Blockchain project Stacks has published a whitepaper showing how a new digital asset called “Stacks bitcoin” (sBTC) can be used to make Bitcoin fully programmable.

Unlike Ethereum or Solana where developers can conjure up all manner of algorithmic machinations – think six-figure gorilla avatars – Bitcoin’s simpler scripting language limits what Bitcoin developers can create on the platform.

Stacks, an existing smart contract platform, wants to break through those limitations by introducing a new digital asset derived from bitcoin – sBTC (pegged at 1:1 with bitcoin) – that can be used to create smart contracts on Stacks, but can also be readily converted back to bitcoin (BTC).

“Bitcoin is, by design, relatively slow and does not natively provide the fully-expressive smart

contracts needed to build sophisticated applications,” the whitepaper states. “Faster and more sophisticated applications must therefore be built outside of the base layer. Bitcoin layers enable this.”

Read more: Smart Contract Platforms: Past, Present and Future

The term “layers” is Stacks’ lingo for any system outside of Bitcoin’s base layer, such as a sidechain, which is a secondary blockchain that interacts with a primary blockchain. In the whitepaper, Stacks acts as a Bitcoin sidechain, powered by both sBTC and STX – Stacks’ native token.

The project claims in its white paper that its Bitcoin sidechain can unlock “hundreds of billions of dollars” in DeFi on Bitcoin.

The…