Quote from: JiiBs on Today at 08:10:51 AM

Was this expected?

Yes, I have planned to cover Stacks in the Sidechain Observer linked already by @tranthiding (if no other forum member wants

).

The Nakamoto upgrade however, afaik does still not activate sBTC, which would be activated in Q4 20204 according to their roadmap. The Nakamoto Upgrade (shameless namedropping, in my opinion) is however the requiremente for sBTC to work.

sBTC is the "decentralized bridge" which would convert Stacks effectively in a Bitcoin sidechain. Until then, Stacks is simply an altcoin.

Quote from: JiiBs on Today at 08:10:51 AM

Is this how to solve the scalability of Bitcoin?
[...]
Is this something Bitcoiners would like?

I'm generally optimistic regarding layer-2's and sidechains in particular. In contrast to Lightning, they offer the advantage that you transact like on Bitcoin or other blockchains. You don't need to monitor your channel for possible fraud, and also merchants don't need to be online to receive payments.

However, Stacks, like most other L2 projects, has a big disadvantage in my opinion: It depends on an utility token which was premined and sold in an ICO. This is not only not good for decentralization, but probably will also not generate interest for the concept by die-hard Bitcoiners, who will continue to prefer L2s without premine, like Lightning.

Quote from: HeRetiK on Today at 09:17:48 AM

Stacks seems to be more about adding smart contract functionality rather than increasing scalability.

IMO this is the way they market it, and for sure it's an advantage if you want to create complex DeFi stuff. But every sidechain, even Ethereum via tBTC (a more decentralized variant of wBTC), adds to Bitcoin's scalability.