Gm Stackers 👋
The PoX-5 upgrade is moving toward activation. Below is a look at what has shipped, what is coming, and what it means for stackers.
📍 The Bitcoin Staking Timeline
A Bitcoin Staking Roadmap page is now live to track everything in one place, from timelines and links to posts and updates. Here’s where things stand:
Completed: The Stacks community approved SIP-044 (Clarity 6) and SIP-045 (Bitcoin Staking) through the SIP governance process, with over 99.99% of votes in favor of both.
Live now: The PoX-5 Public Testnet is up, so builders can test their protocols against the Bitcoin Staking release.
~July 29: The PoX-5 mainnet hard fork target date (Bitcoin block 960230). Clarity 6 and Bitcoin Staking go live together.
Late August: The Genesis Bond follows and the first BTC is bonded.
🍴 What the Hard Fork Means for You
The hard fork targeted on ~July 29 will unlock all stacked STX. Stackers will restack after the fork to keep earning BTC rewards, and signers, pools, and miners will upgrade their nodes before activation. Guides will follow to walk stackers through each step of the scheduled process, so keep an eye out.
😋 Stacks Snacks
The Stacks Q2 2026 Ecosystem Report is out. Cumulative Stacks users passed 1.6 million, up 8.0% quarter over quarter, and new wallet creation rose 53% to 110,000. The full report covers institutional partnerships, ecosystem growth, and infrastructure milestones ahead of Bitcoin Staking's Q3 launch.
Register for Growing Bitcoin's next session, "Bitcoin's Productive Era," featuring Bitwise and Fireblocks. Tuesday, July 28 at 11 AM ET.
Zest Protocol launched Stacks Swap, a swap aggregator that compares liquidity pools across major DEXs on Stacks and routes each trade for the best available output.
Happy stacking, Stackers 🟠
Stacks is a Bitcoin layer for smart contracts. It enables decentralized applications to use Bitcoin as an asset and settle transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain. Stacks exists to unlock Bitcoin’s full potential as the largest, most valuable, durable, and decentralized asset. Learn more here.