Stacks: Big Ideas 2026

Bitcoin is entering 2026 with momentum, legitimacy, and scale.

What it still lacks is not capital or conviction, but infrastructure that lets Bitcoin move, earn, and coordinate without compromising its core principles. Over the past year, a set of ideas has begun to crystallize across builders, researchers, institutions, and core contributors in the Stacks ecosystem. These ideas point toward how Bitcoin may function operationally in the next phase of adoption. 

This is a synthesis of ideas highlighted by leading figures in the Stacks ecosystem and core organizations. They are drawn from research forums, technical talks, protocol launches, and ecosystem experiments already underway. Together, they outline the narratives likely to shape 2026 for Stacks and, more broadly, for Bitcoin as programmable capital.

Self-Custodial Bitcoin Staking

There is currently no product on the market that allows Bitcoin holders to stake BTC on the base layer to earn Bitcoin-denominated yield while remaining fully self-custodial.

Because of this, trillions of dollars in BTC held by individuals, institutions, treasuries, and ETFs remain idle. Participating in yield today generally requires giving up custody, moving BTC off Bitcoin, or relying on intermediaries. These constraints exclude most large pools of capital.

Stacks’ latest R&D update explores a design for self-custodial Bitcoin staking that keeps BTC anchored to Bitcoin L1 while enabling Bitcoin-denominated yield through Stacks. The approach avoids custodial wrappers and federated bridges, and is designed to preserve unilateral exit and Bitcoin-grade security assumptions.

This is the first step in bootstrapping liquidity for Stacks. By enabling native Bitcoin yield under Bitcoin’s trust model, Stacks targets the largest unused capital base in crypto: idle BTC.

Right now, it’s clear that holders want to leverage their Bitcoin in yield opportunities and DeFi in much greater numbers if the Bitcoin can be (self) custodied at the L1. The latest designs directly tackle this and are already being tested with light implementations.

— Alex Miller, Stacks Labs CEO, Stacks R&D Forum

Bitcoin Earn Vaults

Institutions want Bitcoin yield, but only through products that are auditable and work with existing custody and investment frameworks. Most Bitcoin yield solutions today fail this standard because they rely on custodial structures, fragmented DeFi strategies, or cross-chain risk that institutions can’t underwrite.

Bitcoin Earn Vaults offered through Hermetica take a different approach. Built on sBTC, the vault combines yield strategies with transparent onchain execution and settlement anchored to Bitcoin, making it the first live implementation of this model.

Operating within Stacks’ enterprise-ready infrastructure, the vault is designed for institutions to participate. Vault logic is enforced by smart contracts while settlement remains tied to Bitcoin. The design avoids trusted middlemen and eliminates cross-chain risk.

The most important part is that it’s non-custodial. Users control withdrawals, everything is fully onchain, and activity is visible in real time. You show up with your Bitcoin and it’s a one-click deposit into the vault.

—Jakob, Hermetica Finance

Productive Bitcoin Treasuries

Corporations, funds, and endowments now hold large amounts of Bitcoin, but most of it sits idle. Internal rules around custody, risk, and oversight make it difficult for treasuries to earn yield without handing control to third parties or moving BTC off Bitcoin.

Stacks offers a different path. Through Bitcoin Staking and Bitcoin-native financial protocols, treasuries can earn yield paid in Bitcoin while keeping security aligned with Bitcoin itself. Returns come from participating directly in the network rather than lending out assets or relying on discretionary counterparties.

This model is reinforced by Stacks’ institutional track record. Regulated offerings, including Reg A–qualified vehicles and the Grayscale Stacks Trust, allow institutions to evaluate and access Stacks within familiar allocation and reporting frameworks.

Imagine hedge funds on Wall Street that optimize any spread to increase profits. This is now impacting Bitcoin Treasury Companies where people need to figure out how to get yield on BTC. They are looking at L2s like Stacks that offer BTC yield.

— Muneeb Ali, Stacks Founder, Token2049 Singapore

Capital-Efficient Rails for BTC & USD Movement

With Circle’s USDCx now live on Stacks, BTC–USD liquidity, pricing, and settlement can occur on-chain without relying on centralized exchanges.

Centralized exchanges still dominate this flow, but their limitations are well known: custody risk, opaque execution, withdrawal limits, and jurisdictional friction. Over time, both institutions and retail will need alternatives they can verify. Stacks-native AMMs like Bitflow provide that alternative through transparent execution, onchain settlement, and a growing track record.

The most important crypto rails are the movement between BTC and USD. By decentralizing these rails, Stacks becomes a core part of Bitcoin’s infrastructure.

The most important pair in crypto is BTC/USD, yet most of the on-chain trading for BTC is happening on crypto chains. We want to bring that back home and create the best place to trade in and out of BTC and USDC.

— Dylan Floyd, Co-Founder Bitflow

AI Agent Economy on Bitcoin

AI agents are beginning to earn, spend, and coordinate autonomously. To do this safely at scale, they require a monetary layer that is neutral, censorship-resistant, and programmable. Bitcoin provides settlement. Stacks provides execution.

An emerging initiative from the Buenos Aires Hacker House, x402, or AIBTCDEV suggests a future where agents operate economically using BTC via Stacks. They are earning yield, paying each other in BTC via sBTC, and building reputation through an onchain identity.

In 2026, AI agents begin to become Bitcoin’s economic natives, autonomously earning yield, detecting risks, and paying each other in sBTC on Stacks, with on-chain identity and reputation turning code into trusted actors on the hardest money. 

— Publius, Co-Founder, AIBTCDEV

Private Self-Custodial Movement

As Bitcoin adoption grows, transparent transaction histories become an operational risk. Institutions and individuals alike need to move capital without exposing strategy or counterparties. Stacks’ work on self-custodial transaction mechanisms, combined with Bitcoin-native privacy, addresses this gap. This enables Bitcoin to be managed and transferred without broadcasting sensitive information while preserving verifiability.

By advancing self-custody and privacy together, Stacks is emerging as a frontrunner in an area where Bitcoin infrastructure remains underdeveloped. This positions the leading Bitcoin layer to attract new users, capital, and builders into a growing ecosystem of financial applications.

Bitcoin holders will retain custody of their coins while being able to transfer them on Stacks, unlocking improved scalability and reduced costs. Institutions and retail users alike are interested in features that allow them to better manage their Bitcoin while protecting their financial history, business strategies, or other sensitive information.

— Alex Miller, Stacks Labs CEO, Stacks R&D Forum

The Path Forward

Taken together, these ideas point to a clear shift in how Bitcoin is being built on and used. Yield without custody loss. Liquidity without centralized chokepoints. Execution without compromising settlement. Privacy without sacrificing verifiability. What emerges is not a departure from Bitcoin’s principles, but their extension into a more functional, capital-efficient system.

With live protocols, institutional access, and Bitcoin-native design at its core, Stacks is emerging as the layer where Bitcoin transitions from passive capital into an operational financial system — without compromising the properties that made it valuable in the first place.