Taproot Assets is “how we bitcoinize the dollar and the world’s financial assets,” according to Ryan Gentry, head of business development at Lightning Labs.
The mainnet alpha of Taproot Assets, a protocol designed to allow stablecoins and real-world assets to be created on the Bitcoin and Lightning Network, has been made available by Lightning Labs, a provider of layer-2 infrastructure for Bitcoin.
According to Ryan Gentry, head of business development at Lightning Labs, the current version, Taproot Assets v0.3, will offer a “feature-complete developer experience” for issuing, managing, and exploring stablecoins and other assets on the Bitcoin blockchain.
“We believe this new era of Bitcoin will see a myriad of global currencies issued as Taproot Assets, and the world’s foreign exchange transactions settled instantly over the Lightning Network.”
According to a second article published by Lightning Labs on October 18, “With this release, developers can issue financial assets on-chain in a scalable manner.” “The multi-asset Bitcoin era begins today.”
This iteration of Taproot Assets will function by passing through the Lightning Network’s current Bitcoin BTC $34,725 liquidity.
According to Gentry, the integration will increase the network effects of Bitcoin and bring it one step closer to “bitcoinizing the dollar.”
“This is how we turn Bitcoin into the world’s largest payment routing system. This is how the dollar and other global financial assets get bitcoinized.
The demand from developers for stablecoin apps on Bitcoin, according to Gentry, is “overwhelming,” especially in light of the fact that certain stablecoin issuers possess more US Treasury bonds than nations like Germany and South Korea.
“[It] shows the value of these assets on a global scale and provides a sense of scale for the user demand,” Gentry continued.
According to Gentry, in the months leading up to the mainnet alpha launch, around 2,000 Taproot Assets were created on testnets.
Launching an alpha often indicates that the development isn’t complete. According to Lightning Labs, the alpha designation signifies that they anticipate the public testing it for potential flaws.
The BitVM, Botanix Labs’ Spiderchain, and Bitcoin Drivechains (via Bitcoin Improvement Proposal-300) are a few notable initiatives in the Bitcoin ecosystem aiming to increase Bitcoin’s functionality.
