Ark is all about making Bitcoin transactions cheaper, faster, and more private.
You can find us on Discord, StackExchange, Github, and at Arkdev.info.
So, what is Ark?
Basically, Ark is a layer two solution designed to boost Bitcoin’s scalability by making transactions:
- cheaper
- more private
- lightning fast
- with less need for both the sender and receiver to be online at the same time.
How does it work?
In a nutshell, Ark uses a shared UTXO model for off-chain payments. Users get started with an ASP (Ark Server Provider) by funding an output. This output can later be used as a Virtual Transaction Output (VTXO) in future rounds, allowing users to move Bitcoin off-chain through the ASP (like sending to others using the same ASP) or through other connected ASPs via lightning. You can check out more details on it here.
What about self-custody?
Users maintain custody of their funds as long as they interact with their ASP at least once every few days. If a user doesn’t log in during that timeframe, the ASP can claim the funds after a certain timeout. You can find more info on that here.
Does Ark need a softfork?
Ark functions better with covenants, which need a softfork, but it can still work without them. In that case, senders act as co-signers in each round. There’s a page explaining the differences between covenant-less Ark (or clArk) and Ark, but honestly, I don’t think it fully sums up the main downsides of clArk.
What are the major downsides of clArk?
Clients have to keep signatures for the rounds they take part in to unilaterally...
Would like this thread to be revived a bit
As some may know there were some interesting developments regarding Ark in the last year. There is a public beta (see this thread) of an implementation called ArkadeOS, and there are also other new software projects based on the Ark concept.
With Tether, a big stablecoin company is considering releasing its stablecoin on Ark.
I also quote a post where I listed a few wallets I found:
Honestly, I haven't heard about The Ark, this is my first time but I have a latent question to why the Ark when there is LN. I got my answers in this article but not without some contradictions.
About ASP claiming funds when a user is offline after a specific timeout, I visited the project and asked them the question of whether a user is offline for a whole day, I got this answer.
It's a bit scary. However, they mentioned an escape route which is "delegation" where users can delegate VTXO renewal to a third party. Here the self custody is being traded for availability risk.
I will say that The Ark removes the burden of channel management by introducing ASP but then the promise of "no need being online always" is not guaranteed.
I think The Ark will face greater adoption challenge than LN. LN hasn't fully broken through even without softfork, a solution that depends on SF will definitely face greater adoption challenge
When I talked about this with Burak a couple of years ago, he said that the reference implementation would be written in Rust and Go.
However, I believe this repo is just 3rd party software, as one thing I am sure about is that the reference implementation lives on Github. Not Gitlab where this repo takes me.