DECEMBER 14, 2020
Introducing the Stacks 2.0 Whitepaper Draft
by Muneeb Ali on December 14, 2020
I'm excited to share the Stacks 2.0 whitepaper draft. The paper is a light read that gives an overview of the Stacks 2.0 blockchain design, connection to Bitcoin, and links out to further technical details throughout. I hope this paper becomes a helpful go-to resource for everyone in the community and a helpful onramp for those first getting oriented to the Stacks ecosystem.

It's incredible to see how quickly our project has evolved. Earlier published research papers; the 2017 technical whitepaper, and the token economics paper are now outdated. Today's release of the Stacks 2.0 whitepaper is now the most up-to-date source of information—we plan to redirect the earlier papers to this 2.0 whitepaper.

Stacks brings apps and smart contracts to Bitcoin without modifying it.
This is done through a new consensus algorithm between Bitcoin and the Stacks blockchain. The paper summarizes the Proof-of-Transfer (PoX) consensus mechanism at a high-level, the Stacks ecosystem, STX token economics, earning BTC from consensus, and even some future R&D areas. PoX consensus, the first of its kind between two blockchains, is a unique concept and is fairly complex so the full PoX whitepaper remains the best place to understand consensus details.

I'd like to thank the Stacks community members for feedback on early drafts and several offers to translate the Stacks 2.0 whitepaper into international languages. Feel free to contact me @muneeb for any comments or questions about the paper. I plan to make minor improvements to the in the coming weeks. The best part about the paper to me is that it's not merely a "design paper" but describes a system that's actually going live next month.

→ Read the Stacks 2.0 whitepaper
Muneeb Ali
Co-Founder, Stacks
Dr. Muneeb Ali is the founder of Stacks, a decentralized network that brings apps and smart contracts to Bitcoin. He serves as the CEO of Hiro PBC, a Public Benefit Corp that builds developer tools for the Stacks blockchain. He has raised $75 million USD in funding from investors like Union Square Ventures, Y Combinator, Lux Capital, Winklevoss Capital, and others. Hiro (formerly Blockstack PBC) was featured in the CNBC's list of 100 promising startups to watch. Muneeb received his Ph.D. and Masters in Computer Science from Princeton University. His Ph.D. thesis was nominated for the ACM SIGCOMM dissertation award by Princeton University. Muneeb gives guest lectures on cloud computing at Princeton and his research publications have over 1,300 citations. He is one of the main characters in George Gilder's book Life After Google and was a technical advisor to the HBO show Silicon Valley.