Introduction

Ark is a scaling solution for Bitcoin that involves moving transactions off-chain. Ark executes transactions outside of the Bitcoin main chain but posts transaction data back on-chain in a compressed format. Ark servers bundle multiple off-chain transactions into large batches before submitting them to the Bitcoin blockchain. This method spreads fixed costs across multiple transactions in each batch, significantly reducing fees for end-users.

📜 How Does Ark Work?

Head over to our Learn section to understand the Ark protocol in detail.

⛹️‍♀️ Use cases

• Scaling of other protocols that leverage UTXO model such as tokens, channels or swaps.
• Create a Bitcoin wallet for your users with cheap and fast transactions.
• Rebalance Lightning Network channels.

👩‍💻 Integrate Ark

You can integrate Ark into your wallet or application to enable "virtual" bitcoin transactions. Check out our Wallet SDKs for Go and JavaScript, soon also Rust and Python.

🏃‍♀️ Running Ark

You can join an existing Ark Server or run your own on Bitcoin or Liquid. To get started, follow the guides below:

• Sending and receiving funds as client
• Running an Ark Server and provide liquidity

⌨️ Contributing

We welcome contributions from the community. If you'd like to contribute to the reference implementation, please see the Ark GitHub.

➰ Stay in the Loop

• Join the Ark Labs developer chat on Discord.
• Ask questions or get help on Stack Exchange.
• Join the Ark community on Telegram.

⚖️ License

By contributing to this repository, you agree to license your work under the MIT license, unless specified otherwise. Contributions not originally authored by you must include a license header with the original author(s) and source.