Bitcoin Startups Go All-In on New Layer 2 Scaling Protocol
A new project unveiled today, a year after it was proposed, is dedicated to making the Ark concept a reality. Ark Labs has announced that it is developing a Bitcoin Layer 2 network and hopes to capitalize on the growing demand for scalable and affordable Bitcoin payment solutions.
Marco Argentieri, CEO of Ark Labs, shared his perspective on the protocol’s evolution since its initial launch in an interview with Bitcoin Magazine.
“After months of building prototypes and putting together proofs of concept, we believe Ark is ready to enter the next phase of development and are excited to share this opportunity with the industry.”
Using accounts and virtual transactions orchestrated by trustless servers, Ark enables inexpensive off-chain transfers between participants who consent to the system.
The simple server-client architecture allows this to be achieved without the tradeoffs typically associated with non-custodial systems. Argentieri believes the protocol is well-positioned to support the growth of other sidechain protocols such as Lightning and Liquid.
“We see all of these solutions as complementary. There are clear synergies between Ark and Lightning, and we hope to leverage them to build better, more stable products for the entire ecosystem.”
Now is the time
Although the project caught the attention of the Bitcoin community last year, its momentum stalled when the protocol was included in conversations about covenants and other upgrades. Argentieri believes there is an opportunity to move forward despite ongoing discussions about future soft fork improvements.
“We are currently developing two versions of Ark that we can implement. One is Bitcoin and the other is Liquid Network. Covenants will improve the user experience, but we believe this technology already has many commercial use cases.”
Ark Labs is already working with partners and expects to have an application or product available in late 2024.
Currently, Argentieri and his team of veteran Bitcoin developers are focused on providing a flexible implementation of the protocol to make it easy to integrate Ark services into applications. To achieve this, they have open sourced their implementation and are inviting other stakeholders to contribute to their efforts.
“We hope other teams and implementations will contribute to the Ark protocol to ensure the best standards and practices are in place. Our goal is to give every wallet access to Ark servers in the same way you can use Lightning today.”
He recognizes that the current infrastructure is still very immature, but is confident it has the pieces to execute on the original vision.
“We all pitched in.”
