“Always pushing the boundaries of Bitcoin token trading and that’s we’re excited to work with them on improving the Runes trading experience” Jan Smejkal, Chief Strategy Officer Xverse
MIAMI, FL, December 19, 2024 /24-7PressRelease/ — Bitflow and Pontis are proud to introduce the first Bitcoin Runes Automated Market Maker (AMM) on Stacks, the leading Bitcoin Layer 2 (L2), delivering a highly-anticipated scaling opportunity for Runes—a type of fungible token on Bitcoin previously constrained by slow transaction speeds, high fees, pre-splitting of UTXOs, marketplace listings, and sniping of pending transactions.
With the recent Stacks Nakamoto Upgrade, Bitflow now offers fast, cost-effective transactions, all within a user-friendly interface. Instead of marketplace listings, the Bitflow liquidity pools enable AMM based pricing for any amount that users want to trade.
This product launch marks a significant moment for Bitcoin DeFi: a scalable system for Bitcoin assets where users experience fast confirmations and secure transactions that are as difficult to reorg as Bitcoin itself.
“Some people haven’t realized this yet, but Bitcoin is fun again.” said Dylan Floyd, Co-Founder of Bitflow. “Our Runes AMM gives everyone in crypto more reasons to transact on Bitcoin, which is great for the sustainability of network fees. And thanks to the Nakamoto upgrade on Stacks, we’ve unlocked a premier DeFi experience for tokens on Bitcoin. Together with Pontis, we make it easy for that liquidity to flow across novel swap and earn products.”
Powering the Runes AMM: The Stacks Nakamoto Upgrade
The Runes AMM launch coincides with the Stacks Nakamoto Upgrade, activated at Bitcoin Block #867,867. This upgrade reduces Stacks’ block times from 10 minutes to seconds and provides Bitcoin-level finality, significantly enhancing the efficiency of the Runes AMM through the bundling of Pontis bridge and Bitflow infrastructure.
Another key feature that Nakamoto unlocks is Bitcoin finality. Stacks no longer forks on its own, and after a transaction is confirmed, reversing it is at least as hard as reversing a Bitcoin transaction. Now, with the Pontis Bridge and Runes AMM, users can safely trade Bitcoin assets on Stacks after a single confirmation–allowing users to swap BTC, Runes, BRC-20s, and more.
With this infrastructure, locking in a trade with native BTC is fast and secure, requiring only one Bitcoin block and one Stacks block (5-10 seconds). In comparison, other bridge options typically demand 3-6 Bitcoin block confirmations to consider a mint safe on another chain or layer.
Decentralized Security with Industry-Leading Signers
Bitflow’s Runes AMM leverages the Pontis Bridge, a federated multisig system that brings more decentralized security and reliability to cross-chain transactions – supported by ecosystem leaders deeply invested in the success of Bitcoin, Runes, BRC-20s, and Bitcoin Layers.
Pontis signers—including leading Ordinals wallet Xverse, Smart Custody Layer for Bitcoin Asigna, prominent Ordinals launchpad OrdinalsBot, the largest DeFi protocol on Runes Liquidium, Bitcoin liquid stacking leader StackingDAO, the leading Runes ecosystem community Billion Dollar Cat, and several others—unlock powerful interoperability between Bitcoin and Stacks using a federated mint/burn model. This approach offers greater decentralization compared to single-entity custodians common in other Bitcoin AMMs.
With the Nakamoto upgrade, mint and swap transactions on the Runes AMM now achieve full Bitcoin finality and reorg protection, making them as secure and irreversible as Bitcoin itself. Once sBTC goes live on Stacks later this year, Pontis will migrate its bridge to work with sBTC, enabling an improved decentralized way to move Bitcoin assets to the Stacks L2 and back.
“At Pontis, our mission is to create a secure and seamless bridging experience for Runes and other metaprotocol assets by harnessing a consortium of trusted projects as node operators,” said Filip S, Core Contributor at Pontis. “In partnership with Bitflow, we are enhancing the user experience for BTC traders, enabling them to interact with Runes through liquidity pools on Stacks effortlessly. This achievement marks a pivotal step in advancing the adoption of Runes and laying the foundation for a new narrative in Bitcoin’s evolution.”
Full List of Signers
The list of signers includes Asigna, Xverse, Leather, Liquidium, DeSpread, OrdinalsBot, Pontis, Bitflow, Hermetica, Ducat, Bima, StackingDAO, Zest Protocol, Sats Ventures, and Billy (BILLION•DOLLAR•CAT).
Elevating User Experience with a Real AMM for assets on Bitcoin
The Runes AMM on Stacks introduces a Uniswap-style liquidity pool structure, enabling deep liquidity, low slippage, and fast price discovery for Bitcoin assets. Thanks to the Nakamoto upgrade, reorg protections and fast block times allow the Stacks layer to be abstracted from the user experience, enabling Bitflow to offer a Layer-1 Bitcoin DEX trading experience with Stacks as the execution layer.
Smart contracts for the Runes AMM reside on the Stacks layer and interact with Pontis to enable Layer-1 integration and interoperability. This infrastructure lets users trade Bitcoin assets directly through wallets like Xverse and Leather on Stacks—eliminating the need for marketplace listings, manual price management, or waiting for buyers.
“We love how Bitflow team is always pushing the boundaries of Bitcoin token trading and that’s we’re excited to work with them on improving the Runes trading experience utilizing both the L1 and Stacks.”
Jan Smejkal, Chief Strategy Officer Xverse
The Runes AMM launches alongside sBTC on 12/17/2024, and with the Pontis Bridge integrated directly inside the Bitflow app, users can bring BTC and Runes to the Stacks layer and trade at the speed of Nakamoto. At launch, swaps between native BTC and STX will also be available, and the sBTC-Runes liquidity pools will initially offer an extra 5% BTC yield on all sBTC deposits
Supported Assets
At launch, liquidity pools will support dozens of popular Runes, including BILLION•DOLLAR•CAT, DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON, LIQUIDIUM•TOKEN, BASED•INTERNET•PANDA, SHORT•THE•DOLLAR, PUPS•WORLD•PEACE, POOKA•CANNOT•BE•STOPPED, ROOOOOOOOOONS, with plans for expansion to BRC-20 Tokens and more Native BTC Assets.
Bitflow is the best place to trade Bitcoin assets with the deepest liquidity hub on Stacks. The Bitflow protocol is growing the Bitcoin economy through a suite of essential DeFi infrastructure, centered around the best form of money.
Pontis is a decentralized bridge connecting Bitcoin Layer 1 to other chains and Layer 2s. It enables secure, fast, and decentralized asset movement, supporting BTC, Runes, Ordinals, and BRC-20s. Built on robust multisig, Pontis plans to enhance decentralization with Threshold Signature Scheme (TSS).
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