Hiro CEO Alex Miller says that although the bitcoin network is not programmable, it serves as an excellent settlement layer for building robust applications on top.
Hiro provides bitcoin development tools for developers to build on the Stack blockchain. Miller said that Stax inherits the security of the bitcoin network through a consensus mechanism called proof-of-transfer (though this is a controversial statement for some).
Miller told Cointelegraph the value proposition behind programs building on top of bitcoin is that it is a “really well established, well accepted, very trustworthy settlement layer.”
Because of this, he said, it is a much simpler blockchain to build on top than most other smart contract platforms that perform computation and settlement on a single layer:
“When your disposal and computation are both on the same layer, it really complicates things in a lot of ways. […] You don’t want to modify your disposal layer that much.”
It enables developers to “innovate more and more quickly” at layer two, with “far stronger capabilities.”
Miller claimed that we shouldn’t be surprised that developers are making bitcoin programmable, as envisioned by Satoshi Nakomoto:
“Satoshi himself wrote back in 2010, 2011, that he foresaw additional layers of [and] Additional chains will be built on top of this to provide all such programmable qualifications.”
Miller said that the Stax developer ecosystem has grown rapidly since the platform’s launch in January 2021, “We have hundreds of developers working in the ecosystem, and thousands of smart contracts and applications that are deployed on it.” “
Within the first year of launch, the Stacks blockchain deployed more than 350 million monthly API requests, 40,000 Hero Wallet downloads, and 2,500 Clarity smart contracts, with these figures increasing further in 2022.
Miller also said that we will live in a “multi-chain future” without a specialized smart contract platform. “Ethereum will be there for at least some time, but there are many other smart contract platforms that have yet to stand the test of time,” he said.
related: Stack’s Michel Cuevas Talks About Building a Unified DeFi Bridge for Bitcoin Users
As far as the cryptocurrency market is headed, Miller said that crypto volatility will decrease as crypto applications become more “accepted, integrated and used in our society,” adding:
,[By] By bringing programmability and smart contracts to bitcoin, it helps to advance bitcoin as both a technical and financial layer in our society, reducing volatility while driving up the price over the long term.
