Lightning Labs, a Bitcoin Layer 2 infrastructure company has released Taproot Alpha main net in a move to bring stablecoins and Real World Assets to second layer BTC-LTC Lightning Networks.
The announcement is also an admission that ‘Bitcoin-only’ sentiment is a double-standard in the industry, which does not hold water in practice. Moreover, the move is a testament to ongoing Bitcoiner efforts to broaden the size and scope of financial products and services built on second-layer Bitcoin-Litecoin technology, not dissimilar to traditional finance.
In a blog post on Wednesday, Lightning Labs’ Ryan Gentry explained that the release would be a feature-complete developer experience that aims to bring stablecoins and other assets onto the Bitcoin (and by extension) Litecoin blockchains.
Announcing the first mainnet release of Taproot Assets 🥕, a protocol for assets on #bitcoin and Lightning.
With this release, developers can issue financial assets on-chain in a scalable manner. 💱
Today marks a new era of multi-asset bitcoin. 🌅https://t.co/2cNvZSvv8v
— Lightning Labs⚡️🍠 (@lightning) October 18, 2023
“With Taproot Assets v0.3, builders have all the tools needed to make bitcoin a multi-asset network, but in a scalable manner that upholds bitcoin’s core values,” said Gentry.
We believe this new era for bitcoin will see a myriad of global currencies issued as Taproot Assets, and the world’s foreign exchange transactions settled instantly over the Lightning Network.
The protocol will route assets via current Bitcoin liquidity networks, allowing routing nodes to forward Taproot Assets on the Lightning Network.
This is how we make bitcoin the global routing network for the internet of money. This is how we bitcoinize the dollar and the world’s financial assets.
According to Gentry, bout 2,000 Taproot Assets were minted on testnets over the last few months in the run up to the mainnet alpha launch.
An Alpha launch means the product is not yet ready for release, but is open for community testing to uncover potential bugs.
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