As we close out 2025, we look back at the Stacks Snacks that resonated most with you. Based on what readers clicked, shared, and engaged with throughout the year, we pulled together the moments, launches, and milestones that mattered most. Think of this as your 2025 on Stacks: a fast, five-minute snapshot of how the leading Bitcoin layer evolved over the past twelve months.
"Outside of Stacks, no other Bitcoin layer experienced meaningful growth in bridged BTC"
🍿 Stacks Snacks: What actually changed in 2025
sBTC matured into productive infrastructure, with caps filling rapidly (Cap-2, Cap-3), withdrawals going live, caps fully removed, and over 5,000 BTC becoming productive on Stacks.
Dual Stacking launched, enabling Bitcoin holders to earn native BTC yield and boost their yield with STX.
Core upgrades shipped, including Clarity 4, near real-time block arrival and finality improvements, as well as new new Stacks R&D toward self-custodial Bitcoin staking and beyond.
Institutional-grade infrastructure plugged in across custody, analytics, and connectivity, including Circle, BitGo, Copper, Nansen, DEX Screener, Wormhole, and WalletConnect.
Stacks gained mainstream market exposure, with inclusion in the Coinbase 50 Index, Bitfinex, the Grayscale® Stacks Trust (STCK) publicly trading on OTCQB, and the 21Shares Stacks Staking ETP update.
SIP-031 moved from proposal to execution, establishing the Endowment, Treasury Committee, Stacks Labs operations, and a clear path for grants and an accelerator, as outlined in the December 2025 Treasury Committee update.
Stacks got recognized by Bitcoin Layers as a true Bitcoin layer, meeting criteria other ecosystem could not, and was put into a rare high potential crypto landscape category of having a Grayscale Trust, #22 COIN50 indexation, and being created in the USA.
The Stacks ecosystem orange-pilled the world locally at the likes of Selini Summit, ETH Denver, Token2049, and Conviction.
😋 Why this mattered beyond the numbers
Bitcoin DeFi crossed a trust threshold, with early sBTC participation from Bitcoin-native capital allocators and infrastructure players including UTXO Management, Jump Crypto, CMS Holdings, RootstockLabs, SNZ, Sypher Capital, and Asymmetric Research.
Apps crossed real usage milestones, including StackingDAO surpassing 100M STX in TVL, Bitflow announcing HODLMM, Velar launching its perpetual DEX, and Zest passing 650 sBTC supplied. This resulted in a new grade-a quality Stacks ecosystem map.
Developer momentum accelerated, with Stacks ranking as the #5 fastest-growing developer ecosystem and expanding programs like Stacks Ascent, DeGrants, hackathons with DoraHacks, and global bootcamps via Rise In.
Community-led initiatives flourished, from the Stacks AI Guild’s experimentation to DeOrganized Media, BoostX, BNS One, tokenized communities via ALEX programs, AI innovation through prompt2DAO, and grassroots growth with Let Africa Build and Stacks Latam.
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.