,200 BTC — roughly $500 million — in stacking rewards since Proof of Transfer went live in 2021, and its sBTC bridged asset holds about $186 million, per DefiLlama, down from a Q1 peak of $545 million as BTC's price fell.
The vote result did nothing for the token. STX trades at $0.144, down 13% in 24 hours, per CoinGecko, sharply underperforming Bitcoin's 1.9% decline.
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Bitget has completed dividend distributions for 63 stocks including Micron Technology and TSMC.
According to an official announcement, Bitget has completed the dividend distribution for 63 US stocks and ETFs, including rMU (Micron Technology), rQQQ (Nasdaq 100 Index ETF), and rTSM (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, TSMC). The platform has settled USDT dividends proportionally for users who held the relevant assets at the snapshot time, with the entire process automated—no user action is required. This distribution covers multiple asset categories including technology, semiconductors, communications, and index ETFs. Users can check specific details via: in the App, navigate to "Assets" → "Financial Records" → "Spot" → "Other" → "Dividends"; or on the Web, go to "Asset Overview" → "Spot Orders" → "Fund Flow" → "Other" → "Dividends". The final credited amount and timing shall be subject to the platform’s actual credit and page display.
2 minutes ago
Ethereum breaks through $1,900
According to HTX market data, Ethereum has broken through the $1900 level, with a 0.92% decline in the past 24 hours.
2 minutes ago
Analyst: If ETH holds the $1,850 support level, it may rebound to $2,060.
Crypto analyst Ali Charts posted that Ethereum rebounded after testing the lower boundary of its price channel. The current key support level stands at $1,850; as long as this level holds, Ethereum could rally back toward the channel’s upper boundary, around $2,060.
2 minutes ago
CXMT is 3 days away from its IPO, as newly opened whale positions partially cut their CXMT long positions.
According to Hyperinsight monitoring, CXMT on Hyperliquid is currently trading at $6.4658, down roughly 0.8% over 24 hours, equivalent to ~￥43.93. This is 5.07 times the ￥8.66 IPO price of Changxin Technology, representing a ~407% premium. Changxin Technology is set to list on the STAR Market on July 27 (next Monday), with stock code 688825. Its total post-IPO share count is ~668.81 billion, of which ~45.03 billion shares will be tradable from the first day of listing. Calculated at CXMT’s current price, its implied market cap is ~￥2.94 trillion, ~￥2.36 trillion higher than the IPO valuation of ￥579.188 billion. CXMT futures launched on July 15, hitting a high of $8.64 (~￥58.70) from $6 on its first day, at one point trading at a 577.8% premium to the IPO price, with its implied market cap once approaching ￥3.93 trillion. The current price has fallen 25.2% from that peak, but remains 7.8% higher than its launch price. Open interest for CXMT on the platform stands at ~$50.1 million, with 24-hour trading volume of ~$11.566 million. On the address front, the largest existing position is held by address 0xf29, which is short $8.53 million worth of CXMT at 1x leverage, with an average entry price of $6.6, unrealized profit of $170,000, and liquidation price of $15. Meanwhile, the largest recent million-dollar position (a whale address starting with 0x8e09) has started reducing its long positions; after 13:00 today, it sold a small portion of 30,000 units. As of press time, this address still holds 204,100 CXMT long positions in isolated mode at 5x leverage, with a position value of ~$1.19 million, average entry price of $6.57, unrealized loss of ~$17,000, and a return of ~-7.9%. Although this position is marked as 5x leverage, it has posted ~$1.196 million in isolated margin, resulting in an effective leverage of only ~1.1x; it is currently labeled "Hanba Xiaolong" on Hyperliquid.
2 minutes ago
Roundup of Stablecoin Demand Deposit Yields on Major CEXs: USDT Offers Up to 10% for Small-Tier Deposits, USDC Up to 8%
According to the latest compiled data on flexible savings and earn products of major centralized crypto exchanges (CEXs), platforms including HTX, Binance, OKX, and Bitget continue to offer stablecoin current yields structured as "high returns for small amounts, tiered reduction for excess amounts". For USDT: HTX’s 0-200 USDT tier has an annualized yield of 10%, dropping to 1.95% for amounts over 200 USDT; Bitget’s 0-300 USDT tier yields 6.25%, with excess amounts at 1.59%; Binance’s 0-200 USDT tier is 4.54%, excess at 1.54%; OKX’s is 1.63%. For USDC: HTX’s 0-200 USDC tier offers an annualized yield of 8%, falling to 2.75% above 200 USDC; Bitget’s 0-300 USDC tier is 6.66%, excess at 1.73%; Binance’s 0-200 USDC tier is 6.51%, excess at 1.51%; OKX’s is 1.68%. For other stablecoins: HTX’s USDT VIP tier has an annualized yield of 6%-9%, while Bitget’s USDT VIP 0-300,000 tier is 1.88%; USDE’s annualized yields on HTX, Binance, and Bitget are tiered at 5%/3%, 4.00%, and 1.81% respectively; HTX’s USDD is 4.00%; Binance’s U product has an annualized yield of 8.53% for the 0-10,000 tier, dropping to 0.53% for excess amounts. Overall, current high yields on stablecoin flexible savings products of major CEXs remain concentrated in small amounts, with yields generally lower for large sums. When comparing related products, users should not only consider the nominal annualized yield, but also note tier limits, interest calculation rules, supported currencies, and real-time product availability. The above data is displayed yield rates and does not constitute investment advice.
2 minutes ago
South Korea’s Mirae Asset Group has acquired a 97.15% stake in Korbit, and plans to develop it into a smart investment platform.
South Korea’s Mirae Asset Group has completed the acquisition of a 97.15% stake in Korbit, a veteran South Korean cryptocurrency exchange, and plans to rebrand the platform as Digital X. The deal was finalized after securing approval from South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission, and the group currently has no plans to acquire the remaining shares. Mirae Asset stated that Digital X will be positioned as a "smart investment platform" that integrates real-world assets (RWA), security token offerings (STOs), stablecoins, traditional assets, and digital assets into a unified investment ecosystem, while connecting knowledge, information, and in-depth investment research. The "X" in the name represents the unknown future and infinite possibilities arising from the convergence of different value forms. Korbit currently holds less than 1% of South Korea’s domestic crypto market share, far trailing Upbit and Bithumb. Mirae Asset emphasized that its goal is not to outperform other exchanges, but to combine its global investment expertise with Korbit’s digital asset capabilities to drive the steady, sustainable development of the digital asset industry in South Korea and globally. The group also plans to strengthen investor education, research capabilities, and institutional-grade infrastructure, while strictly adhering to anti-money laundering (AML), know-your-customer (KYC), and fraud detection standards across all operations to serve both institutional clients and retail traders.
The Stacks ecosystem just took a meaningful step toward letting Bitcoin holders earn yield without handing over their keys. The PoX-5 public testnet is now live, giving builders and developers a sandbox to stress-test Bitcoin staking before the protocol’s mainnet hard fork, currently penciled in for around July 29, 2026.
PoX stands for Proof of Transfer, a consensus mechanism that has been running on Stacks since January 2021. Miners on Stacks spend BTC to mine blocks, and that BTC gets distributed as rewards to participants who lock up their STX tokens. The system has maintained over 99.9% uptime since launch, distributing more than 4,200 BTC in rewards over its lifetime.
PoX-5 builds on that foundation but introduces the ability to stake actual Bitcoin alongside STX. The BTC stays on Bitcoin’s own blockchain, secured by a timelock rather than a custodian. The public testnet phase follows a private testnet that kicked off on July 16, 2026. During that earlier phase, integration partners confirmed the protocol bond lifecycle worked correctly under accelerated conditions.
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The mainnet activation hinges on a Bitcoin block height target of approximately block 907,740. Two governance proposals, SIP-044 (Clarity 6) and SIP-045 (Bitcoin Staking), cleared the community vote with an approval rate exceeding 99.99%.
Bootstrap phase parameters and what comes next The initial rollout won’t be a free-for-all. Stacks is implementing a bootstrap phase with a 3,000 BTC capacity cap, a projected yield of around 3% APY paid in BTC, and a minimum STX pairing ratio of 5%.
After PoX-5 stabilizes, the roadmap points toward PoX-6, which would transition the system into a permissionless auction model. The team is also planning to release what they’re calling the Genesis Bond, described as the first Bitcoin Protocol Bond, with a target date in late August 2026.
What this means for investors The 5% minimum STX pairing ratio creates a structural demand floor. If the 3,000 BTC bootstrap cap gets filled, that implies a need for STX equivalent to at least 5% of the staked BTC value to be locked alongside it.
Timelocks on Bitcoin are elegant in theory, but any mechanism that involves locking capital introduces liquidity risk. If BTC price moves sharply while tokens are locked, stakers can’t react. The 3% APY needs to compensate for that illiquidity premium.
STX price action has already shown sensitivity to Bitcoin staking narratives. The Genesis Bond release in late August could serve as the next major catalyst if the mainnet launch goes smoothly.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
New York, NY, United States, July 23rd, 2026, Chainwire
Q2 Ecosystem Report highlights institutional partnerships, ecosystem growth, and infrastructure milestones ahead of Bitcoin Staking’s Q3 launch.
Stacks (STX) today published its Q2 2026 Ecosystem Report, outlining progress toward launching Bitcoin Staking and expanding the infrastructure needed to make Bitcoin a productive capital asset. Cumulative Stacks users surpassed 1.6 million during the quarter, an 8.0% increase quarter over quarter, while new wallet creation rose nearly 53%, from 72,000 in Q1 to 110,000 in Q2.
The report highlights a quarter of steady execution. Stacks built and deployed PoX-5, the on-chain mechanism powering Bitcoin Staking, first to a private testnet for institutional partners and later to public testnet, where it is now undergoing audit ahead of mainnet launch. The quarter also marked two major institutional partnerships. Fireblocks, which facilitates the transfer and storage of more than $10 trillion in digital assets globally, joined as the institutional custody infrastructure partner, while UTXO Management – the Bitcoin-native asset management subsidiary of Nakamoto Inc. (NASDAQ: NAKA) – became the inaugural Bitcoin Staking launch partner. Alongside this, the Bitcoin-native finance ecosystem continued to grow, and the Endowment expanded its grant and Foundry programs to support new builders.
“Bitcoin has spent years establishing itself as an asset. The next chapter is making that asset productive, and Stacks made strong progress on that front in Q2 2026,” said Alex Miller, CEO of Stacks Labs. “Our thesis is clear: Stacks is the place where Bitcoin becomes productive capital. The quarter ahead is an important one for the broader Stacks ecosystem, and we are determined to capture a larger share of the Bitcoin sitting idle today.”
Among the report’s highlights:
Bitcoin Staking advanced toward launch, with PoX-5 built, deployed to private and public testnet, and now in audit ahead of mainnet in Q3. Fireblocks and UTXO Management joined as institutional partners, expanding the custody and asset-management infrastructure required for institutional participation. Zest Protocol had its biggest quarter to date: the ZEST token launched via Binance Alpha on May 19, reaching a $200 million fully diluted valuation (FDV) within hours while ranking No. 1 trending on CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap. Zest remains the top DeFi protocol on Stacks, with $70M in TVL and over 800 sBTC deposited. Stacking DAO reached an all-time high of 110M STX in TVL and announced stBTC, the first Bitcoin liquid staking token on Stacks, now in audit and targeting an August launch. BitFlow surpassed $5 billion in cumulative transaction volume and $575M in swap volume, grew to 29,677 cumulative users, and delivered an estimated average 17.9% Bitcoin APY across its two primary sBTC pools over the past 30 days. Hermetica saw continued allocator demand for BTC yield, with hBTC reaching 75 BTC in TVL and its latest capped allocation filling within 24 hours, while USDh averaged 8% APY over the quarter as Hermetica advanced its STRC integration. Network and protocol development continued, with three stable mainnet node releases and ongoing security hardening through the Immunefi bug bounty program. The Stacks Endowment expanded strategic ecosystem investment through grants and the Foundry program, completing its first Validate cohort (60 participating teams, 25 advancing toward grant applications) and preparing the next program, Onboard. The report also outlines Stacks’ priorities for Q3, including the launch of Bitcoin Staking, expansion of the liquid staking ecosystem through stBTC, onboarding additional institutional participants, and continued investment in founders building Bitcoin-native financial applications.
Read the full Q2 2026 Stacks Ecosystem Report.
About Stacks
Stacks is growing Bitcoin by turning idle Bitcoin into productive capital. The network enables self-custodial Bitcoin yield and a growing ecosystem of Bitcoin-native financial applications that settle on Bitcoin. Learn more at stacks.co.
Bitcoin has long been the asset everyone wants exposure to and the network nobody could build on. Stacks was designed to change that, and a new on-chain milestone suggests it is making progress.
The Stacks protocol has recorded 1.6 million total wallets that have ever received a transfer, according to on-chain analytics tracking cumulative user adoption.
What the wallet count actually tells you What the 1.6 million figure tells you is the cumulative reach of the network, the total number of unique addresses that have had at least some interaction with the Stacks ecosystem at any point in its history. Not everyone is logging in daily, but the number sets a ceiling for potential reactivation and signals that the protocol has moved well beyond niche hobbyist territory.
A busy summer of product launches On July 8, 2026, the protocol announced stBTC, a liquid staking token built to generate Bitcoin yield within the Stacks DeFi ecosystem. Instead of simply holding Bitcoin and earning nothing, users can stake it through Stacks and receive a liquid token that can be deployed elsewhere in DeFi while the underlying Bitcoin continues earning yield.
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Five days later, on July 13, a proposal for the PoX-5 upgrade was put forward. PoX, which stands for Proof of Transfer, is the consensus mechanism that connects Stacks to Bitcoin by having miners transfer Bitcoin to participate in block production. The PoX-5 proposal introduces a new staking model and a 15% reserve fund, creating a buffer within the staking system designed to add stability and reduce the risk of yield disruption for participants.
Earlier in the summer, on June 17, Stacks announced an integration with Fireblocks, the institutional-grade digital asset custody and transfer platform. Fireblocks is the infrastructure layer that hedge funds, banks, and crypto-native institutions use to move and secure assets at scale, and the integration opens the door to a class of capital that previously had no clean on-ramp into the Stacks ecosystem.
The Nakamoto foundation The Nakamoto release, completed in 2024, was the most significant technical upgrade in the protocol’s history. Before Nakamoto, Stacks blocks were tied to Bitcoin block production, meaning the network inherited Bitcoin’s roughly ten-minute confirmation window. Post-Nakamoto, the protocol produces blocks at a faster cadence. The two-way peg mechanism, sBTC, allows Bitcoin to move between the Bitcoin base layer and the Stacks layer without relying on a centralized custodian.
stBTC, announced this July, builds directly on top of sBTC.
What investors should watch stBTC is the most direct catalyst to watch. Liquid staking tokens tend to generate flywheel effects: yield attracts deposits, deposits increase total value locked, higher TVL attracts more DeFi protocols, and more protocols attract more users.
The PoX-5 upgrade directly affects the incentive structure for STX holders who participate in stacking. The 15% reserve fund introduces a new variable into that calculus, and the market will need to price in both the stability benefits and any changes to effective yield rates once the upgrade is finalized.
The Fireblocks integration removes one of the primary friction points for funds that want Bitcoin DeFi exposure without building custom infrastructure.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
NEW YORK (AP) — The anticipation. The chase. The powdery, sugar-coated board of gum! For generations of baseball card fans, there was nothing like scrounging up some change and sprinting to the store to buy a wax pack.
Some tore the slightly tacky paper wrapper open and flipped through the cards in an insatiable instant (hence the popular phrase “ripping wax” for opening card packs even today, about 35 years since use of actual wax wrappers ceased). Others did the slow reveal: one card at a time, peeking out of a corner of the pack, or maybe upside down and reversed. However you did it, it was the right way.
“There is something inherently magic about peeling away the paper of the wax pack. There’s something visceral about it, taking the pack to your face and smelling it,” says Brian Pirrip, owner of collectible business M1NT. “It’s something about the mix of all these scents — the wax, the gum, the cardboard — that transports you back to a different time.”
Collecting and trading cards has been part of the baseball ecosystem since the 1860s. But the wax pack emerged as the delivery method in 1951 by Topps.
Opening a pack was thrilling. Who were you going to pull? Whether it was Hall-of-Famer-to-be Brooks Robinson or Sixto Lezcano, a “common” card, the feeling was the same: “an innocent joy,” Pirrip says. You’d then scale them or flip ’em, turn that pack of 15 cards into 20 through some clever trades. The cards went with you everywhere.
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Fueled by history, statistics and mythmaking, baseball card collecting rode the nostalgia craze of the 1980s into big business and overproduction of cards. While saturation of the market brought down prices, the abundance of fan favorites has driven a resurgence of interest in opening wax packs.
Baseball trading cards, gum and packs are displayed, Wednesday July 15, 2026 in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)
Baseball trading cards, gum and packs are displayed, Wednesday July 15, 2026 in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)
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Read More Sure, you can open modern foil wrappers and chase high-value autos, refractors or other gimmicky cards, But there’s nothing like tearing open a wax pack and chomping on the thin pink rectangle.
Pirrip has taken his love of collecting to 47 states. He has seen countless faces light up when a favorite card surfaces.
On a recent night at Citi Field, home of the New York Mets, Pirrip pulled out a box of 1987 Topps cards and had guests rip some wax. Nolan Ryan, Don Mattingly, Roger Clemens and Kirby Puckett drew gasps. But it was all smiles, even for names not uttered in years.
“It instantly transports people to a happier time,” he says. “You can’t get that with anything else.”
Part of a recurring series, “American Objects,” marking the 250th anniversary of the United States. For more American objects, click here. For more stories on the anniversary, click here.
The anticipation. The chase. The powdery, sugar-coated board of gum! For generations of baseball card fans, there was nothing like scrounging up some change and sprinting to the store to buy a wax pack.
Some tore the slightly tacky paper wrapper open and flipped through the cards in an insatiable instant (hence the popular phrase “ripping wax” for opening card packs even today, about 35 years since use of actual wax wrappers ceased). Others did the slow reveal: one card at a time, peeking out of a corner of the pack, or maybe upside down and reversed. However you did it, it was the right way.
“There is something inherently magic about peeling away the paper of the wax pack. There’s something visceral about it, taking the pack to your face and smelling it,” says Brian Pirrip, owner of collectible business M1NT. “It’s something about the mix of all these scents — the wax, the gum, the cardboard — that transports you back to a different time.”
Collecting and trading cards has been part of the baseball ecosystem since the 1860s. But the wax pack emerged as the delivery method in 1951 by Topps.
Collecting and trading cards has been part of the baseball ecosystem since the 1860s (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)Opening a pack was thrilling. Who were you going to pull? Whether it was Hall-of-Famer-to-be Brooks Robinson or Sixto Lezcano, a “common” card, the feeling was the same: “an innocent joy,” Pirrip says. You’d then scale them or flip ’em, turn that pack of 15 cards into 20 through some clever trades. The cards went with you everywhere.
Fueled by history, statistics and mythmaking, baseball card collecting rode the nostalgia craze of the 1980s into big business and overproduction of cards. While saturation of the market brought down prices, the abundance of fan favorites has driven a resurgence of interest in opening wax packs.
Sure, you can open modern foil wrappers and chase high-value autos, refractors or other gimmicky cards, But there's nothing like tearing open a wax pack and chomping on the thin pink rectangle.
Pirrip has taken his love of collecting to 47 states. He has seen countless faces light up when a favorite card surfaces.
On a recent night at Citi Field, home of the New York Mets, Pirrip pulled out a box of 1987 Topps cards and had guests rip some wax. Nolan Ryan, Don Mattingly, Roger Clemens and Kirby Puckett drew gasps. But it was all smiles, even for names not uttered in years.
“It instantly transports people to a happier time,” he says. “You can’t get that with anything else.”
For generations of baseball card fans, there was little like scrounging up some change and sprinting to the local convenience store to buy a wax pack of baseball cards
July 15, 2026 at 2:49 p.m. EDTToday at 2:49 p.m. EDT
Baseball trading cards, gum and packs are displayed, Wednesday July 15, 2026 in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)By
NEW YORK — The anticipation. The chase. The powdery, sugar-coated board of gum! For generations of baseball card fans, there was nothing like scrounging up some change and sprinting to the store to buy a wax pack.
Stacks, the Bitcoin Layer 2 network, is proposing a significant upgrade to its consensus mechanism that would let Bitcoin holders earn yield on their BTC without ever moving it off the main chain. The kicker: 15% of all excess revenue gets funneled into a reserve fund designed to keep the whole system solvent even during lean times.
The upgrade, dubbed PoX-5 (Proof-of-Transfer version 5), introduces a waterfall distribution model. Protocol bond holders sit at the top of the payment queue, with an initial target yield of roughly 3% APY. These bonds require a six-month lockup period. Only after those obligations are met does the remaining revenue flow downhill.
Whatever is left after paying bond holders, the excess miner revenue, gets split two ways. STX-only stakers receive 85% of the surplus. The protocol reserve fund absorbs the remaining 15%.
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To participate, Bitcoin holders lock their BTC on the Bitcoin Layer 1 network using a timelock mechanism and pair it with STX, the native token of the Stacks network. No bridging required. No custodial transfers.
Building a 1.2-year safety buffer The 15% reserve allocation isn’t arbitrary. Simulations run across 210 two-week cycles, roughly eight years of modeled data, project that the reserve fund would accumulate enough to cover 1.2 years of yield commitments.
The system also includes capacity constraints and real-time coverage ratio monitoring. There’s no slashing mechanism for participants, meaning stakers don’t risk losing their principal if something goes sideways with the network.
The whitepaper laying all of this out was published on May 13, 2026. Since then, the Stacks community has been reviewing the associated SIP (Stacks Improvement Proposal) documents related to the bootstrap phase. No formal votes or launches have been finalized yet.
Stacks’ track record with Proof-of-Transfer The original PoX mechanism has been operational since January 2021, and over that period, the protocol has distributed more than 4,200 BTC to participants under prior consensus versions. PoX-5 is an evolution of that infrastructure, adding structured yield products and reserve mechanics on top of existing plumbing.
The upgrade also serves a dual purpose beyond yield generation. By requiring participants to pair BTC with STX, it creates organic demand for the Stacks native token. More staking activity means more STX gets locked up, which theoretically supports the token’s value while simultaneously enhancing network security through increased participation.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
In brief OpenAI has released GPT-5.6 Sol, alongside the cheaper Terra and Luna, ending a two-week preview the U.S. Department of Commerce kept boxed in. Sol in ultra mode tops Terminal-Bench 2.1 at 91.9% and matches Anthropic's restricted Mythos Preview on ExploitBench while burning roughly a third of the tokens. The launch lands one day after Grok 4.5 and hours after Meta's Muse Spark 1.1, leaving Google's November 2025 Gemini 3 as the oldest frontier flagship still standing. OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol is now public. The company released its new flagship model to general users today, launching alongside two smaller siblings, Terra and Luna, after the U.S. Department of Commerce kept a preview restricted to about 20 trusted partners for two weeks.
The naming strategy is new for OpenAI. This is the first time the company gives names to its models instead of simply using numbers. Sol, Terra, and Luna mark capability tiers that can move on their own cadence. Sol is the flagship, Terra the everyday model OpenAI says matches GPT-5.5 at half the price, and Luna the cheaper option.
Pricing runs $5 and $30 per million input and output tokens for Sol, dropping to $1 and $6 for Luna. (Tokens, for those not in the know, are the smallest unit of information a model can handle. And companies typically price their models on a per token basis for API services) Two new knobs ship with it: a max reasoning effort that lets Sol think longer, and an ultra mode that farms work out to subagents.
For context, Anthropic charges $10/$50 for Claude Fable 5, Google charges $2/$12 for Gemini 3.1 Pro, xAI charges $15/$75 for Grok 4.5.
On the Chinese side: DeepSeek charges $1.74/$3.48 for V4 Pro, and Xiaomi charges just $1/$5 for MiMo v2.5 Pro—placing Sol between the premium U.S. frontier models and China's low-cost challengers.
What the benchmarks show
On Terminal-Bench 2.1—a test of command-line workflows that reward planning, tool use, and iteration, scored as the share of tasks a model completes—Sol in its ultra configuration hit 91.9%, with standard Sol at 88.8%.
That puts both ahead of Anthropic's Claude Mythos 5 at 88.0%, Claude Fable 5 at 84.3%, and Claude Opus 4.8 at 78.9%. Google's Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview trailed the chart at 70.7%.
OpenAI leaned hardest on cyber. On ExploitBench, which measures how well a model finds and weaponizes software vulnerabilities, Sol matched the restricted Mythos Preview while spending roughly a third of the tokens. OpenAI says Sol still doesn't cross the "Cyber Critical" line in its own risk framework.
The testers already have opinionsEarly access was loud. Theo, a well-known developer, AI youtuber and CEO of the AI platform T3 Chat, called Sol "world leading in computer use" and said it fixed the complaints he had with GPT-5.5.
Apparently I'm allowed to talk about GPT-5.6 now?
It's a damn good model. Not quite as "smart" as Fable, but it is incredibly capable. Fixed all the problems I had with GPT-5.5.
It is incredibly determined. Will run for a day without even using a /goal. It understands subagents…
— Theo - t3.gg (@theo) July 8, 2026
Dan Shipper, whose team at Every tested it for a month, offered the cleaner line: "GPT-5.6 is like a Porsche, Fable is like a warp drive." His read is that Sol is the daily driver and Fable the thing you reach for to cross the galaxy.
GPT-5.6 is like a Porsche, Fable is like a warp drive.
We've been testing internally @every for about a month. And GPT-5.6 is the best combination of power, speed, and performance for your day to day knowledge work and coding.
Fable is a different beast. If you need to get…
— Dan Shipper 📧 (@danshipper) July 8, 2026
Researcher Daichi Konno, who got in early, said Sol clearly beats GPT-5.5 and lands near Fable 5, with Anthropic still ahead in writing tasks. His sharper note: Sol's safeguards didn't trip on life-science questions, which he thinks could make it a default for biology work.
— Daichi Konno / 紺野 大地 (@_daichikonno) July 9, 2026
Leaks already point past it. One roadmap-tracking account, "Synthwave" on X, claims GPT-5.6 is the last of the 5.x line, with GPT-6 built on a larger base arriving within about a month. The same thread pegs Anthropic's Fable 5.1 as close and DeepSeek's V4 general release as imminent.
The timing is pointed. Sol arrives the same week Anthropic's Fable 5 drops out of subscription plans—after it returned globally on July 1, the model moved to usage credits only once its 50% weekly allowance expired on July 7.
It's crowded at the top. SpaceXAI shipped Grok 4.5 yesterday at a fraction of the price, which Elon Musk called "roughly comparable to Opus 4.7, but much faster." Meta released Muse Spark 1.1 this morning, its first paid model. Neither leads the pack, but both are frontier-class.
That leaves Google as the one big U.S. lab that hasn't refreshed its flagship in this run. Its top model, Gemini 3, has been out since November 2025—the oldest frontier release still standing while OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and Meta all moved in the same seven days.
Daily Debrief NewsletterStart every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
In brief OpenAI has released GPT-5.6 Sol, alongside the cheaper Terra and Luna, ending a two-week preview the U.S. Department of Commerce kept boxed in. Sol in ultra mode tops Terminal-Bench 2.1 at 91.9% and matches Anthropic's restricted Mythos Preview on ExploitBench while burning roughly a third of the tokens. The launch lands one day after Grok 4.5 and hours after Meta's Muse Spark 1.1, leaving Google's November 2025 Gemini 3 as the oldest frontier flagship still standing. OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol is now public. The company released its new flagship model to general users today, launching alongside two smaller siblings, Terra and Luna, after the U.S. Department of Commerce kept a preview restricted to about 20 trusted partners for two weeks.
The naming strategy is new for OpenAI. This is the first time the company gives names to its models instead of simply using numbers. Sol, Terra, and Luna mark capability tiers that can move on their own cadence. Sol is the flagship, Terra the everyday model OpenAI says matches GPT-5.5 at half the price, and Luna the cheaper option.
Pricing runs $5 and $30 per million input and output tokens for Sol, dropping to $1 and $6 for Luna. (Tokens, for those not in the know, are the smallest unit of information a model can handle. And companies typically price their models on a per token basis for API services) Two new knobs ship with it: a max reasoning effort that lets Sol think longer, and an ultra mode that farms work out to subagents.
For context, Anthropic charges $10/$50 for Claude Fable 5, Google charges $2/$12 for Gemini 3.1 Pro, xAI charges $15/$75 for Grok 4.5.
On the Chinese side: DeepSeek charges $1.74/$3.48 for V4 Pro, and Xiaomi charges just $1/$5 for MiMo v2.5 Pro—placing Sol between the premium U.S. frontier models and China's low-cost challengers.
What the benchmarks show
On Terminal-Bench 2.1—a test of command-line workflows that reward planning, tool use, and iteration, scored as the share of tasks a model completes—Sol in its ultra configuration hit 91.9%, with standard Sol at 88.8%.
That puts both ahead of Anthropic's Claude Mythos 5 at 88.0%, Claude Fable 5 at 84.3%, and Claude Opus 4.8 at 78.9%. Google's Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview trailed the chart at 70.7%.
OpenAI leaned hardest on cyber. On ExploitBench, which measures how well a model finds and weaponizes software vulnerabilities, Sol matched the restricted Mythos Preview while spending roughly a third of the tokens. OpenAI says Sol still doesn't cross the "Cyber Critical" line in its own risk framework.
The testers already have opinionsEarly access was loud. Theo, a well-known developer, AI youtuber and CEO of the AI platform T3 Chat, called Sol "world leading in computer use" and said it fixed the complaints he had with GPT-5.5.
Apparently I'm allowed to talk about GPT-5.6 now?
It's a damn good model. Not quite as "smart" as Fable, but it is incredibly capable. Fixed all the problems I had with GPT-5.5.
It is incredibly determined. Will run for a day without even using a /goal. It understands subagents…
— Theo - t3.gg (@theo) July 8, 2026
Dan Shipper, whose team at Every tested it for a month, offered the cleaner line: "GPT-5.6 is like a Porsche, Fable is like a warp drive." His read is that Sol is the daily driver and Fable the thing you reach for to cross the galaxy.
GPT-5.6 is like a Porsche, Fable is like a warp drive.
We've been testing internally @every for about a month. And GPT-5.6 is the best combination of power, speed, and performance for your day to day knowledge work and coding.
Fable is a different beast. If you need to get…
— Dan Shipper 📧 (@danshipper) July 8, 2026
Researcher Daichi Konno, who got in early, said Sol clearly beats GPT-5.5 and lands near Fable 5, with Anthropic still ahead in writing tasks. His sharper note: Sol's safeguards didn't trip on life-science questions, which he thinks could make it a default for biology work.
— Daichi Konno / 紺野 大地 (@_daichikonno) July 9, 2026
Leaks already point past it. One roadmap-tracking account, "Synthwave" on X, claims GPT-5.6 is the last of the 5.x line, with GPT-6 built on a larger base arriving within about a month. The same thread pegs Anthropic's Fable 5.1 as close and DeepSeek's V4 general release as imminent.
The timing is pointed. Sol arrives the same week Anthropic's Fable 5 drops out of subscription plans—after it returned globally on July 1, the model moved to usage credits only once its 50% weekly allowance expired on July 7.
It's crowded at the top. SpaceXAI shipped Grok 4.5 yesterday at a fraction of the price, which Elon Musk called "roughly comparable to Opus 4.7, but much faster." Meta released Muse Spark 1.1 this morning, its first paid model. Neither leads the pack, but both are frontier-class.
That leaves Google as the one big U.S. lab that hasn't refreshed its flagship in this run. Its top model, Gemini 3, has been out since November 2025—the oldest frontier release still standing while OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and Meta all moved in the same seven days.
Daily Debrief NewsletterStart every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
New York, NY, United States, July 8th, 2026, Chainwire
Stacking DAO today announced stBTC, a liquid staked version of Bitcoin built for Stacks’ upcoming Bitcoin Staking release. stBTC will let Bitcoin holders earn yield through staking while keeping their capital liquid and ready to move across the rest of the Stacks ecosystem.
Bitcoin is the largest pool of capital in the digital economy, and most of it sits idle. Only a small fraction of Bitcoin’s supply is deployed in on-chain finance today, while the rest stays parked in custody, exchange-traded funds, and treasuries. Stacking DAO built stBTC to close that gap and give Bitcoin holders a native path to put their capital to work.
stBTC is the missing bridge between earning Bitcoin yield and putting Bitcoin capital to work. A holder will be able to stake Bitcoin and participate in Bitcoin-native finance at the same time, rather than choosing between the two.
“Bitcoin has never had a true staking economy of its own, and stBTC for Bitcoin staking on Stacks is our answer to that gap,” said Tycho Onnasch, Core Contributor, Stacking DAO. “Holders can earn Bitcoin yield while keeping their capital liquid, and they get an asset they can keep using across Stacks for additional returns.”
stBTC represents BTC bonded to Stacks’ Bitcoin Staking system, where it earns a base yield expected to launch around 3% under the protocol’s initial parameters. The underlying Bitcoin remains locked in the bond, secured entirely by Bitcoin, while stBTC itself stays liquid and transferable.
That liquidity is the point. A holder can stake and stop there, earning the base yield on Bitcoin they still hold. From that floor, stBTC can flow into the financial applications already live on Stacks, including lending platforms like Zest Protocol and trading pools like BitFlow, with the base yield continuing to accrue underneath. Capital already actively deployed across Stacks protocols sits at $121 million, led by Zest Protocol, Granite, and Stacking DAO, according to DeFiLlama. stBTC gives that stack a new entry point for fresh Bitcoin capital.
stBTC is also Bitcoin-native by design. The Stacks network settles activity on Bitcoin through Proof of Transfer, backed by 100% of Bitcoin’s hashpower, and reads Bitcoin’s state directly with no oracle or trusted relay. This stands apart from past attempts to bring Bitcoin into DeFi by wrapping it onto other chains and routing it through centralized custodians. stBTC keeps the decentralization, settlement, and the security of Bitcoin itself.
The yield model is designed to outlast its own bootstrap phase. Economic activity across Stacks, powered by STX, generates fees that fund miner rewards. Miners spend Bitcoin to win those fees and secure the network, and that Bitcoin flows back into the staker pool, where the base yield originates. As more capital moves through the ecosystem, the yield shifts from relying on emissions to running on real economic activity.
Stacking DAO is well positioned to bring stBTC to market. The team has run STX Stacking infrastructure for over 2 years, managing over $150m of peak staked capital for 40,000+ stakers without a security incident. That track record is what makes Stacking DAO the team building the liquid staking layer for Bitcoin on Stacks now.
stBTC is expected to launch just before Stacks’ Bitcoin Staking release. Bitcoin holders will be able to stake BTC, receive stBTC, and begin earning yield directly through Stacking DAO at stackingdao.com.
About Stacking DAO
Stacking DAO is the STX Stacking infrastructure powerhouse for the most prominent Bitcoin L2. Users can learn more at stackingdao.com
About Stacks
Stacks is the leading Bitcoin layer by BTC deployed, providing infrastructure for a growing range of Bitcoin-native applications. The network enables Bitcoin-native financial applications, from lending and borrowing to autonomous AI agents, all settled with Bitcoin finality. Users can learn more at stacks.co
