Burak Keceli, a 24-year-old self-taught Bitcoin developer and researcher, who gained attention last year for disrupting a significant portion of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, is now proposing a new layer 2 protocol called Ark. According to Keceli, Ark aims to solve Lightning’s “inbound liquidity” problem.
Inbound liquidity refers to the ability to receive funds on the Lightning Network, which is a layer 2 payment network designed to facilitate faster and cheaper Bitcoin transactions. However, establishing the capacity to receive funds requires committing funds and making outbound payments.
Keceli believes that Ark, similar to the Lightning Network, will enhance the efficiency and speed of Bitcoin transactions. However, the key distinction is that Ark eliminates the need for recipients to commit funds.
Keceli expressed his concerns about Lightning’s inbound liquidity problem, stating that it doesn’t make sense to require money to receive money in a payment system. Inspired by this issue, he developed Ark.
Ark operates differently from Lightning. While Lightning requires users to commit funds to create liquidity, Ark employs Ark service providers (ASPs) who offer 24-hour liquidity services for a fee. Rather than traditional channels, Ark uses a shared unspent transaction output (UTXO) model with virtual unspent transaction outputs (VTXOs) for one-time payments.
Keceli clarified that Ark and Lightning can coexist and complement each other. An Ark service provider can also function as a Lightning service provider by running a Bitcoin node, an Ark service provider node, and a Lightning node.
Currently, Ark is in the early stages of development. Keceli is focusing on addressing questions from the Bitcoin community and finalizing technical specifications. He plans to establish Ark Labs, an infrastructure company similar to Lightning Labs or Blockstream, to build key Ark infrastructure, including the client, daemon, CLI, SDK, and other tools. Keceli intends to raise capital to support the development and growth of Ark Labs.
