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Accomplishments in Q4
In the final quarter of 2021, we had the following highlights to brag about:
- Stacks Blockchain: Hiro engineers worked on Clarity benchmarking and supported the SIP-012 network upgrade. Our team also proposed and implemented a new fee estimator, which is the first step towards a healthy fee market on Stacks. As a result, both network throughput and transaction fees have more than doubled (source).
- API: We made significant investments in the performance and scalability of the API as well as infrastructure and operational improvements in Hiro’s production API instance (e.g. a read-only mode, CPU profiling, faster auto-scaling, better caching, database optimizations). Together, these changes allowed us to handle transient traffic surges. Our API is now serving 300-400M queries / month.
- Clarinet: We added some amazing new features for developers in Q4, including a local DevNet (for end-to-end testing), integrated cost-tracking, code coverage and a brand new “check checker”. We’ve also produced 10 bite-sized videos to help you get started with Clarinet. Check them out here!
- Wallet: We reduced onboarding friction in the Hiro Wallet by introducing the first fiat onramp via Transak, started working on Ledger support on the web, added telemetry, added better fee estimation and made performance improvements.
- Team: We grew the award-winning Hiro team by 18% to build and enhance Hiro tools faster. We also launched a new website to better explain who we are and what we do.
What We’re Focused On in Q1
We’re thrilled by the growth across the Stacks ecosystem in just 1 year since the mainnet launch. We’re excited to continue to support the growing number of developers and teams choosing to build on Stacks for Bitcoin! Supporting the rapid growth in Stacks, and specifically, addressing the needs of high-throughput, low-latency workloads is a top priority for us. Here are some of our focus areas in Q1:
- Blockchain: We plan to launch a usable prototype of subnets on testnet for high-throughput / low-latency workloads. We intend to further improve fee estimates, improve observability and support Stacks 2.1 work (via SIP-015).
- API: We expect to refactor the API into separate, smaller services to ease the operational overhead and to facilitate better horizontal scaling. We also want to add endpoints for NFTs and further optimize performance.
- Clarinet: We plan to invest in “explainability,” so developers get actionable feedback and useful guidance to write better Clarity code. We also expect to create more educational resources, and we plan to pilot some new features around debugging smart contract state and “serverless” functions.
- Stacks.js: We’ve under-invested in this area in the last few months. In Q1, we intend to address critical issues and publish an updated strategy for the future of stacks.js.
- Wallet: We expect to continue to work on bringing Ledger support to the web wallet, add more fiat onramp providers and explore tighter Bitcoin integration in our Wallets, as well as the Explorer.
- Team: We plan to continue to expand the Hiro team across all departments. Want to be a part of the largest and fastest growing web3 project on Bitcoin? Join our team!
What We’re Not Focused On
As more teams and developers find their way to Stacks, we tend to have many more ideas than we have capacity for (which is a great problem to have!). Here are some areas we are unable to focus on this quarter:
- EVM compatibility / Ethereum bridges
- Mobile support
- Data storage
These projects need work, as do others not mentioned here, and we encourage the community to pick these efforts up, and we will support you the best that we can!
Let Us Know What You Think!
If you have any questions about our priorities, join us in Discord and reach out to the Hiro team.
