I recently started a new format breaking down the monthly and quarterly performance of leading protocols.
After reviewing @SuiNetwork’s July progress, it’s time to go deeper.
Here’s the full @Stacks Q2 breakdown.
1️⃣ The ecosystem crossed 1.6M wallets
New active wallets went from 72K to 110K, so up ~50% QoQ, and that's with a one-off Q1 spike excluded. Daily actives grew 55% to ~4.2K.
Not bad for a quarter where most of the market was bleeding.
2️⃣ Institutions aren't waiting around
UTXO Management (owned by Nakamoto Inc, a NASDAQ-listed company) signed up as the first staking partner and already committed part of their BTC. They're going for ~3% yield on their Bitcoin without giving up custody.
The market for this is huge, the top 100 Bitcoin treasury companies are sitting on 1.2M+ BTC doing absolutely nothing. Fireblocks joining as the custody partner tells you exactly who they're building for.
3️⃣ Bitcoin Staking is almost here
PoX-5 went from whitepaper to working infrastructure in a single quarter. It ran on a private testnet with institutional partners first, then moved to a public testnet, and it's now in audit before the Q3 mainnet launch.
4️⃣ @ZestProtocol had a monster quarter
Their token launched on Binance Alpha in May, hit $200M FDV within hours, and was #1 trending on CoinGecko and CMC.
The lending protocol itself sits at $70M TVL with 800+ sBTC deposited.
They've processed 1,500+ liquidations with zero bad debt, which is the stat that impresses me most.
5️⃣ @StackingDao hit a new TVL ATH
TVL reached an all-time high of 110M STX, and what caught my eye is stBTC, set to become the first liquid staking token for Bitcoin on Stacks.
It's in audit now and targeting an August launch.
6️⃣ @bitflow crossed $5B in volume
They have almost 30K users now, and their two main sBTC pools did an estimated 17.9% Bitcoin APY over the past 30 days. The ZEST launch pools also hit a 28x volume-to-TVL ratio.
7️⃣ Demand for BTC yield keeps beating supply
@HermeticaFi's latest capped hBTC allocation sold out in 24 hours. hBTC is at 75 BTC now, and USDh averaged 8% APY through the quarter.
8️⃣ The builder pipeline
Q2 grants went out across DeFi, RWAs, AI agents, and privacy.
Their Foundry program also ran 60 early builders through a five-week cohort, with 25 moving toward grant applications.
9️⃣ AI agents are picking up Stacks
Active AI agents on the network went from 105 to 766 in a week, making it the top Bitcoin L2 for agent activity.
Totally separate story from staking, but I found this one particularly interesting.
Loving the progress on making Bitcoin productive, and it's a big W for us holders.
Crypto cards made it easy to spend your Bitcoin, and IMO this next wave is about making it earn, and I can bet the stBTC launch in August will be the first real signal of that wave.
Disclosure: I'm a long-time Stacks supporter and $STX holder.