The energy around Stacks 2.0 is obvious. Momentum across the ecosystem has continued to grow in recent weeks with all kinds of new partnerships, new efforts from independent entities, and community activities. Today, we’re excited to share further details on the mainnet launch itself.

Thanks to the hard work of engineers at PBC, the Stacks Foundation, and community contributors, the Stacks 2.0 blockchain is on target to reach feature completion by December 15th. This is largely in line with previous estimations about mainnet readiness, most recently covered in the post, ‘When Stacks 2.0’. After discussing with exchanges, launch partners, and potential miners we can now set a launch date of January 14th, 2021. This date is the recommendation by PBC after consultation with other entities; miners will ultimately decide exactly when and how the launch happens.

The top priority with the launch of Stacks 2.0 is to ship high-quality, well-tested code. The next is to provide a launch that benefits the global Stacks community with opportunities and access. With that in mind, we discussed the launch schedule with exchanges, partners, potential miners, and other community members to arrive at the January 14th recommendation. The time between December 15th and January 14th will be used for integrations with exchanges and launch partners, and further testing.

Upon launch of Stacks 2.0 by independent miners, the blockchain will be decentralized and no single party, including Blockstack PBC (soon to be Hiro) will have the ability to change it, pause it, or shut it down. Upon the launch of mainnet, PBC’s primary focus will narrow to developer tools for the Stacks blockchain under the Hiro Systems banner.

1 Million STX For Miners

To celebrate feature completion and community momentum, the Stacks Foundation is putting up 1 Million STX to be won in an upcoming mining challenge hosted by Daemon Technologies. The mining challenge will follow code completion on Dec 15th. Independent miners will be the ones to launch the network, so this will be a great way for prospective miners to learn the final system before that and to celebrate their key role in enabling the user-owned internet on Bitcoin. Interested miners can register at daemonmining.co/minestx.

Stay tuned for other significant news in the coming weeks and thank you for your support. If you haven’t yet, you can follow rich weekly technical updates on the forum or receive those updates via email. Register for Stacks 2.0 related events and launch festivities at stacks2.com.

Forward-looking statements

This communication contains forward-looking statements that are based on our beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to us. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the following words: “will,” “expect,” “would,” “intend,” “believe,” or other comparable terminology. These statements involve risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors that may cause actual results or performance to be materially different. We cannot assure you that the forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.