- Ark Labs secured a $5.2 million seed round from Tether and Anchorage Digital to build a programmable layer for Bitcoin.
- The company’s Arkade technology executes transactions off-chain for privacy, with fail-safe mechanisms to reclaim assets if the server fails.
- The firm’s goal is to expand stablecoin and real-world asset use on Bitcoin, with the backing of Paypal’s former VP and other venture capital firms.
- While Tether hasn’t committed to issuing USDT on Arkade yet, Ark Labs is working with a “smaller issuer” active in the Global South.
Ark Labs, a Bitcoin infrastructure startup in Lugano, Switzerland, announced Thursday it secured a $5.2 million seed round with backing from stablecoin giant Tether and the federally chartered digital asset bank Anchorage Digital. The funding aims to advance the company’s Arkade layer, which expands Bitcoin’s capacity for stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets.
Consequently, this brings Ark’s total institutional funding to over $7.7 million and includes participation from former PayPal executive Ralph Ho and several venture capital firms. The firm is betting its technology can shift the current dominance of networks like Ethereum and Solana for commercial smart contract functions.
Arkade processes transactions off-chain to improve scalability and privacy. However, the system includes a crucial safety net, as “If the server happens to go offline for whatever reason, you keep a copy of your latest Bitcoin balance as a pre-signed transaction,” explained Alex Bergeron of Ark Labs.
Tether has not yet committed to issuing its USDT stablecoin on the new layer. However, Ark Labs hopes to become part of the stablecoin’s footprint by year’s end and has already secured a “smaller issuer” widely used across the Global South. Tether previously ended support for USDT on the Bitcoin-based Omni layer in 2023, according to reports.
Meanwhile, the investment continues Tether‘s partnership with Lugano, which began in 2022 to establish the city as a blockchain hub. The duo recently unveiled the second phase of “Plan B,” a $6.3 million commitment to build digital sovereignty. Notably, Tether has also been reportedly stacking Gold in a former local nuclear bunker.
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