Lightning Labs releases Taproot Assets alpha, bringing stablecoins to Bitcoin

Bitcoin layer-2 infrastructure steadfast Lightning Labs has released the mainnet alpha of Taproot Assets, a protocol aimed astatine enabling stablecoins and real-world assets to beryllium issued connected the Bitcoin and Lightning Network.

The existent version, Taproot Assets v0.3, volition supply a “feature-complete developer experience” to issue, negociate and research stablecoins and different assets connected the Bitcoin blockchain, according to Ryan Gentry, caput of concern improvement astatine Lightning Labs.

“We judge this caller epoch for Bitcoin volition spot a myriad of planetary currencies issued arsenic Taproot Assets, and the world's overseas speech transactions settled instantly implicit the Lightning Network.”

“With this release, developers tin contented fiscal assets on-chain successful a scalable manner,” Lightning Labs stated connected Oct. 18 successful a abstracted post. “Today marks a caller epoch of multi-asset bitcoin.”

— Lightning Labs⚡️ (@lightning) October 18, 2023

This mentation of Taproot Assets volition work by routing done existing Bitcoin liquidity connected the Lightning Network.

Gentry says the integration volition widen Bitcoin’s web effects and determination it 1 measurement person toward “bitcoinizing the dollar.” He added:

“This is however we marque bitcoin the planetary routing web for the net of money. This is however we bitcoinize the dollar and the world's fiscal assets.”

Gentry described developer request for stablecoin applications connected Bitcoin arsenic “overwhelming” — peculiarly fixed that immoderate stablecoin issuers clasp much United States Treasuries than the likes of Germany, South Korea.

The aboriginal we deserve#bitcoin https://t.co/XW433TVEIL

— Paolo Ardoino (@paoloardoino) October 18, 2023

“[It] signifies the value of these assets globally, and gives a consciousness of standard for the planetary idiosyncratic demand,” Gentry added.

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Nearly 2,000 Taproot Assets were minted connected testnets implicit the past respective months successful the pb up to the mainnet alpha launch, according to Gentry.

Alpha launches typically mean the web isn’t successful its last state. Lightning Labs said the alpha tag indicates that they expect the assemblage to trial it for imaginable bugs.

Bitcoin Drivechains (through Bitcoin Improvement Proposal-300), Botanix Labs’ Spiderchain and the BitVM are among the different developments successful the Bitcoin ecosystem looking to grow Bitcoin’s capabilities.

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