Ark's superpower lies in its ability to leverage native Bitcoin script 🦸🏻♂️
Scaling UTXO-based contracts has the potential to enable a new generation of financial applications.
Today, we're happy to share our work on Virtual Channels, bringing instant settlement to Ark .
Few might remember that payment channels predate the Lightning Network ⚡️
Early implementations, like the unidirectional channels in bitcoinj, never caught on for a variety of reasons
One obvious downside comes from the high on-chain costs associated with channel setups.
Ark allows us to revisit this concept, unburdened by Bitcoin's limited block space.
Cost-effective deployment of payment channels becomes possible!
For users, Virtual Channels offer notable advantages over Lightning:
No backups ✅
No liveness requirements ✅
No routing ✅
Thanks to Tapscript, we can extend bare VTXO script beyond a single signer
By defining additional spending paths, we can encapsulate multi-party contracts within VTXOs, enabling the creation of Virtual Channels
Details and code snippets below👇
Virtual Channels are just the beginning!
By extending Bitcoin's script capabilities through Ark, we’re opening the door to a broader financial infrastructure secured by Bitcoin's consensus rules.
Blog - Ark Labs
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
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