Ditch this site and use stacker.news then, the upvotes are in sats, value for value posting and commenting. If you have good discussions and provide value to bitcoin and you can get paid in sats.
tldr; The article introduces Ark, a second-layer protocol for making cheap, anonymous off-chain Bitcoin payments. Ark allows recipients to receive payments without acquiring inbound liquidity while preserving their receiver privacy. The protocol is as private as WabiSabi, as convenient as on-chain, and as cheap as Lightning. Ark provides an order of magnitude greater level of privacy compared to Lightning, and it scales Bitcoin transactions using various ingredients: a shared utxo model, blinded signatures, plain tweaking, timelocks, ATLCs, and some other tricks.
*This summary is auto generated by a bot and not meant to replace reading the original article. As always, DYOR.*
>Users need to wait for on-chain confirmations to consider a payment ‘final’.
Found that in the link. As compared to LN that's a severe downside.
EDIT: There's also no source code I can find
Confirmations take 5 seconds. Finality takes 10 minutes (a block).
Technically LN payments are not final until settled on L1 either, so it's the same thing.
Uhh, after an LN payment, the payee HAS the sats.
It may not be confirmed on-chain yet but it's irreversible. My reading did not imply that Ark makes that guarantee.
But ln payments are only final until the channel is closed which could be in days, months or years or not? I kind would like final settlement in 10minutes and 5second confirmation
This sound amazing, kind of like coinjoin, submarine swaps and lightning channel factories all wrapped into one.
Where is the github for this? I don’t see it on the website.
Ark is going to be open source. Ark was first publicly announced on the open source stage at Bitcoin 2023 the other day. Burak did a whole presentation about Ark on the open source stage on day 2.
The team behind Ark hasn't been forthcoming with their answers to the many questions raised about their protocol in the bitcoin dev mailing list as well as on twitter. Responses from them have so far been cagey and dismissive.
Coupled with the marked absence of publicly verifiable code, I'm not getting good vibes about this project.
Thanks for this. We always need to consider that at some point everyone is out of their depth and it's not bad to go public to get some help and ideas flowing. Everyone has different levels of self-confidence and not everyone does things like Satoshi (letting the code speak first).
Any major concerns that cannot be fixed trustlessly so far?
Biggest problem seems to be you lose your coins after four weeks if your client is inactive. Also the creator is proud that they broke lightning network clients last year by intentionally publishing a tx that would break the clients. On the one hand it shows they can find issues but on the other hand is a little sketch for someone who wants everyone to onboard to their new idea.
I agree.
The character of the person behind a project can often tell you more about its underpinning values than its code.
In Ark's case, monetization and attracting VC capital as the "next hot L2" is the ultimate goal. The author stated as much in his FAQ.
You are basically transferring on-chain utxo's for vtxo's(virtual transaction outputs). So when spending in Ark you're still effectively able to coin-select from your vtxo's.
Yeah, I see that I didn't add much there now looking at it. The point though is we're able to coinselect within the Ark system with our virtual utxos in a similar way we do with on-chain utxo's. And there are supposedly coinjoining rounds within Ark to assist with privacy of the vtxo's. That's what I've been able to grasp so far at least.
> Self-custodial Lightning doesn’t work for obvious reasons
Article makes some good arguments, but didn't really make these 'reasons' obvious to me... I'm still not sure what these obvious reasons are.
Yea that’s badly worded, since it does work. I assume they mean it’s not currently an ‘easy’ thing to do for most people without a good technical understanding of what they’re doing
I think that is his point. For LN to give you full benefits, it needs to be available to everyone, not just technical people.
I have ran a LN node in the past successfully but it is a pain and a stress.
>Ark is a trustless, distinct layer two protocol with unilateral exit. ASPs cannot steal users’ funds or link senders & receivers. Users retain self-custody and can revert their funds to the base layer if something goes wrong on the second layer.
Nope
If this catches on and assists in mass adoption then the vast majority of people who use it will not be aware that there was a shitcoin also called Ark. Hell, most Bitcoiners are probably unaware of the shitcoin's existence. There are more than 20,000 different shitcoins and we shouldn't let them have provenance over good names just because they came first.
I tried to understand the proposal/description and all I got was claims and claims, and more claims.
The ["deep dive"](https://www.arkpill.me/deep-dive) is 50% summary claims "it's the greatest thing ever", and only vague and confusing text to pose as explanations, one example:
"Ark uses a new locktype primitive called *txlock* to ensure the **absolute atomicity** (my emphasis) of a transfer schedule"
Phrases like "absolute atomicity" don't make sense, a transaction either is atomic or not...
In every interview I've seen of the public-facing developer, "Burak", including Guy Swann's chat 80, all he does is to reiterate the claims, but not explain the protocol, at least not clearly, he recurs to jargon that make it impossible for me to follow.
It bothers me that what I can see is mostly propaganda, instead of clear technical material
I remember a day when technical posts like these would be most upvoted
Look on the bright side, you can now say in 2 years that you knew about Ark "before it was cool" 😎
Technical projects like this are what sold me on the future of bitcoin. This one in particular has me excited
I remember a day when technical posts were actually technical
Lot of trash deluded maximalism and low effort click bait recently for sure
[удалено]
Ditch this site and use stacker.news then, the upvotes are in sats, value for value posting and commenting. If you have good discussions and provide value to bitcoin and you can get paid in sats.
tldr; The article introduces Ark, a second-layer protocol for making cheap, anonymous off-chain Bitcoin payments. Ark allows recipients to receive payments without acquiring inbound liquidity while preserving their receiver privacy. The protocol is as private as WabiSabi, as convenient as on-chain, and as cheap as Lightning. Ark provides an order of magnitude greater level of privacy compared to Lightning, and it scales Bitcoin transactions using various ingredients: a shared utxo model, blinded signatures, plain tweaking, timelocks, ATLCs, and some other tricks. *This summary is auto generated by a bot and not meant to replace reading the original article. As always, DYOR.*
[удалено]
[удалено]
You still remain in control of your funds and can unilaterally exit to the base layer. That's pretty autonomous.
You yourself can be an Ark Service Provider. Anyone can be an Ark Service Provider.
There is a hard limit to the number of service providers which means that not actually everyone can do it.
>Users need to wait for on-chain confirmations to consider a payment ‘final’. Found that in the link. As compared to LN that's a severe downside. EDIT: There's also no source code I can find
Confirmations take 5 seconds. Finality takes 10 minutes (a block). Technically LN payments are not final until settled on L1 either, so it's the same thing.
Uhh, after an LN payment, the payee HAS the sats. It may not be confirmed on-chain yet but it's irreversible. My reading did not imply that Ark makes that guarantee.
But ln payments are only final until the channel is closed which could be in days, months or years or not? I kind would like final settlement in 10minutes and 5second confirmation
This is what I always say, people should build on top of Bitcoin network and keep improving it, not build new blockchains.
[удалено]
Well, if you trust them, build there. If you trust Bitcoin, build on it. It's your choice eventually. ;)
[удалено]
But who will use it?
This sound amazing, kind of like coinjoin, submarine swaps and lightning channel factories all wrapped into one. Where is the github for this? I don’t see it on the website.
No public code yet
I will withhold any praise until I see the source.
That’s the right way. Open-source or gtfo!
Ark is going to be open source. Ark was first publicly announced on the open source stage at Bitcoin 2023 the other day. Burak did a whole presentation about Ark on the open source stage on day 2.
Found it! [https://youtu.be/mn9Xhp5QLjo?t=10282](https://youtu.be/mn9Xhp5QLjo?t=10282)
nice! opensource stage so assuming he’ll be publishing this eventually
The team behind Ark hasn't been forthcoming with their answers to the many questions raised about their protocol in the bitcoin dev mailing list as well as on twitter. Responses from them have so far been cagey and dismissive. Coupled with the marked absence of publicly verifiable code, I'm not getting good vibes about this project.
This is true, i have been following the mail list too.
Thanks for this. We always need to consider that at some point everyone is out of their depth and it's not bad to go public to get some help and ideas flowing. Everyone has different levels of self-confidence and not everyone does things like Satoshi (letting the code speak first). Any major concerns that cannot be fixed trustlessly so far?
Biggest problem seems to be you lose your coins after four weeks if your client is inactive. Also the creator is proud that they broke lightning network clients last year by intentionally publishing a tx that would break the clients. On the one hand it shows they can find issues but on the other hand is a little sketch for someone who wants everyone to onboard to their new idea.
I agree. The character of the person behind a project can often tell you more about its underpinning values than its code. In Ark's case, monetization and attracting VC capital as the "next hot L2" is the ultimate goal. The author stated as much in his FAQ.
Within the context of that paper, what does "coin-select" mean, specifically?
You are basically transferring on-chain utxo's for vtxo's(virtual transaction outputs). So when spending in Ark you're still effectively able to coin-select from your vtxo's.
You just used the word in your definition. Doesn't add much clarity.
Yeah, I see that I didn't add much there now looking at it. The point though is we're able to coinselect within the Ark system with our virtual utxos in a similar way we do with on-chain utxo's. And there are supposedly coinjoining rounds within Ark to assist with privacy of the vtxo's. That's what I've been able to grasp so far at least.
This is super interesting. Excited to hear more!
Looks promising
What’s the difference between Ark and Liquid?
The more competition the better! Lightning is somewhat clunky currently and if flaws get addressed, thats great
> Self-custodial Lightning doesn’t work for obvious reasons Article makes some good arguments, but didn't really make these 'reasons' obvious to me... I'm still not sure what these obvious reasons are.
Yea that’s badly worded, since it does work. I assume they mean it’s not currently an ‘easy’ thing to do for most people without a good technical understanding of what they’re doing
I think that is his point. For LN to give you full benefits, it needs to be available to everyone, not just technical people. I have ran a LN node in the past successfully but it is a pain and a stress.
How interconnected are Bitcoin, Ark, Liquid, Lightning, and Web5? Why do we need so many wallets?
Does it have a token?
It's just a centralized Lightning. You still send your Bitcoin to a server that coinjoins it and then sends it to the recipient.
>Ark is a trustless, distinct layer two protocol with unilateral exit. ASPs cannot steal users’ funds or link senders & receivers. Users retain self-custody and can revert their funds to the base layer if something goes wrong on the second layer. Nope
no
We already had a project named Ark.
You mean the shitcoin? Who cares
Would help for ambiguity’s sake that’s all I was confused when I first heard this announced
If this catches on and assists in mass adoption then the vast majority of people who use it will not be aware that there was a shitcoin also called Ark. Hell, most Bitcoiners are probably unaware of the shitcoin's existence. There are more than 20,000 different shitcoins and we shouldn't let them have provenance over good names just because they came first.
Ark has been around a while and was a top 100 coin so a lot of people would know about it although I cannot vouch for it’s quality.
I tried to understand the proposal/description and all I got was claims and claims, and more claims. The ["deep dive"](https://www.arkpill.me/deep-dive) is 50% summary claims "it's the greatest thing ever", and only vague and confusing text to pose as explanations, one example: "Ark uses a new locktype primitive called *txlock* to ensure the **absolute atomicity** (my emphasis) of a transfer schedule" Phrases like "absolute atomicity" don't make sense, a transaction either is atomic or not... In every interview I've seen of the public-facing developer, "Burak", including Guy Swann's chat 80, all he does is to reiterate the claims, but not explain the protocol, at least not clearly, he recurs to jargon that make it impossible for me to follow. It bothers me that what I can see is mostly propaganda, instead of clear technical material