Stacks was one of the first “Bitcoin L2s” (or “Bitcoin scalers” if you’ll call it that) that has stayed incredibly relevant in the Bitcoin Season 2 era. From conducting the first regulated token sale to becoming a face of the Ordinals ecosystem, Trustmachines COO Rena Shah guides us through the network’s history, and why she believes its positioned to keep both Bitcoin’s network and ethos alive.

In this episode, we discussed:

• How Stacks pulled off the first regulated token sale
• Stacks consensus, yield, and the Nakamoto upgrade
• Stacks before and after the Ordinals boom
• Why Bitcoin HODLers are NOT keeping Bitcoin alive
• Why Rena doesn’t like the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve

This episode is powered by Best In Slot—the leading API for Ordinals and BRC20 data aggregation and indexing.TIMESTAMPS:

1:17 Stacks: an OG Bitcoin Layer

3:35 STX: The first regulated token sale

6:17 How STX proved itself to the SEC

9:55 Was STX needed to keep the Stacks ecosystem funded?

11:13 Stacks consensus explained

14:20 Stacks staking, mining, and “where the yield comes from”

15:25 Bitcoin finality with the Stacks Nakamoto upgrade

17:40 Stacks before the Ordinals era

19:35 What did Satoshi want from Bitcoin?

22:06 The crypto shift from “world computer” to “decentralized finance”

24:06 Bitcoin staking products with Stacks?

25:42 Stacks as the first ecosystem to embrace Ordinals

27:10 Rena’s inscriptions of her father’s voice notes

29:05 Stacks, XVerse, and bootstrapping Ordinals infrastructure

30:45 When did the Bitcoin L2 explosion start?

32:08 When did Stacks start calling itself a “Layer 2?”

33:29 What happens if there are so few L1 transactions?

35:50 Bitcoin fees should be higher!

37:39 Will Bitcoin become a medium of exchange?

40:10 Rena doesn’t like the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve

42:30 HODLers are not securing the Bitcoin network

44:00 Trust Machines: Building out the Bitcoin economy

45:36 From Blockstack to Stacks Foundation and Hiro

48:38 Who are the validators of the Stacks network?

51:52 Stacks has more devs than Bitcoin Core - with very few grants

55:42 Is crypto all collapsing back to Bitcoin?

57:00 Granite: Aave-style lending on Stacks

58:46 Aiming for a “trustless” Stacks layer with BitVM

› https://x.com/renapshah

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