Overview

Bitcoin Staking, protocol bonds, participant flows, and contract-facing notes for the PoX-5 protocol upgrade.

Bitcoin earns nothing sitting still, and most ways to put it to work mean giving up custody. PoX-5 is the Stacks upgrade that enables Bitcoin Staking: BTC-denominated yield on bitcoin that never leaves your own keys, paid out of the revenue miners already spend competing for Stacks blocks. These docs cover how it works and how to build against it, including the PoX-5 managed bootstrap phase of Bitcoin Staking: who participates, how implementation paths line up, and technical surfaces on the contract side.

Note: This documentation is in the process of being carefully merged into existing documentation (replacing PoX-4, etc.) throughout August 2026. It is presented as a standalone section for users, builders, and partners while that deeper integration across existing resources is completed.

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