Its never been a better time to learn about crypto, with the low-interest rate environment that we are in and rising inflation across global economies. The general population has increasingly view the likes of cryptocurrencies, equities, real estate, and art as an alternative store of value to hedge against inflation and to preserve their wealth.
Satoshi Nakamoto gave us the Bitcoin Network and a new incentive model - tokenomics which allows users to bootstrap network effects. Decentralized Finance (DeFi) took the concept of tokenomics a step further by incorporating it into various financial products. From the likes of yield farming, staking, lending, and other forms of DeFi products, folks who participate in these ecosystems earn a yield on their assets. Historically, for the crypto community to earn a recurring bitcoin yield, one would have to incur huge capital expenditure to set up mining operations to mine bitcoin or be exposed to counterparty risks by engaging in lending/rehypothecation of their bitcoin to earn a yield. However, with the launch of Stacks blockchain, it enables a new and risk-free way for the crypto community to earn a recurring bitcoin yield, through their Proof-of-Transfer (PoX) consensus mechanism. STX token holders can signal their support for Stacks protocol by locking up their STX token (known as stacking) while still maintain custody of their tokens for a period of 2,100 bitcoin blocks and receive a bitcoin payout at an approximately 10% APY, as miners commit bitcoin to the Stacks blockchain for a chance to win the right to mine the next Stacks block. The bitcoin committed would then be redistributed to qualified STX holders who locked their STX tokens for the stacking cycle. Through PoX, Stacks blockchain allows anyone to participate in the consensus mechanism and earn a payout in bitcoin, which significantly lowers the risks and cost of entry to earn bitcoin relative to bitcoin mining and lending.
To stack individually via the stacks blockchain, STX token holders would need to meet a dynamic minimum amount of STX. The dynamic minimum is derived before the start of each reward cycle where the transfer of miners’ funds is limited to 5000 Bitcoin addresses. Therefore, to ensure that this number of addresses is sufficient to cover the pool of participants (given 100% participation of liquid STX), the threshold for participation must be 0.02% (1/5000th) of the liquid supply of STX. As of writing, the minimum amount to participate in stacking individually is 100,000 STX.
The community recognizes that a threshold of 100,000 STX can be prohibitive for many to participate. This led to multiple ground-up initiatives from developers and community members building pooling options where individuals can pool their STX token together to meet the minimum stacking threshold, thereby makes stacking a lot more accessible to everyone in the community. Amongst the many pooling options, Planbetter is one of the few OG non-custodial pooling options that payout bitcoin within the Stacks community. Built by Diego & Bumblebee who have been with the Stacks community since Stacks 2.0 went live in Jan’21. Planbetter has been serving the community since stacking cycle #5, and along the way built a strong community following via their Discord and Twitter socials.
To participate in stacking simply, 1) create a Stacks web wallet via Hiro and send some stacks to the wallet, you can get them from these exchanges if you do not already have them. 2) Connect to Planbetter new stacking web app with your stacks web wallet and via their dashboard select the number of cycles and enter the amount of STX you’d like to delegate to Planbetter pool.
More info on Planbetter stacking pool
- Planbetter pool requires a minimum of 200 STX to stack with them, with a 5% fee.
- Before Stacks 2.1 update, there will be a 1 cycle cooldown period after the end of your stacking phase, thus if you’d like to maximize your stacking returns, delegating for a greater number of cycles would be recommended. However, while stacking, your STX tokens are locked, and you will not be able to send/withdraw them.
- Each cycle is 2,100 bitcoin blocks, which equates to approximately 14days.
Now to the portion that I’m extremely excited about Planbetter, while drafting this article I had the chance to speak with Diego & Bumblebee from the Planbetter team. They very kindly shared their design philosophy for Planbetter, along with key updates to their newly released Planbetter web app.
Planbetter seeks to provide a premium stacking experience to STX token holders stacking via their flagship product, the Planbetter web app where users get access to key stacking information and essential features. Regardless if you’re a power user or a new user you’ll find Planbetter’s new app intuitive and informative. Once you’ve connected to Planbetter’s web app, you’re greeted with a clean and organized landing page with a well-designed dashboard that enables stackers to grasp all the key information with a glance.
Credit to the Planbetter team, they have shared a full list of features made available with their updated web app:
Basic Functionalities
- Live status of your stacking progress
- Shows STX & BTC wallet & balances
- Delegate to Planbetter pool
- Review your payouts per cycle
- Info about current and upcoming cycles
Extra Features
- Privacy mode (I love how the team designed privacy mode differently from the usual *** censoring)
- Welcome stackers by their own BNS domain
- Watch-only mode open to everyone
- APY estimation
- Multi-account stacking
- Tax Report in CSV (coming soon)
This is a really strong update from Planbetter, it is clear that their objective is to make the stacking experience a lot more intuitive and delightful. My personal favourites are 1) their integration of stacks web wallet multi-account stacking feature with Planbetter’s proprietary dashboard design to allow users to enjoy the utility of the dashboard across all their wallets. 2) Displaying Stacker’s BNS domain when they logged, which gives a sense of familiarity to users within the Stacks ecosystem. Furthermore, the integration of the BNS domain opens up future possibilities as the Stacks ecosystem matures and become more interconnected. BNS domain will become part of a user’s digital identity, enabling them to move between applications across the Stacks ecosystem, thus providing a more holistic user experience. 3) Built-in tax reporting feature that’s coming soon to Planbetter app, allow folks to accurately account for their tax obligations with a few clicks on the app, which makes it a much more pleasant experience especially during tax reporting season!
As the crypto industry continues to grow, and blockchain technology gets integrated across multiple industries (e.g. finance, art, gaming, global trade, etc), the role Bitcoin plays in the industry evolves from being a store of value for the digital economy to a global settlement layer. Stacks being a layer 1 blockchain with smart contracts capabilities that tethers to the Bitcoin Network for finality plays an important role in Bitcoin’s evolution as it enables complex applications to be built with the security of the Bitcoin Network. Stacking pools play a fundamental role in securing the Stacks blockchain, as Planbetter strives to be the standard-bearer in the space, with their redesigned web app and exciting new features. I’m excited for the future of Planbetter where extensions to their best-in-class feature set could be extended to new synergistic products and services with the same high level of utility for users. To learn more about Planbetter or to connect with the team, check out their Discord group and Twitter handle!
