Stacked - Improving On-Chain Support - Feedback Wanted
On-chain support at Stacked: looking for honest feedback before we build
Hey r/nzbitcoin. I'm Brandon Bucher, CEO at Stacked. Some of you have seen our "we want feedback" posts that I wrote under the u/lightningpaynz account. Manual bank transfers and a few other things we shipped came directly out of those conversations. Been a while since I did one, so here we are.
This time I want to talk about on-chain support, because it's by far the hottest topic in our support channels.
Where we sit today
Stacked was built Lightning-first on purpose. There are two reasons. First, we think the world benefits from bitcoin being better money. That's more than a savings story, it's a "cash final settlement, instantly, and nobody can stop you" story. We think better money is better for spending too. It's more private, and serves only its owner.
The second reason: most DCA purchases sit in the $20–$200 range, and stacking those on-chain gives you a wallet full of tiny UTXOs. The day you want to move your coins, you discover consolidation is brutal, and if on-chain fees rise in the future, those small UTXOs become genuinely expensive to spend.
Our rough rule of thumb is that UTXOs you're saving long-term should be at least 500k sats, ideally 1m+. We've written about this in more depth here if you're curious: https://support.stackedbitcoin.com/learn/saving-in-bitcoin
For what it's worth, the Lightning-first path is definitely the right path if you're DCA'ing $20 per day. It's cheaper now, and saves you from problems down the road.
Where we want to go
We built Stacked the way we did because we genuinely believe Lightning-first is the better path in the long run. But we also know that today, on-chain is relatively cheap, and we know what a lot of you are doing: DCA to your hardware wallet, set it, forget it, stack sats for years. It works. Your coins are safe, your job is done, you don't have to think about it.
Asking you to change that is a tall order, and honestly, "it's cheaper if you also learn this new thing and add a step" isn't a good enough reason. So we want to change this: support what you're already doing, but also make the better path so easy and obvious that it's cheaper and at least as simple, not cheaper with extra steps.
Lightning-only also caps our transaction sizes at NZ$10k right now, which is a real gap for larger buys. On-chain support solves that too.
What we want to build
The goal: make it as seamless as possible to get both things. Let people use the path they're comfortable with, while making the genuinely better path the easy, default one.
Rough plan:
- Drop the Boltz (Lightning → on-chain) swap from the flow for on-chain users, saving ~0.5%
- Native on-chain DCA
- Clear, honest guidance when someone sets up an on-chain DCA at an amount that's going to produce dust UTXOs. Explain why, point them at the Stacked Wallet (or any Lightning wallet) for those amounts, but let them choose
- Automated path to cold storage: once your Stacked wallet crosses a threshold, the wallet automatically constructs a send to your cold storage wallet for you to sign
What I want to know
- For people who DCA on-chain elsewhere: what would make you actually try a Lightning path?
- Does the UTXO-size framing resonate?
- Can you think of other ways we can help people understand saving bitcoin 20k sats at at a time in cold storage isn't the best idea?
- Would the guidance at setup time be useful, or just feel patronising?
- AutoStack to Lightning, auto-send-to-cold-storage: appealing?
- Anything we're missing?
Not trying to talk anyone out of their setup. Trying to build something where the right approach is also the easiest one. Tell me what you think.