Making Bitcoin cheap to spend with Ark

Welcome back to The Gwart Show! Today, Alex B from Ark Labs joins us to talk about the Ark protocol and Arkade implementation - a Bitcoin layer 2 that uses transaction batching and virtual UTXOs to scale Bitcoin beyond Lightning. We explore how Ark competes with roll-ups, enables Bitcoin capital markets, and could transform Lightning's UX while maintaining self-custody. Alex explains the technical innovations, use cases from payments to lending, and why this could be Bitcoin's answer to Ethereum's scaling solutions.

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NOTES:

• Phoenix wallet charges 0.4% per transaction

• Bitcoin market cap reached $2 trillion

• Roll-ups rely on bridge security assumptions

• Ark enables unlimited swap throughput

Chapters:

00:00 Start

01:03 What is Ark?

13:34 Sequencers

16:15 Why rollups?

23:47 Security Counsel

28:17 Ellipsis Labs

29:18 EVM vs Ark

35:41 Arkade's killer app

51:30 Bitcoin payments

1:02:17 All innovation comes back to Bitcoin

1:12:12 Fragmented liquidity

1:15:35 Open source

1:19:42 Wen Arkade beta?

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The Gwart Show is sponsored by Ellipsis Labs, the builders behind Atlas, a blockchain for verifiable finance and Phoenix, an on-chain orderbook DEX with over $50 billion in unincentivized volume.

If you're interested in a mission-driven company, Ellipsis Labs is hiring engineers passionate about crypto and finance to work on Atlas.

Learn more and apply on Twitter at @Ellipsis_Labs and @atlasxyz.

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