Solution to high transaction GAS fees — What is Stacks?

Bitcoin has been on a moon rally since the beginning of this year, and along with it ETH & ALTS are also enjoying the ride. Just a few days back Bitcoin reached ATH of ~$50,000 and Ethereum reached ATH of ~$1900. Network fees generated by ETH is $20 million daily, which is 4 times the network fees generated by BTC. But what is the reason for that? Primary reason is the very high GWEI cost per transaction. GAS fees used to be 20–30 GWEI at max a few weeks back but now it has soared to an average of 200–300 highest being 800+ GWEI on some days.

I do a few transactions per daily basis and the recent increase in gas fees has eroded my profitability. I was searching to find a solution to this and stumbled upon Stacks (STX) coin. It promises to be a sustainable solution to challenges faced by the industry today. There are more than 3000 active dApps on Ethereum network and now it has reached a point of inflection, ETH prices have soared 6X in 3 months and for marginal investors/traders like me it has become difficult to maintain a net positive balance on profit & loss statement. For Stacks current transaction fees are as low as 0.00018 STX which is not even 1 cent.

Stacks is an open-source network of decentralized apps and smart contracts built on Bitcoin. Stacks unleashes Bitcoin’s full potential as a programmable base layer. It’s a layer 2 solution which is fast and cheaper. Stacks gets its power from:

1. Clarity Smart Contracts: its safer & predictable v/s Solidity
2. Stacks Blockchain: Layer-1 blockchain that connects to Bitcoin
3. Proof of Transfer: Consensus mechanism
4. Bitcoin: Settlement, Security, and the reserve asset

Stacks addresses the two fundamental challenges to building apps and smart contracts on Bitcoin:

1. Scalability: The base Bitcoin blockchain has a limited capacity for transactions.
2. Secure Contracts: The Bitcoin blockchain has a limited scripting language and does not allow general smart contracts. This design choice ensures security at the base layer.

Proof of Transfer is a new mining mechanism, its a variant of Proof of Burn where miners instead of destroying or “burning” the cryptocurrency transfer the committed cryptocurrency to Stackers in the network. Miners get rewarded with newly minted Stacks after they append the block.

Stackers are important participants in the network, they lock STX temporary to support network’s security and consensus. This is called Stacking. The minimum amount needed to participate in Stacking directly is dynamic and based on both the total supply of STX and the total amount of current participation. Stackers are rewarded with Bitcoin that miners transfer as part of Proof of Transfer.

Here is more you can read:

Stacks

Introducing the Stacks 2.0 Whitepaper

Stacks is available on:

1. https://www.binance.com/en/trade/STX_USDT
2. https://www.okcoin.com/spot/trade/stx-usd
3. https://trade.kucoin.com/STX-USDT
4. https://crypto.com/

For feedback reach out to me at: https://twitter.com/@swatihec