A year following its proposal<\/a>, a new project revealed today is committed to bringing the Ark concept<\/a> into reality. Ark Labs<\/a> has announced it is developing the Bitcoin layer-two network and hopes to capitalize on the growing demand for scalable, low-cost Bitcoin payment solutions.<\/p>\n Speaking with Bitcoin Magazine, Marco Argentieri, CEO of Ark Labs, shared his perspective on the evolution of the protocol since its initial release. <\/p>\n \u201cAfter months of prototyping and putting together proofs-of-concept, we believe Ark is ready to enter the next stage of its development and we are excited to share this opportunity with the industry\u201d.<\/p>\n Diagram of the Ark network infrastructure<\/p>\n Using accounts and virtual transactions coordinated by a trustless server, Ark enables low-cost off-chain transfers between participants who opt into the system. <\/p>\n Because of its simple server-client architecture, it manages to achieve this without the trade-offs usually associated with non-custodial systems. Argentieri believes the protocol is well-positioned to support the growth of Lightning and other sidechain protocols like Liquid. <\/p>\n \u201cWe look at all of those solutions as complementary. There is an obvious synergy between Ark and Lightning which we hope to leverage to build better, more reliable, products for the entire ecosystem\u201d.<\/p>\n After the project captured the attention of the Bitcoin community last year, momentum stalled once the protocol got caught up in the conversations around covenants and other upgrades. Argentieri thinks there\u2019s an opportunity to move forward despite the ongoing debate on future soft fork improvements. <\/p>\n \u201cWe are working on two versions of Ark that can be implemented today, one on Bitcoin and the other on the Liquid Network. Covenants will improve the user experience but we think the technology already has many commercial use cases\u201d.<\/p>\n Ark Labs is already engaged with partners and expects applications or products to be launched later in 2024. <\/p>\nThe Time Is Now<\/h3>\n