Lightning Labs Releases Mainnet Alpha of Taproot Assets, Enabling Stablecoins on Bitcoin

Bitcoin layer-2 infrastructure firm Lightning Labs has unveiled the mainnet alpha of Taproot Assets, a protocol designed to facilitate the issuance of stablecoins and real-world assets on the Bitcoin and Lightning Network.

Taproot Assets v0.3, the current version, offers a "feature-complete developer experience" for issuing, managing, and exploring stablecoins and other assets on the Bitcoin blockchain, according to Ryan Gentry, head of business development at Lightning Labs.

"We believe this new era for 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," Gentry said.

With this release, developers can issue financial assets on-chain in a scalable manner," Lightning Labs announced in a separate post. "Today marks a new era of multi-asset bitcoin."

This version of Taproot Assets will utilize existing Bitcoin liquidity on the Lightning Network for routing.

Gentry explained that this integration will enhance Bitcoin's network effects and bring it closer to "bitcoinizing the dollar." He stated, "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."

According to Gentry, the demand from developers for stablecoin applications on Bitcoin has been "overwhelming," especially considering that some stablecoin issuers hold more US Treasuries than countries like Germany and South Korea. He added, "It signifies the importance of these assets globally and gives a sense of scale for the global user demand."

Leading up to the mainnet alpha launch, nearly 2,000 Taproot Assets were created on testnets over the past few months. Gentry noted that the alpha release indicates that the network is not yet in its final state and expects the community to test it for potential bugs.

In addition to Taproot Assets, other developments in the Bitcoin ecosystem, such as Bitcoin Drivechains, Botanix Labs' Spiderchain, and the BitVM, are also working to expand Bitcoin's capabilities.