The Stacks project was initiated in 2017 by Muneeb Ali, who had just completed his PhD. His thesis laid the groundwork for the Stacks layer for Bitcoin. The original whitepaper was released the same year, and the project gathered substantial support. Prior to this, the early team had been building protocols and apps on Bitcoin before they began working on Stacks. In 2019, Stacks conducted the first-ever SEC qualified token offering for the general public, including the US. From 2018 to 2020, the team focused on building out the Stacks infrastructure, which is a programming layer for Bitcoin. The Stacks cryptocurrency has a predefined supply that is set to reach approximately 1,818 million STX.