Bitcoin Layer 2 Stacks to Rollout Nakamoto Upgrade

Reported by Coindesk, after years of R&D, the Stacks blockchain is getting an overhaul. The rollout of the popular Bitcoin scaling layer’s largest upgrade to date began at Bitcoin block height 840,360, beginning a two-step process that will end sometime in late May.

Called Nakamoto, honoring Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, the upgrade will decouple the Stacks block production schedule from Bitcoin's. Although the layer-2 network has a higher transaction throughput than Bitcoin (which processes about 7 transactions per second), as initially designed, Stacks produced blocks at the same rate as Bitcoin, leading to congestion issues.

Nakamoto will introduce a new way of producing Stacks blocks, updating its bespoke proof-of-transfer consensus algorithm. Starting today, new block “signers” will start coming online to validate “tenures” of transactions. At first, until the upgrade is fully activated in May, this will all be for “'practice,” Stacks developers said on X.

For casual users of Stacks, the developers recommend checking you’re using an updated wallet, which in many cases should happen automatically. For those who stake their STX tokens, the instantiation on Monday automatically unlocked those tokens, which can then be restaked when Nakamoto-compliant pools come online, likely sometime next week.