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Second, a Bitcoin development lab, has officially introduced Bark — its iteration of the Ark protocol — onto the Bitcoin mainnet, facilitating self-custodial bitcoin payments for developers and general users without the intricate setup typically required by the Lightning Network or on-chain transactions.
Bark is founded upon the Ark protocol, a secondary layer solution enabling extensive user participation in shared on-chain UTXOs through a network of pre-signed, off-chain transactions. This distributes fee burdens among participants while maintaining individual self-custody.
In contrast to Lightning, Ark eliminates the need for channel management or prior liquidity allocation, tackling challenges that have persistently steered mainstream users toward custodial solutions.
“Our objective was to simplify immensely the process for users to begin with self-custodial bitcoin, manage it, and spend it, free from unforeseen fees and without the necessity of overseeing channels or liquidity,” stated CEO Steven Roose in a blog entry.
As of this date, Second’s Ark server is publicly available for payment processing. The deployment encompasses a comprehensive developer toolkit — the Bark SDK — developed in Rust, with language integrations for Kotlin, Swift, React Native, Flutter, Go, Python, and WebAssembly. For server environments, Second also provides Barkd, an independent wallet daemon that offers a REST interface compliant with OpenAPI specifications.
A number of applications are already operational on the mainnet at its launch.
Noah is a complete mobile Ark wallet application that combines a React Native front end with a Rust back end. Arke is a meticulously designed native iOS wallet constructed with open-source user experience principles derived from bitcoin.design. Satsigner extends Sparrow-like UTXO administration and multisig functionalities to mobile users. Bark Wallet is an Umbrel application that supports Ark, Lightning, and on-chain payments.
A BTCPay Server plugin, also created by Second, empowers merchants to handle self-custodial Lightning payments without the need to open channels or manage liquidity.
Second has successfully secured $5.1 million in funding from a private investor and operates with a workforce of 11 individuals. The company has attracted significant industry professionals, including former engineers from Blockstream.
This release emerges during a period of intense competition within the Bitcoin layer-2 domain, where various protocols—including Ark Labs’ Arkade and solutions based on statechains—are striving to bridge the gap between self-custody and user-friendliness.
Second will also be facilitating a live AMA session on Stacker News on June 9th at 10:00 AM EST.
Learn more at : bitcoinmagazine.com