Portal DeFi Announces Plans to Integrate Stacks into Portal DEX and Enable Cross-Chain sBTC Trading

Portal DeFi, the first trust-minimized, Layer 2 cross-chain that involves no bridges, custody or wrapping, today announced plans to integrate with Stacks, the leading Bitcoin Layer 2 technology that enables smart contracts and decentralized applications to use Bitcoin as a secure base layer. The integration will bring sBTC, a 1:1 Bitcon-backed asset on the Stacks layer that enables smooth movement of BTC from Layer 1 to Layer 2 and back while remaining decentralized, to the Portal DEX Network.

The release of sBTC and its subsequent support in the Portal DEX Network will take place in the months following the Nakamoto rollout this year. sBTC functionality will ultimately unlock BTC as a fully programmable, productive asset. And unlike the issuer behind Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), which today holds $10 billion of Bitcoin in a central custodial vault, Stacks’ decentralized sBTC will use an open and distributed signing architecture.

“Our integration with Portal will provide exciting cross-chain interoperability for builders,” said Andre Serrano, sBTC go-to-market resident at the Stacks Foundation. “With sBTC set to join the Portal DEX Network, users will experience seamless, trust-minimized swaps between Bitcoin layers and beyond. It’s exciting to see new capabilities opening up for builders through integrations like this one, as each step gets us closer to a dynamic, activated Bitcoin economy.”

Once sBTC is live, it will be incorporated into the Portal DEX Network, which will enable sBTC’s cross-chain trading capabilities. With this integration, users can execute smooth one-click trades of sBTC against native assets on other chains without bridging. This expanded accessibility to sBTC beyond the Stacks ecosystem will grant users a new level of flexibility in managing their digital assets.

Portal Swap SDK enables Layer 2 Atomic Swaps, a technology for trading native BTC against Layer 2 assets like sBTC and other assets issued on Layer 2 chains. With Portal DEX, users will have access to permissionless, decentralized swaps between two chains without costly bridging or risk of custody. Building a DEX on Layer 1 Bitcoin is expensive and slow, so Layer 2s are growing in popularity with Stacks, the category creator, as the largest by traction. sBTC is the bridged BTC asset on Stacks. With this integration, Stacks users will be able to swap their sBTC for native BTC or for native tokens on other chains like ETH, USDT and more in a fast, non-custodial and decentralized way – without needing to unbridge their sBTC. Stacks’ infrastructure will incorporate Portal Swap SDK for native swapping to occur within Foundation-led apps/trading interfaces. The Stacks Foundation will support liquidity pools of trading pairs for sBTC.

“It’s fantastic to see a more decentralized, BTC-collateralized synthetic for Bitcoin DeFi, and Stacks is serving this to the market,” said Chandra Duggirala, CEO and co-founder of Portal. “Portal will enable liquid markets for sBTC to BTC, ETH and other assets, channeling the billions of DeFi transactional value from these other EVM chains and funneling it safely and seamlessly into the Bitcoin ecosystem. This will inevitably help Bitcoin grow.”

About Portal

Portal is a fintech infrastructure provider democratizing wealth creation and enabling financial self-sovereignty with technology for accessing traditional and crypto assets. A builder of the foundational pieces of technology required for a trustless and inclusive economy, Portal offers an advanced technological infrastructure, improved systems for coordination and easy-to-use tools previously only available to large institutions and hedge funds. Portal enables individual investors to exchange digital assets across blockchain networks with greater efficiency and speed, lower costs, increased transparency and enhanced security and privacy. A pioneer with passion and an advocate for free and unfettered markets, Portal is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and backed by Coinbase Ventures, Arrington Capital, OKX Ventures, Gate.io and many other prominent fintech/crypto investors. For more information, visit https://portaldefi.com.

About Stacks

Stacks is a Bitcoin L2 that enables smart contracts and decentralized applications to use Bitcoin as a secure base layer. The 2024 Nakamoto and sBTC releases will bring faster speeds and transactions backed by 100% Bitcoin finality. Stacks is the current leading Bitcoin L2 by developer traction and market cap and is poised to help unlock Bitcoin and its $1T + in passive capital as a fully programmable, productive asset. The Stacks (STX) token, used as gas on the L2, was the first to undergo an SEC-qualified sale in the United States. The project explicitly decentralized with the mainnet launch in 2021. In the Stacks ecosystem, there are currently 30+ contributing entities including a non-profit Stacks Foundation, a developer tooling company Hiro, Xverse, Trust Machines, Mechanism, Bitcoin L2 Labs, ALEX, Bitcoin Frontier Fund, and more. For more information, visit https://www.stacks.co

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