Bitcoin (BTC) use cases see ‘explosive growth’, says Trust Machines
AUSTIN, Texas – Bitcoin ecosystem firm Trust Machines said it has seen “explosive growth in bitcoin (BTC) use cases” during the first quarter of 2023, according to new research from the firm.
The report identified bitcoin non-fungible tokens (NFT), bitcoin naming services (BNS) and recent developments on the Stacks blockchain – a bitcoin smart contract platform that powers much of the Trust Machine ecosystem – as the key use cases driving new growth and adoption.
While Web3 development has grown exponentially based on other blockchains such as Ethereum, development on Bitcoin has lagged behind. But with new use cases and technologies emerging, this is likely to change, said Muneeb Ali, CEO of Trust Machines and co-founder of Stacks, during a panel Friday at Consensus 2023, titled “Building on Top of Bitcoin (for Real) ).”
“I think it’s the revival of developer culture that I’m most excited about by far. It’s like bitcoin is fun again because it’s a place to build again and I think that’s the best thing that could have happened,” Ali said.
The Bitcoin blockchain has historically been limited to payments. Even Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto rejected non-financial uses for the dominant blockchain. However, new technologies are emerging that have begun to use Bitcoin as a layer 1 foundation to develop the network of Web3.
Bitcoin NFTs took off earlier this year with the launch of the Ordinals protocol in January. The protocol uses “inscriptions” or arbitrary content such as text or images that can be added to sequentially numbered satoshis or “sats” – the smallest units in Bitcoin – to create unique “digital artifacts” that can be held and transferred across the Bitcoin network, like any other rate.
Over a million inscriptions have been minted, according to research from Trust Machines.
The firm’s research also shows a 400% increase in BNS registrations since 2022 on sister platform BTC.us. The platform allows users to register human-readable “.btc” domain names that can be used later to host a website or even send and receive bitcoin. Trust Machines attributes this rise to both Ordinals and the launch of the Jack Dorsey-backed decentralized social media protocol, Nostr.
The Stack’s blockchain—founded by Muneeb Ali and Princeton University computer science professor JP Singh—currently powers most of the applications in the Trust Machine ecosystem. Research from crypto data analytics company Messari shows that Stacks’ average daily active users and addresses “increased by 76% and 42% respectively in the fourth quarter [2022].”
Stacks published a white paper late last year showing how a new digital asset called “Stacks bitcoin” (sBTC) could be used to make Bitcoin fully programmable.
“While we have seen a resurgence of Bitcoin NFTs in recent months, more development needs to be done to unlock Bitcoin [decentralized finance] use cases fully,” the research said, adding that one of the biggest efforts to unlock it is sBTC.
Stacks has now launched an sBTC testnet, and is aiming for a mainnet launch later this year.
