Stacks Monthly Report - March 2023

March has been nothing short of an absolute banger for the Stacks ecosystem. With a whopping 23% increase in value for the Stacks token ($STX) in just 31 days, and an impressive 350% growth over the past year, the Stacks community has reason to celebrate. And while much of this growth can be attributed to the hype surrounding Bitcoin Ordinals, it's worth noting the other factors that contributed immensely to the ecosystem's success.

Let's take a closer look at some of the key highlights from March.

Stacks Token Performance

• $STX value up 23% in March.
• 350% increase in value over the past year.

Booming Ecosystem

• 60,000 smart contracts deployed on the Stacks protocol.
• 3,500,000 transactions have taken place on the Stacks blockchain.
• Gamma, the largest NFT marketplace on Stacks launched a trustless ordinals marketplace. To learn more about the differences between Stacks NFTs and Bitcoin ordinals, check out this helpful article, and learn more about Gamma here.

Stacks 2.1 Update

• Stacks 2.1 update went live, bringing improvements and new features to the protocol. To learn more about Stacks 2.1 and what it means for the future of Stacks, Captain Jack has you covered.
• Hiro Wallet Seeing Massive Growth
  • Over 100,000 active installations via the Chrome Web Store.
  • Weekly active users grew by 500%, from around 3,000 to 18,000.
• BNS, Gamma, and ALEX have driven the most wallet usage in 2023. Stay tuned for future articles covering web3 identity/BNS, and DeFi on Bitcoin/ALEX.

ALEX and sUSDT Integration

• ALEX to bridge USDT on Ethereum to sUSDT on Stacks in mid-to-late April.
• ALEX DEX to enable sUSDT and STX swaps. This allows for a simplified flow of liquidity from Ethereum to the Stacks blockchain via stable coins.

Additional Stacks Ecosystem Updates

• Hiro Systems launched the Bitcoin builders platform.
• Nakamoto1 introduced interplanetary Bitcoin NFTs.
• ALEX Decentralized Finance Lab announced $ALEX listing on MEXC.
• Emblem Vault added support for Stacks NFT token standard.
• Hiro Wallet introduced an improved pooling and direct stacking experience.
• $STX briefly joined the top 40 cryptocurrencies by market cap.
• Stacks became a top 10 trending crypto project on socials.
• Stacks Accelerator rebranded to the Bitcoin Frontier Fund.
• ALEX DeFi protocol raised $2.5 million to bring DeFi to Bitcoin.
• Apollo added support for Stacks NFTs.
• sBTC Product Lead @andre.btc published the sBTC roadmap.
• Hiro Systems teased the launch of Hiro321, a developer platform for Bitcoin smart contracts.
• NeoSwap launched AI proposed trades (very cool, got to test this out!)

Parting Thoughts

With all this innovation happening in Stacks, it's no surprise that the larger crypto community is starting to take notice. The Stacks ecosystem has experienced rapid growth in March, and with major features like sBTC and the Nakamoto Upgrade incoming we can anticipate even more growth headed our way.. Make sure to keep an eye on this space as the year continues, as the Stacks community shows no signs of slowing down. We will continue to help keep you ahead of the game here at Flagship, so stay tuned! Captain Jack signing off.