On Tuesday, Ark Labs announced the public beta launch of the highly anticipated (at least among Bitcoin purists) Arkade, which is a new upper-layer network protocol built on top of the base Bitcoin blockchain that enables more user-friendly payments and extended financial use cases, while still retaining much of the underlying Bitcoin blockchain’s properties. The protocol is viewed by many as the most important Bitcoin protocol rollout since the Lightning Network back in 2018.

The basic idea with Arkade is to mix the benefits of the Bitcoin network’s inherently decentralized and non-custodial nature with the ease of use and speed that come in more traditional, centralized fintech systems. While many viewed the Lightning Network as the long-term solution for Bitcoin payments

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