Ark Labs Forms New Company to Build Faster, Cheaper Bitcoin Payments System

The team behind Bitcoin layer-2 protocol Ark has formed a new company called Ark Labs, which aims to build a faster and cheaper payments system on the world's largest blockchain. The primary objective of the new company is to develop an open implementation of the Ark Protocol and build services for users. Ark's off-chain payments use a virtual unspent transaction output (VTXO) model to facilitate one-time-only payments, avoiding the "inbound liquidity" problem of Lightning. The first service is expected to be launched later this year.