In the last 24hrs I’ve been digging into the Stacks Token – trying to understand what it’s all about and how it works.
I’ve run across a few things that I really like about it, namely:
- Built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain – the Stacks blockchain has a 1:1 mapping to the blocks in the BTC blockchain – mapping block-per-block. This allows Stacks to be incredibly efficient, not needing any additional Work or Stake to function – the proof that the corresponding BTC block exists is enough to validate the Stacks block – efficient!
- “Mining” Stacks is clever/risky in so much that the miners (currently there are 5… yes, five) throw in a bid at the start of each block that is used to calculate the odds of them winning the right to author the block; the calculation being:
Bid sats / Sum of All Bid Sats = % chance to win block- While expensive and risky, what I like about this model is that the sats aren’t burned; they are distributed as payment to all the stackers stacking their STX.
As I continue to dig into this crypto, I’ll capture other interesting tid-bits I find here.
Update: An interesting discussion on Reddit between myself and another person thinking about mining Stacks.