Hassan Maishera
TL;DR
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Lightning Labs has rolled out its Taproot Asset protocol on the Bitcoin mainnet.
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The protocol will give developers the tools needed to make Bitcoin a multi-asset network.
Lightning Labs’ Taproot Assets Is Now Live
Bitcoin layer-2 infrastructure developer Lightning Labs announced in a blog post on Wednesday that it has released its Taproot Assets protocol on the main network. Taproot Assets provides a feature-complete developer experience for issuing, managing, and exploring stablecoins or other assets on the bitcoin blockchain. It also enables the issuance of stablecoins and other assets on the Bitcoin and Lightning networks.
Ryan Gentry, director of development at Lightning Labs pointed out that with Taproot Assets v0.3, builders have all the tools needed to make bitcoin a multi-asset network, but in a scalable manner that upholds Bitcoin's core values.
He added that,
“These new Taproot Assets Lightning transactions will route through the existing bitcoin liquidity at the core of the network, allowing routing nodes to forward Taproot Assets transactions on Lightning without ever knowing it, extending bitcoin's global network effects and bolstering the blockchain's incredibly secure foundation. This is how we make bitcoin the global routing network for the internet of money. This is how we bitcoinize the dollar and the world's financial assets.”
Lightning Labs is working to see foreign exchange transactions settled over the Lightning network. According to the firm, the ability to add stablecoins to their applications is a major request they get from developers.
Developers who are interested can access the Taproot Assets daemon via the most recent Polar release, a popular tool for rapid prototyping amongst application developers. It is also available in litd v0.12, the bundle of Lightning Labs tools including lnd for node operations, liquidity management tools loopd and poold, accounting tools faraday, and now tapd for multi-asset support.
