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Ark Labs Raises $5.2M Backed by Tether to Build Programmable Finance on Bitcoin

Ark Labs Raises $5.2M Backed by Tether to Build Programmable Finance on Bitcoin

Bitcoin is reshaping global markets and deserves the programmable infrastructure that modern financial applications require. Today, we're announcing a $5.2M seed round to build it, with partners who share that conviction. The round includes Tether, Ego Death Capital, Epoch VC, Lion26, Sats Ventures and Contribution Capital, with

The Case Against Payment Blockchains

The Case Against Payment Blockchains

Payments don't just need faster rails, they need programmable money. Consider what happens every time you pull out a credit card. @Slashapp, a fintech company doing $4 billion in annual volume on Visa rails, recently detailed the process: an elaborate flow tracking authorization, incremental auth, partial capture, reversal,

Native Assets on Bitcoin: Introducing Arkade Assets

Native Assets on Bitcoin: Introducing Arkade Assets

Today, we're excited to share Arkade Assets, our framework for bringing stablecoins and other digital assets to Bitcoin. We’ve designed the protocol to be native to Arkade meaning no requirements on external indexers or social consensus. Arkade Assets extends Arkade's UTXO-based architecture to support multiple

Press Start: Arkade Goes Live

Press Start: Arkade Goes Live

Today, we're opening Arkade to the world, the first step in Bitcoin's evolution from static money to a global, open financial platform.

Closing the Lightning Loop: Bitcoin's Missing Layer Secretly Goes Live

Ten months ago, we embarked on a mission to tackle one of Bitcoin's longest-standing challenges: building truly accessible payment infrastructure. We set out to "close the Lightning liquidity loop" using a combination of Ark's VTXO system alongside virtual swap providers. Earlier this month at

Adios, Expiry: Rethinking Liveness and Liquidity in Arkade

Adios, Expiry: Rethinking Liveness and Liquidity in Arkade

Introducing trust-minimized delegation and the Intent coordination framework Arkade's batch expiry mechanism serves an important role in liquidity management. Periodic renewal of VTXOs allow for efficient allocation of resources across the system. Active users pay fees proportional to the time value of money. In Ark-based protocols, Operators provide

Exploring Taproot Assets in Ark

taproot-assets Featured

Exploring Taproot Assets in Ark

As Bitcoin infrastructure matures, so do the ways developers explore asset representation on-chain. Taproot Assets offer a compact and Bitcoin-native format for token issuance, built atop Taproot and Merkle-Sum Sparse Merkle Trees (MS-SMT). In this post, we experiment with integrating Taproot Assets into Ark’s offchain batching layer. Specifically, we

Introducing the Ark Wallet SDK

Introducing the Ark Wallet SDK

The Ark Wallet SDK, a TypeScript-powered toolkit for building Bitcoin wallets with both on-chain and off-chain transaction support.

Bitcoin Virtual Channels: Bringing Instant Settlement To Ark

Bitcoin Virtual Channels: Bringing Instant Settlement To Ark

Leveraging Ark’s VTXO paradigm, Virtual Channels enable efficient, low-cost Bitcoin payment channels by lifting smart contracts off-chain One of the most promising opportunities introduced by Ark is the ability to lift Bitcoin-native contracts onto off-chain trees. Payment channels are an ideal candidate to showcase this potential. While payment channels

Introducing Ark Notes

Ark Notes are a proposed mechanism designed to facilitate the recovery of expired funds by Ark users. They are virtual equivalent of vouchers signed by Ark Server and redeemable in Ark rounds. VTXO Expiry: A UX Issue for Ark Mobile Clients The Ark protocol requires servers to front the liquidity

Unlocking Liquidity Before Shared Output Expiration

A new VTXO Tree signing scheme that allows the server to unlock liquidity before a round expiration. Building on insights from Brandon Black, we present a generalized method for Ark clients to collaborate with Ark Servers to release liquidity ahead of the expiration of the shared output that commits to

Ark Labs at Bitcoin Amsterdam 2024: Lightning Without the Storms & The Future of Bitcoin Scaling

Ark Labs at Bitcoin Amsterdam 2024: Lightning Without the Storms & The Future of Bitcoin Scaling

Earlier this month at Bitcoin Amsterdam 2024, Ark Labs CEO Marco Argentieri took the stage for an eagerly awaited panel, as well as to…

Ark Labs Secures $2.5 Million Pre-Seed to Power the Future of Bitcoin-Driven Global Commerce

Ark Labs Secures $2.5 Million Pre-Seed to Power the Future of Bitcoin-Driven Global Commerce

Some big news from the Lab — we’ve just closed a $2.5 million pre-seed fundraise, led by visionary investor Tim Draper

Introducing Ark Labs: A new venture to bring seamless and scalable payments to bitcoin

Introducing Ark Labs: A new venture to bring seamless and scalable payments to bitcoin

Today, we’re proud to unveil Ark Labs, a new company dedicated to building bitcoin layer-two solutions based on the new Ark protocol.