sBTC Updates - Weekly MegaThread

Working Groups
#1

Moving forward, I’ll be sharing the weekly sBTC updates here for more ecosystem visibility. This issue first appeared on Bitcoin Writes. You can subscribe here to get these straight to your inbox.

Dear Bitcoiners,

As a follow up to our recent issue on user experience, the sBTC working group has started to define the UX for key ecosystem applications.

Here’s a little alpha leak for you.

sBTC is going to unlock a Bitcoin-native UX when transacting on the Stacks network. This means that Bitcoin will become the primary unit of account for trading NFTs and transacting in DeFi. This is how it would work:

(Thanks to Mark and the Hiro Wallet team for providing this preview)

In this example, the user would log into Gamma and send a Bitcoin transaction to purchase the NFT. Bitcoin is automatically converted to sBTC, which executes a smart contract call and the NFT is delivered to the users Stacks address where it is secured by 100% of Bitcoins hash power.

Our goal is to define the best practices that will reduce friction for Bitcoiners and provide an exceptional user experience. There is still lots of work to be done, but we’re steadily making progress.

:computer: Engineering Updates

  • sBTC Eng Working Group Update
    • :white_check_mark: Formed sBTC Workstreams to accommodate the growing sBTC Working Group.
    • :white_check_mark: Workstream leads own communication with other workstreams and call out risks.
    • :information_source: Let Igor know via Discord to be looped into a workstream.
    • Visit the sBTC Eng Wiki for all relevant resources.
  • Workstream Updates
    • Bitcoin
    • Blockchain
      • Lead: Mårten Contributors: stjepan, soju-drinker, jacinta
      • Risks:
        • Commit-reveal design might not fulfill our needs.
        • Peg-handoff is not getting enough attention.
        • Peg-out request SIP-021 definition potentially needs update.
      • Asks from other workstreams:
    • Clarity
      • Lead: José Contributors: Fernando, Jesus, Marvin
      • Scoping remade with insights from the team.
      • Contacting stacks core leads for reviews.
    • Crypto
      • Lead: Joey Contributors: Mike M, Igor
      • Completed WTF paper audit. Continuing with FROST code audit.
    • Frontend
      • Lead: mijoco Contributors: Sergey, Igor
      • Finished final touches on deployment for sBTC Bridge Web and API
    • Nakamoto
      • Lead: Aaron
      • Plan is to have a detailed task breakdown by next week.
      • Highlights of unknown unknowns.
    • Security
      • Lead: StacksSec Contributors: Scott
    • Stacks Signer
      • Lead: Jacinta Ferrant
      • Work has just started on project plan
  • Bitcoin Builder Updates
    • @mårten#2709
    • mpj#2095
      • Setup arm build matrix for rust continuous integration. This is the first step for building the coordinator in Arm-based device like Android
    • @fjs#4368
      • Deployment of sbtc-bridge (web and api)
    • @Jacinta#2534

:hammer_and_pick: Go-To-Market Updates

  • Kicked off sBTC brand working group (Link)
  • Awarded 10 critical bounties to accelerate the growth of sBTC (Link)

:earth_africa: Around the Ecosystem

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Stacks Blockchain Core Development Update, June 2023
#2

This issue first appeared on Bitcoin Writes. You can subscribe here to get these straight to your inbox.

Dear Bitcoiners,

Product-market fit is when a product satisfies a strong market demand. It starts by identifying the customers who are likely to use your product and the features to build to ensure you are meeting their needs.

The following chart is a great illustration of this.

How do you know when you have product-market fit?

You know you’ve achieved product-market fit when you are experiencing exponential growth… without marketing. Your product is considered a “must have” and you are testing the boundaries of the system’s capacity.

Note: I’ve noticed crypto sometimes confuses product-market fit by assuming that speculative growth is equivalent to real user demand. Sometimes the signal gets buried. Product-market fit isn’t likely to happen in a “big bang” style event, but rather through sustained execution over time. This is why we focus on building flywheels.

Now, let’s break this down for sBTC.

Market

Target User: As of April 2023, over 45 million unique addresses have a non-zero balance of Bitcoin. These 45M users represent over $500BN serviceable addressable market (SAM). This is a very large target market, which is the ideal place for startups to operate.

Underserved Needs: One of the most common answers I hear to “What would you like to do with your Bitcoin?” is the ability to take out a stablecoin loan without a centralized counter-party. The reasoning for this is simple. Bitcoiners don’t want to sell their Bitcoin, but they do want to access dollars without incurring a taxable event.

Currently, there are very few options on the market to do this. Over the past several years, this market has been been occupied by centralized companies like BlockFi and Celsius, which forced users to incur counter-party risk (…and we all know how that turned out.) There is a significant need for decentralized alternatives.

Large market + underserved needs = huge opportunity

Product

Value Prop: sBTC’s value proposition is to access Bitcoin DeFi without a centralized counter-party. Instead of a custodial or federated solution, sBTC relies on a decentralized set of signers that allow users to “peg in” their Bitcoin to use in smart contracts.

Feature Set: Building the right features requires a deep understanding of your target user as well as the competitive products on the market. Since sBTC is a tool to build programmable applications, one of the most important metrics to watch is how easy it is for developers to integrate it into their dapps. The GTM group is actively researching key features and scoping product milestones. You can see early discussion on the forum to align the product with Bitcoiner values.

UX: The majority of users who interact with sBTC may not need to use it directly. Ideally, a user would log into an application with their wallet and deposit Bitcoin collateral to their account, which executes a swap to sBTC on the backend. Once the user has sBTC, a smart contract may be executed to release stablecoins to the user’s account or to liquidate the collateral if the value falls below a pre-determined threshold.

Check out this recent Bitcoin Writes issue for more thoughts on how the GTM working group is approaching UX.

The goal for sBTC is to successfully deploy Bitcoin capital in apps, products, and smart contracts alike that prove that you can unlock Bitcoin into productive use cases. We’re focused on tightly scoping the product, and ensuring developer and app user growth. I think we have the opportunity to build something special that the market clearly needs.

“When a great team meets a great market, something special happens.”

:computer: Engineering Updates

sBTC Workgroup Updates

  • :white_check_mark: sBTC Alpha Deployment unblocked. Thank you @mijoco!
  • :warning: Need to reallocate blockchain workstream resources to signer workstream to support sBTC Alpha.

Workstream Updates

  • Blockchain
    • Lead: Mårten Contributors: stjepan, soju-drinker, jacinta
    • Definition and implementation plan for commit-reveal format
      • Got a lot of good feedback on the design. Thanks to everyone who helped! :pray:
      • Next step is to formulate a SIP and implement support for the protocol in Stacks
    • Peg handoff wire formats PR is out
    • StackerDB local testing setup is taking shape
    • Started work on the first StackerDB RPC
  • Frontend
    • Lead: mijoco Contributors: Sergey, Igor
    • Moved to multinet - sBTC now supports a network toggle to switch between testnet and mainnet in-app.
    • Moved from self hosted mongodb docker containers to Cloud managed via Mongo Atlas
  • Signer
    • Lead: Jacinta
    • Work has just started on project plan. Meeting next week to review product requirements.
  • Bitcoin Builder Updates

:hammer_and_pick: Go-To-Market Updates

  • Began process of procuring various legal opinions related to sBTC
  • Kicked off work with a new potential signing partner
  • Scoped launch goals, challenges, and dependencies for updated project plan
  • Presented keynote talk and sBTC panel during Bitcoin Unleashed
  • Made progress with several teams building potential ‘flagship apps’
  • Started planning for a sBTC-focused hack event in Q2

:earth_africa: Around the Ecosystem

  • Growing the Bitcoin Economy - keynote talk during Bitcoin Unleashed (Link)
  • sBTC panel discussion featuring builders such as Zest Protocol, ALEX, and Hiro Wallet (Link)
  • ALEX launched their cross-chain bridge on Mainnet :tada: (Link)

Many folks from the working group are heading to Austin, TX for Consensus this week. Reach out if you’re in town!

Have a great week ahead everybody.

Andre

#3

For folks that like rhymes:

As a rhyme:

When there’s a demand that’s grand, with a product at hand,
Product-market fit comes with customers planned.
Identifying those users, the ones who’ll choose us,
The features we create, meeting needs without fuss.

Just take a look at this chart, illustrating the part,
Where product-market fit begins, where it starts.

How do you know when you’ve got it just right?
When exponential growth takes flight, without marketing in sight.
Your product’s a must-have, testing system capacity,
Bursting the boundaries, with tenacity.

In crypto confusion, the signal gets lost,
Speculative growth, real user demand tossed.
Product-market fit won’t happen with a bang,
But sustained execution, that’s where we hang.

Now let’s break it down, for sBTC,
Market, target user, opportunity we see.

By April 2023, millions of addresses unique,
Bitcoin non-zero balances, the market we seek.
Over 500 billion, a large target indeed,
Ideal for startups, to grow and succeed.

Underserved needs, what users desire,
Stablecoin loans, no centralized party to hire.
No selling Bitcoin, just dollar access,
Taxable events, no need to address.

Few options on the market, centralized ones in place,
BlockFi, Celsius, counter-party risk we must face.
Decentralized alternatives, a need so significant,
Large market, plus underserved needs, equals opportunity magnificent.

Product value, sBTC’s proposition,
Access Bitcoin DeFi, no centralized mission.
Custodial, federated, no need to rely,
Decentralized signers, pegging in, give it a try.

Feature set, understanding users, and competition,
sBTC, a tool for building apps, with great ambition.
Integrating easily, developers watch with care,
GTM group, researching features, scoping milestones to bear.

UX, user experience, interacting discreetly,
Logging in, depositing collateral, swapping to sBTC neatly.
Smart contracts executed, stablecoins released,
Or liquidating collateral, when values decreased.

The goal for sBTC, deploy Bitcoin capital well,
In apps, products, smart contracts, success stories to tell.
Unlocking Bitcoin, productive use cases we see,
A market need, something special, a grand opportunity.

“When a great team meets a great market, something special takes place.”

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#4
#5
#6
#9

This Week’s News & Stories - Mon, 24 Apr 2023

View this on bitcoinwrites.com and subscribe to receive updates via email.

Dear Bitcoiners,

Last week, the Stacks community showed up in force to Consensus 2023. I had the honor of speaking about sBTC at the Keep Bitcoin Weird event along with Alex Miller, Chris Castig, and Kyle Ellicott.

Kyle Ellicott (Bitcoin Frontier Fund), Alex Miller (Hiro), Chris Castig (Console), Andre Serrano (sBTC)

Discussion highlights:

  • Kickstarting Bitcoin DeFi

  • Moving Bitcoin from L1 to L2 in a decentralized way

  • Bitcoin’s economic security

  • The power of identity in Web3

We met with several partners for sBTC throughout the week, and there was positive sentiment from builders on developing new use cases. Check out the latest progress updates on sBTC below 👇

💻 Engineering Updates

  • Testing Infra - Sergey Shandar

    • ✅ Code coverage in CI for our Rust code. Preparing PR Rust code coverage in CI #307

    • Working on a document on how we can achieve 100% coverage.

    • Asks from other workstreams:

      • ⚠️ Our code coverage is very low. ~33%. We need to increase.

  • Bitcoin / DLC - Tycho Onnasch

    • Made a draft technical design

    • Fernando will be working on a technical draft of the DLC implementation discussed in sBTC Eng Bitcoin: DLCs, sBTC

  • Bridge / Frontend - Mike Cohen

    • Switching the commit tx from P2WSH to P2TR. Mostly learning Taproot/Tapscript. Adjusted the UI and API to handle the Tapscript data

    • Writing a blog post on this experience - working title “sBTC Commit Transactions”

  • Blockchain - Mårten Blankfors

    • ✅ stacks-coordinator transaction broadcasting now tested

    • ✅ Draft implementation for commit-reveal support in Stacks

      • ⚠️ Initial SegWit support limited to P2WSH/P2TR nested in P2SH

    • Asks from other workstreams:

      • ⚠️ We need feedback to know if it’s enough to support the P2SH nested SegWit transactions or if we should follow-up with full SegWit/taproot support for commit-reveal.

  • Clarity - José Orlicki

    • ✅ Organized key tasks.

    • ❤️ More tests added:

      • Marvin: Adding Clarity native testing.

      • Fernando: adding SegWit testing.

      • Jesus: adding sBTC Asset Contracts tests.

    • Asks from other workstreams:

      • ⚠️ At least one vector testing case for Peg-In. Already discussed with Marten.

      • ⚠️ Get more input from Stacking Pools

  • Crypto - Joey Yandle

    • Core-eng repo back using wtfrost and p256k1 from crates

    • frost-signer/coordinator now using wtfrost Signer trait instead of accessing parties directly

  • Signer - Jacinta Ferrant

    • ✅ Met with Rena, Andre, and crew to go over initial requirements gathering

      • ❤️ Kudos to Igor for taking the lead on the meeting last minute

    • ⚠️ Priorities are in Coordinator Alpha release so not enough time to devote to Signer this week

    • Asks from other workstreams:

      • ⚠️ Please consider what sort of functionality you would want/expect as a signer and document

  • Bitcoin Builder Updates

    • @mårten#2709

      • Open PRs:

        • ✅ Draft: commit-reveal support in Stacks: stacks PR#3683

          • ⚠️ Initial SegWit support limited to P2WSH/P2TR nested in P2SH

          • ⚒️ Needs thorough testing

        • ✅ Contribution guidelines + DCO check: core-eng PR#292

          • ⚠️ Open question whether we should go with a CLA instead of the DCO check

        • ✅ Peg handoff wire format: stacks PR#3673 updated to stacks PR#3687 based on TM fork.

          • ⚠️ High latency for reviews. Most likely due to the Stacks hard fork work taking precedence.

    • @stjepan#1659

    • @Ӿoloki#3105

      • Merged core-eng PR#273; Use wtfrost and p256k1 from crates; use Signer trait without accessing parties

⚒️ Go-To-Market Updates

  • ✅ Several working group participants attended Consensus, met with partners, and spoke on panels regarding sBTC

  • ✅ Shared pre-mortem takeaways with working group

  • ✅ Conducted UX research interview with LNswap, Gamma

  • ✅ Progress on legal work stream

  • ✅ Competitive research draft completed

🌍 Around the Ecosystem

Signing Off,

Andre


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#10

This Week’s News & Stories - Mon, 08 May 2023

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Dear Bitcoiners,

The landscape around Ordinals and BRC-20s is rapidly evolving. In this issue, we’ll break down everything you need to know and why it matters for sBTC.

🚀 BRC-20 Mania: What’s all the hype about?

BRC-20 tokens provide a new standard for issuing and managing assets on the Bitcoin blockchain. The idea started as an experiment to see if Ordinal theory can facilitate fungibility on Bitcoin. Anyone can deploy, mint or transfer tokens using Ordinal inscriptions through a “First in, First out” model. It uses a format called JSON, which can be broken down like this:

Although BRC-20s are still in their early stages, their proof of concept has demonstrated strong demand for issuing assets on Bitcoin. In just two months, they have risen to over $500M in market capitalization and $10M in 24 hour trading volume. While the most popular BRC-20 tokens are meme coins like MEME and PEPE, this breakthrough could quickly expand to encompass tokenized real world assets.

📈 The Demand for Bitcoin Block Space is Exploding

So far, $14M total fees (USD) have been paid for inscribing Ordinals. Yesterday alone saw a record breaking $2.5M fees paid in a single day. In fact, Bitcoin transaction fees surpassed the block subsidy coinbase reward due to high demand for Bitcoin block space. This was a crucial moment, which demonstrated a path to long-term sustainability for Bitcoin’s security model.

🧠 What does this mean for sBTC?

Stacks is poised to serve as the scaling layer for Ordinals. As fees increase on Bitcoin L1, we anticipate more activity transitioning to L2. sBTC and sOrdinals are needed to move Bitcoin to L2 in a secure and decentralized way and unlock the full capability for Ordinals.

👉The Bottom Line: BRC-20 tokens have expanded the market opportunity for sBTC. It also shapes how we approach our go-to-market strategy. We’ll be following this trend closely to see how it evolves over the coming weeks and months. One thing is certain: excitement around building on Bitcoin is back 🧡

💻 Engineering Updates

  • ❤️ Will enabled the funding of Quarter 3 Critical Bounties for a total of 12 BTC and 240k STX!!

  • ❤️ Sergey submitted an ask to the Stacks Foundation for six engineers for one quarter to focus on build, testing and security infrastructure for sBTC.

  • ✅ Igor resourcing the Nakamoto workstream with engineers.

  • ✅ Hosted a design discussion to align and prioritize features for sBTC.

  • ✅ Aligned on sBTC terminology

    • Use Deposit instead of Peg-in or Wrap

    • Use Withdraw instead of Peg-out or Unwrap

    • Terminology aligned with Subnets and other bridges.

    • We are open for comments on this and otherwise will begin renaming references in code, design docs and white papers starting next week.

  • ✅ sBTC Alpha work is progressing and unblocked.

Workstream Updates

  • Testing Infra - Sergey Shandar

  • Bitcoin / DLC - Fernando Foy

    • ⚠️ We are still looking for a way to make it so that the borrower does not have to sign to refresh a DLC

    • Asks from other workstreams:

      • If someone knows of any additional and extensive DLC libraries, this would be helpful.

  • Blockchain - Mårten Blankfors

    • ✅ Unit tests for commit-reveal operations in Stacks

    • ⚠️ Reclaim path for commit transactions needs attention

    • ⚠️ StackerDB RPC interface stalled on technical issue (borrow-checker battle)

  • Crypto - Joey Yandle

    • ✅ Updated sBTC alpha contract

      • Added key IDs to signer data

      • Signer data map is keyed off signer id not key id

    • ✅ Updated frost with Jacinta

      • All integer types are no longer platform dependent

        • u32 or u64 as necessary

        • Casts to usize are now explicit and panic if failure

      • Signer ID for v1 is no longer fake

        • v1::Signer has u32 id field

        • ID is persisted and loaded

    • ✅ Updated core-eng with Jacinta

      • Config now tracks sBTC alpha contract changes

    • ✅ Onboarded new p256k1 contributor and reviewed/merged PR

      • Replaced base58 crate with bs58

        • base58 crate was not maintained and had no license in repo

        • Error types did not implement Display/Debug

          • This prevented wrapping the errors in types that did

    • ✅ Fixed audit branch

      • Adds comments throughout code to note issues

        • Places where we need to validate inputs

        • Possible vulnerabilities

        • Confusing code

      • Unfortunately it had an awkward merge from main

        • Required a difficult interactive rebase/squash/format

  • Bridge - Mike Cohen

    • See also Bridge’s GitBook updates page.

      • Committed PR 105 which tidies up code around building the commit tx. Several options currently co-exist and work will continue in subsequent PR.

      • Created a risk assessment on the requirements around commit.

      • Finished off web project CI - staging branch is now default for PRs - serves as a safety latch for production builds.

    • Asks from other workstreams:

      • Blockchain Work Stream for sync up on the commit / reveal / reclaim flow.

  • Signer - Jacinta Ferrant

    • ✅ Met with Igor to get contact info for requirements gathering/coordination with related critical bounties

    • ⚠️ Priorities still on Stacks Alpha Project

  • Stacks Foundation sBTC Bounties - Will Corcoran

    • ✅ Home Stretch: DeMining / DeStacking Pools

    • ✅ Proof of Concept: sBTC Electrum Integration concept

    • ✅ Awarded: Stacks-Signer for Mobile and ClarityGPT

    • ✅ Teamwork!: UX/UI on sBTC Bridge, Stacks-Signer, DeStack Pool, and Nakamoto Block Sim coming together here.

    • ⚠️ Flagged: Jacinta and @mxn flagging Stacks.rs WIP - plan to work with grantee @Rswol to expand scope accordingly

    • ⚠️ Audits: DeMine / DeStack first - all others at sBTC code completion

    • ❤️ Funded!: 3Q CBs (sBTC-related CBs = 12 BTC + 240k STX!! (thanks Igor and Sergey)

  • Bitcoin Builder Updates

    • @mårten#2709

      • Open PRs:

        • ✅ Draft: commit-reveal support in Stacks: stacks PR#3683

          • ⚠️ Initial SegWit support limited to p2wsh/p2tr nested in p2sh

          • ✅ Unit tests implemented

          • ⚒️ Working on integration tests

        • ⏸️ Contribution guidelines + DCO check: core-eng PR#292

          • On hold due to unresolved CLA uncertainty

        • ⏸️ Peg handoff wire format: stacks PR#3687

          • On hold due to Stacks hard fork

    • @Ӿoloki#3105

      • Merged p256k1 PR#59 rev version for crates.io

      • Reviewed p256k1 PR#60 switch base58 crate to bs58

      • Reviewed frost PR#102 Add persistent ID to v1::Signer

      • Reviewed frost PR#99 Make all usize into u32

      • Merged core-eng PR#311 Update sBTC contract to store key-ids per signer and use signer-ids as key for signer map

      • Reviewed core-eng PR#318 Update config to better match sBTC contract changes

⚒️ Go-To-Market Updates

  • Progress on sBTC design decisions, including how to handle transaction fees in the wallet

  • Collected feedback on oracles to provide additional tooling for sBTC builders

  • Exploring ecosystem workstream to support founders on sBTC

  • UX research workstream is kicking off this week

🌍 Around the Ecosystem

  • Stacks ecosystem continues to deliver:

  • Don’t forget your tickets to Bitcoin Builders Conference! I’ll be interviewing sBTC core developers Igor Sylvester and Joey Yandle

Signing Off,

Andre


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#11

This Week’s News & Stories - Mon, 22 May 2023

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Happy Monday Bitcoiners,

Last week in Miami was magical ✨. Builder culture has returned and you could feel it in the air. The most popular topics discussed were on ZK rollups, Trustless Bridges, Layer 2s & Ordinals. What a difference a year makes!

The week started off at the Bitcoin Builders Conference. I had the privilege of interviewing gigabrains Igor Sylvester and Joey Yandle for an sBTC technical deep dive. We covered threshold signatures, future scalability and much more.

Takeaways from the Conference:

Ordinals are accelerating Bitcoin. With higher sustained fees and block space demand, builders are racing to add functionality. We’re going to see an explosion of new use cases and applications being built. Ordinals also ensure Bitcoin is the unit of account for digital native transactions, which affirms its role as a monetary asset.

BRC-20s are here to stay. The discussion on long-term viability of BRC-20s was largely split due to its relatively inefficient design and reliance on indexers. However, my takeaway was that BRC-20s will evolve and new standards will emerge that become backwards compatible. Their MVP has shown real demand, but now it’s time to move beyond meme coins to real utility.

ZK rollups are coming to Bitcoin. Zero-knowledge proof systems can offer greater flexibility on top of Bitcoin’s base layer and introduce a range of novel applications. In the near-term sovereign rollups are coming, but it will take years for Bitcoin to implement the opcodes necessary for full ZK rollups.

Trustless Two-Way Pegs are the holy grail. This has been an elusive problem in the Bitcoin community. With the growth of sBTC, the market is starting to pay attention. This is good because it shows we’re working on the right problem, but also a reminder that speed and execution will be critical to protect our current lead.

Stacks is well positioned. Stacks has a strong community of product leaders and experienced developers. We have a head start extending Bitcoin’s functionality and builders that get involved now can capitalize on this next phase of growth.

👉In conclusion: Bitcoin is fun again and I am so excited to see what the community develops over the next few years.

Highlights from the Event:

💻 Engineering Updates

  • Testing Infra

    • WIP: CodeCoverage for p256k1 and WSTS.

    • Need to finalize Work Scope for Testing/Build/Security Engineers that will activate on July 1st.

  • Blockchain

    • Document, test and clean up commit-reveal PR

    • Getting some protocol updates through

      • Allow unpadded payloads in commit-reveal

      • Include a version byte in all sBTC data payloads

      • Length-prefix contract name string in deposit/peg-in payload

    • Test vectors with OP_DROP payloads

  • Clarity Eng

    • Can simulate mining Bitcoin blocks/transactions in Clarinet via testnet controller now.

    • First peg-in tests that check if the transaction was mined, extract peg information, and mint sBTC tokens. (Consuming taproot witness script.)

    • Bridge deposit unit tests will be updated.

    • Setting up POX-2 for Clarity-only testing.

    • Began peg-transfer processor contract.

    • Merge Clarity Bitcoin library very soon, in review.

  • Stacks Signer

  • Stacks-signer: UI & API for Dashboard

    • Merged two PRs related to Create typescript Bridge library. Creates a shared lib for the web and api projects containing the common functions.

    • Keeping User Stories and Trello Kanban board up to date.

🌍 Around the Ecosystem

  • Bitcoin Builders Conference Livestream (Link)

    • Note: The sBTC talk has not been posted yet. I’ll share the recording once I receive it.

  • Tweet thread: A technical primer based on "sBTC Technical Dive", by Kenny Rogers (Link)

  • BRC-20 tokens are now trading on ALEX and they are rapidly rolling out new trading primitives (Link)

Signing Off,

Andre


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#12

This Week’s News & Stories - Fri, 02 Jun 2023

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Dear Bitcoiners,

This week, the sBTC go-to-market group has been working on product research to improve the Bitcoin DeFi experience for users and developers.

For sBTC to be successful, it’s crucial that we understand user pain points and design solutions that meet their needs better than alternatives.

Here’s a summary of the work so far:

  • Four conversations with Stacks product owners to uncover assumptions and pain points.

  • Six conversations with people in Stacks, Bitcoin and Ethereum ecosystems to inform messaging guidelines.

  • Competitive research and product reviews to understand what’s on the market.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be conducting user interviews and plan to publish a report with our findings. Below, I’ll go into more detail on our initial takeaways.

Target User: who is likely to care about our product?

The first question to ask when building a product is who are we building for? Two primary audiences we consider for sBTC are Bitcoin Holders and DeFi Users.

Our initial assumption is that Bitcoin holders and DeFi users have different views and motivations. For example, the former optimizes for security and sovereignty while the latter optimizes for experimentation and collective ownership. This is an assumption we will test through user interviews and research.

The rise of Ordinals has shown that there is a category of users who hold Bitcoin passively, but use Ethereum and Web3 protocols daily. This has revealed demand for productive use cases on Bitcoin, which was echoed in the latest State of Stacks Messari report.

Both user categories would like to earn yield on their Bitcoin with minimal friction; however, the value proposition for each group might be slightly different. With Bitcoiners, we may want to highlight the non-custodial and safety aspects of sBTC; whereas Web3 native users may care more about the competitive yield opportunities.

Early research suggests that Web3 native users are more likely to experiment with new protocols, whereas Bitcoin holders may be skeptical if there isn’t a “Bitcoin-first” experience (ie using a separate network and token).

We’ll publish more insights in the coming weeks and months as we conduct more interviews and test the UX flows for sBTC products.

Signing Off,

Andre

Special thanks to Elena Giralt for contributing to this post.

💻 Engineering Updates

  • Blockchain ⛓️

    • sBTC alpha testing is progressing.

    • Upgraded Alpha Stacks node to 2.4 consensus.

    • Fixed several minor bugs.

    • Currently lacking a deployed bridge UI.

    • Initial test-vectors for wrap/unwrap with commit-reveal are in place.

  • Clarity Eng 🔭

    • Major review of sbtc-stacking-pool.clar by Fernando and Marvin.

  • Crypto Eng ⚙️

    • Implemented Display and Debug for remaining p256k1 objects.

    • Updated frost-coordinator integration test to use code objects not binaries (link)

      • Improved code coverage from 49% to 65%.

    • Fixed a signature verification bug.

    • Discovered an inconsistency in HashMap iteration.

  • Stacks Signer 🖊️

    • Received feedback from the Clarity workstream on the signer diagrams.

    • Organizing meetings to finalize sBTC transaction flow design.

    • Initial Web UI for Stacks Signer is available for feedback.

    • Making progress on Android UI.

    • Received feedback on the WARP API and planning changes.

  • Stacks Grants 💰

    • Latest bridge work is complete here.

    • Working on implementing the design.

    • Added an API call to pull in balances for users' addresses.

⚒️ Go-To-Market Updates

  • New sBTC website is live with a refreshed brand and pitch deck.

  • User research interviews starting next week. Aligning with engineering on Bridge product testing.

  • Planning sBTC pitch competition mid-June. Stay tuned for details.

🌍 Around the Ecosystem


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