Stacks Beginner's Guide – Part 2

Stacks is a Layer 2 blockchain for Bitcoin. It has already been around since 2017. Recently, the Ordinals NFT collection was launched on Stacks. This event has put them in a prime light. Its native STX token pumped 170% during the last 30 days.

So, time to take a deep dive into Stacks. The STX token is also part of our Altcoin Buzz portfolio. We update this portfolio every month. You can check out this link to watch our recent video update. Here’s a link to Part 1 of our Beginner’s Guide to Stacks.

Stacks’ Domain Name Review

Stacks has the Bitcoin Name System, or BNS. You can compare BNS to the better known ENS service on Ethereum. In other words, your Bitcoin address becomes much more user friendly. A  typical Bitcoin address is 40+ characters long. With the BNS domain name service, you can change this into a human-readable domain name. For example, “bc1zq………w0lpr” turns into “josimmons.btc” instead.

The costs are marginal, two STX for every five years. Stacks will register your domain on the Bitcoin blockchain. The three steps you need to follow include:

  1. Search if your desired name is available.
  2. Registration. For this, you need a Bitcoin-connected Stacks account. This can be accomplished with just a few clicks.
  3. Management of your domain name. You can manage your .btc account in one place. It’s also self-custody, so it doesn’t involve any middlemen.

Now, we all know that Bitcoin transactions take their time. However, you can hook up your BNS name to the Lightning Address. This allows you to send money as fast as an email. In other words, you gain access to the Lightning Network.

You can also use the .BTC web bridge. This allows you to browse websites hosted on .BTC names. Straight from your browser. You can find out more here.

How to Stake STX

To clarify, staking the STX token is called stacking. It’s interesting that you can stack your tokens, since it is a proof-of-work chain. You would mine PoW tokens and don’t stake or stack them. However, that’s where Stacks is different. They use the proof-of-transfer (PoX) consensus mechanism.

In other words, they still use the PoW mechanism of another chain. In this case, the Bitcoin PoW mechanism. Remember, Stacks is a Layer 2 built on top of Bitcoin. However, miners transfer the committed cryptocurrency to other participants in the network. In turn, participants of the network secure the PoX chain. In return, they receive a reward in BTC.

You can stack your STX in a variety of pools. However, they have minimum requirements for the amount of STX you need to stack. This ranges from 100 STX to 100,000 STX. Some pools also pay rewards in STX instead of BTC. You will need an STX-compatible wallet, like Hiro Wallet.

We wrote an extensive guide on how you can stake your STX tokens and earn BTC. You can also look into the Stacks docs for an explanation. The picture below shows how this mechanism works.

Stacks
Stacks docs
How to Buy STX

Most major exchanges offer the STX token. This includes, for instance:

  • Binance
  • Coinbase
  • Crypto.com
  • Gate.io
  • Kraken
  • KuCoin
  • OKX

On the other hand, there are lots of smaller, local exchanges that also offer STX. For example:

  • WazirX in India
  • TokoCrypto in Indonesia
  • BtcTurk PRO in Turkey

In general, you will need to open an account on the exchange of your liking. Once you pass the KYC requirements, you can start buying the STX token. Binance, for instance, has an easy-to-follow guide on how to buy STX.

Conclusion

We answered another three popular questions about Stacks in this beginner’s guide. They included information about the Stacks Domain Name, how you can stake STX, and where you can buy STX.

The current STYX price is $0.791041. Its market cap is $1 billion. Out of a max supply of 1.818 billion tokens, 1.366 billion STX tokens are already in circulation.

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