Six network upgrades in six months. A 30x boost to DeFi capacity. Clarity 5 passing with unanimous support. USDCx going live. Dual Stacking launching the first protocol where Bitcoin earns Bitcoin.

That's where we've been. The 2026 roadmap is about where we're going.

The question behind everything

For a long time, the Bitcoin scaling conversation has been about speed and fees. Those matter. But the question we keep coming back to is different: what would it take for Bitcoin holders to actually put their capital to work without giving up what makes it theirs?

That's the north star. Everything in this roadmap flows from it.

Three phases, all active now

The roadmap is organized across three phases. Each one reinforces the others, and preparatory work on all three is happening simultaneously. The phasing reflects the sequencing of major outcomes, not the start of development effort.

‍Phase 1: Anchor Capital

‍Self-custodial Bitcoin Staking is the entry point. Holders lock BTC on Bitcoin L1, pair it with a STX position on Stacks, and earn yield through Proof of Transfer. The BTC never leaves Bitcoin. No wrapping. No bridges. No custodians.

This is designed to require no DeFi expertise from Bitcoin holders. You stake directly from L1, earn yield against your existing position, and retain full control throughout. We see Bitcoin Staking as the top-of-funnel product for the entire ecosystem, the thing that brings long-term capital on-chain and opens the door to everything else: self-custodial loans, DeFi products, programmable capital, AI-agent-managed portfolios.

What makes this structurally different from other Bitcoin layers is that the yield isn't synthetic. It's not subsidized by token emissions. It comes from Proof of Transfer, which means it's sustainable by design. That's the kind of foundation you can build a real financial layer on top of.

Phase 2: Scale Infrastructure

‍When real capital comes on-chain, the network has to be ready for it. The primary scaling goal is 100x throughput via Clarity Wasm. We're also working on sBTC bridge optimization, continued chainstate reduction, and infrastructure designed to support up to 10,000 active AI agents on-chain.

We've already shipped meaningful progress here. The latest network upgrade cut chainstate growth by over 20%, with early node tests showing up to 70% disk space improvement. SIP-039 boosted effective DeFi capacity by 30x. Clarity 5 unlocked unrestricted inflows and outflows for users and institutions. None of this is about chasing TPS benchmarks. It's about making sure that when builders ship products and capital arrives, the network doesn't become the bottleneck.

Phase 3: Bitcoin-Native Finance

‍With capital anchored and infrastructure scaled, the financial layer grows naturally. Lending where you borrow against BTC without giving up custody. Perpetuals and trading settled on infrastructure anchored to Bitcoin's finality. Programmable capital that AI agents can move in seconds. Eventually, sBTC as gas, so the whole economy runs on Bitcoin.

These three phases aren't sequential milestones. They're concurrent workstreams building toward the same outcome: a self-custodial financial system on Bitcoin.

The pieces coming together

Beyond the core phases, there are a few areas we're especially focused on this year.

AI and agents

‍We're targeting 10,000 active agents on Stacks, building open frameworks, agent account contracts, and making our docs and APIs explicitly machine-readable. Agents care about fast settlement, predictable fees, and infrastructure that works. Those happen to be the same things we've been optimizing for all along. We're also expanding our investment in AI-powered testing suites as part of a broader security push.

Fee abstraction

‍We're evaluating the feasibility of letting sBTC cover transaction fees in place of STX. Right now, users need STX for gas. For a person, that's a speed bump. For an AI agent executing hundreds of micro-transactions a day, it's a wall. If we're serious about a Bitcoin-first experience, that friction has to go.

Leather and the wallet layer

‍Leather is a critical gateway to the ecosystem. Our 2026 partnership is focused on native Bitcoin Staking support, multi-sig functionality (a prerequisite for meaningful institutional participation), improved Ledger hardware integration, and general UX improvements based on real user feedback. We're also working on passkey and WebAuthn support for wallet creation, with contributions from Degen Labs and the Stacks Foundation.

Institutional access

‍We're working hands-on with partners like Fireblocks, Bitgo, and Ledger to make Bitcoin Staking accessible through the platforms institutions already use. The Stacks Mesh API is being built specifically to support exchanges integrating Bitcoin Staking. The goal is to meet capital where it lives, not ask it to come to us.

How we measure success

We're benchmarking progress across six criteria: native BTC yield, healthy DeFi engagement, Bitcoin-grade safety, deep liquidity across exchanges and custodians, fast and scalable transactions, and compliance-ready privacy. If those things are trending in the right direction, the roadmap is working.

Built with the community

We didn't write this in a closed room. Earlier this year we ran a four-part workshop series: Builders Reaching Scale, an Open Community Call, AI Enablement, and Next Gen Governance. Stacks Labs, the Stacks Foundation, the Stacks Endowment, and dozens of active contributors all shaped these priorities together.

A roadmap only works if the people building on your platform see their own problems reflected in it. The themes here, capital efficiency, agent infrastructure, self-custodial everything, came directly from builders telling us what they need to ship real products.

We're not publishing a set of promised release dates. We're sharing a set of high-conviction priorities with active work underway on every front. We'd rather be honest about that than pretend we can predict exactly when every piece lands.

Six upgrades shipped. Real products live on mainnet. And a clear path forward. We're excited about where this is going, and we think the work speaks for itself.

Read the full roadmap →