Stacks vs Stellar

Stacks is a Bitcoin Layer‑2 secured by Proof‑of‑Transfer where miners commit BTC to mint STX and anchor blocks to Bitcoin every 10–15 minutes. Clarity smart contracts enable DeFi with Bitcoin finality, and the sBTC proposal aims to bring a two‑way peg for native BTC on chain. The Nakamoto upgrade scheduled for 2025 will reduce block times to five seconds and add probabilistic Bitcoin finality.

Stellar is a payments‑focused blockchain that uses the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), a federated Byzantine agreement where each node chooses its own quorum slices. Anchors issue fiat‑backed tokens, and Stellar’s built‑in DEX offers path payments that can hop through multiple assets in a single transaction. The 2023 Soroban upgrade added WebAssembly smart contracts, enabling on‑chain AMMs, lending and other DeFi primitives.