Stacks blockchain

Stacks, formerly Blockstack, is a layer-2 blockchain.

History

The Blockstack project was originally founded by Muneeb Ali and Ryan Shea in 2013. By 2017, Blockstack locked in two additional funding rounds totalling $4 million. In 2017, Blockstack went on to launch an initial coin offering (ICO). BlockStack PBC (now called Hiro PBC) was the first to launch a SEC qualified token offering in July 2019. The start-up spent almost a year to ensure they met the SEC qualifications.^[1]

In October 2020 the community rebranded Blockstack to Stacks.

With the introduction of the Stacks Blockchain 2.0 on 14 January 2021, Hiro PBC revoked their sole control of the network.^[2] Due to this, the Stacks token could no longer be viewed as a security under SEC Regulation A+ qualifications and filed an exit report.^[3][2]

Design

At its inception, Blockstack aimed to offer solutions to the problems of internet privacy, security and data breaches (especially in cloud storage).^[4] It did so through offering a decentralized internet platform where users could completely own and control their personal information through a network of compatible browsers.^[2] With Blockstack, users have choice on what data they share with other users and applications^[5][6][7] and no longer have to upload data to an external site.^[2] By using the decentralized security Bitcoin offers, an user would receive digital private keys to create their internet identity on the Blockstack network.^[2]

CityCoins

In 2021, the CityCoins project launched fungible tokens for the cities of Miami and New York City.^[8][9] In September 2021, Miami's city commissioners voted to accept the protocol treasury,^{[needs context]} valued at $21 million at the time.^[10] MiamiCoin's value crashed, and so Stacks donated $5.25M to the City of Miami.^[11]

As of March 2023, Bloomberg was reporting that CityCoin was facing a "quiet demise" as liquidity issues and a lack of interest caused both the New York City and Miami coins to be delisted from the OkCoin cryptocurrency exchange.^[12]