Bitcoin News

Story: $5.1 Million Raised as Second Launches Bark on Bitcoin Mainnet

By Sakamoto Nashi

1 / 15

What Bark Changes for Bitcoin Payments. Bark is Second's in-house implementation of the Ark protocol.

2 / 15

The Bark SDK and Apps Available at Launch. Second delivers an entire ecosystem, not just a bare protocol.

3 / 15

$5.1 Million Raised, Eleven People, Former Blockstream Engineers. Second has raised $5.1 million from a private investor.

4 / 15

Second, a Bitcoin development lab, has just launched Bark on the mainnet. This is not a beta or a testnet—it's the real network.

5 / 15

Bark is Second's in-house implementation of the Ark protocol. Ark is a layer 2 solution that allows a large number of users to share on-chain UTXOs through pre-signed off-chain…

6 / 15

Second's Ark server is now open to the public for payments.

7 / 15

Second delivers an entire ecosystem, not just a bare protocol. The Bark SDK is written in Rust, with bindings for Kotlin, Swift, React Native, Flutter, Go, Python, and WebAssembly.

8 / 15

Four applications are already mainnet-compatible at launch. Noah, a complete Ark mobile wallet, combines a React Native frontend with a Rust backend.

9 / 15

For merchants, Second has also released a BTCPay Server plugin. This allows for self-custody Lightning payments without opening a channel or touching liquidity.

10 / 15

The breadth of the SDK—seven languages, a server daemon, four apps at launch—clearly bets on developer adoption. Second isn't banking on a single flagship wallet.

11 / 15

Read also: A Chinese court sentences a Bitcoin thief to nearly 11 years in prison

12 / 15

Second has raised $5.1 million from a private investor. The team consists of eleven people, including several former Blockstream engineers.

13 / 15

More context: Chinese Court Sends Bitcoin Thief to Prison for Nearly 11 Years After Seed Phrase Heist

14 / 15

The competitive landscape is crowded. Ark Labs is pushing Arkade, its own version of the protocol. Solutions based on statechains also exist.

15 / 15

What sets Bark apart from other attempts is perhaps precisely the SDK-first approach. Many layer 2 protocols have launched a single wallet and hoped that would suffice.

The Currency Analytics

Want the full story?