One yr after the proposal was made, a brand new undertaking unveiled in the present day is devoted to turning the Ark idea into actuality. Ark Labs has introduced that it’s creating a second-layer Bitcoin community and hopes to capitalize on the rising demand for scalable, low-cost Bitcoin fee options.
In an interview with Bitcoin Journal, Ark Labs CEO Marco Argentieri shared his ideas on the evolution of the protocol since its preliminary launch.
“After months of prototyping and proof-of-concept, we imagine Ark is able to transfer into its subsequent section of growth, and we’re excited to share this chance with the business.”
By utilizing accounts and digital transactions coordinated by trustless servers, Ark permits low-cost off-chain transfers between members who select to affix the system.
Due to its easy server-client structure, it is ready to obtain this with out the trade-offs sometimes related to unmanaged methods. Argentieri believes the protocol is well-positioned to help the event of the Lightning Community and different sidechain protocols similar to Liquid.
“We imagine all of those options are complementary. There are clear synergies between Ark and the Lightning Community, and we hope to leverage this synergy to construct higher, extra dependable merchandise for your complete ecosystem.
It is now
After the undertaking caught the eye of the Bitcoin neighborhood final yr, momentum stalled as soon as the protocol grew to become slowed down in discussions surrounding contracts and different upgrades. Argentieri believes that whereas the controversy over future gentle fork enhancements continues, there are nonetheless alternatives to maneuver ahead.
“We’re creating two variations of Ark which might be accessible now, one on Bitcoin and one on the Liquid community. The contract will enhance the consumer expertise, however we expect there are already many business use instances for the know-how.”
Ark Labs has engaged with companions and expects purposes or merchandise to be launched later in 2024.
Presently, Argentieri and his workforce of veteran Bitcoin builders are targeted on offering a versatile protocol implementation to simply combine Ark providers into purposes. To realize this, they’re open sourcing their implementation and alluring different stakeholders to contribute to their efforts.
“We hope that different groups and implementations will begin contributing to the Ark protocol in order that we will provide you with greatest requirements and practices. Our purpose is to permit each pockets to entry Ark servers identical to they will now utilizing the Lightning Community.”
Whereas he acknowledges that the present infrastructure remains to be very immature, he firmly believes that these elements are there to execute the unique imaginative and prescient.
“We’re all right here.”