Developers update Taproot Assets protocol for the Lightning Network

Lightning Labs unveiled a new version of the Taproot Assets protocol v0.2 (formerly Taro) for issuing assets on the Bitcoin blockchain and on the Lightning Network (LN).

Today we’re excited to announce the newest version of Taproot Assets ?, a scalable protocol to issue assets on #bitcoin and Lightning.

With this release, developers have the core set of features to bitcoinize the dollar in a chain-efficient manner! ?⛓️https://t.co/7WmeDjNnM2

— Lightning Labs⚡️? (@lightning) May 16, 2023

The solution is available in the LN testnet alongside a core set of features for application developers. Mainnet support is expected in the near term.

The team released an early version of the protocol in 2022. Its creation was made possible by the activation of the Taproot upgrade on the Bitcoin blockchain.

The protocol is designed to operate as autonomously as possible, in particular to avoid blockchain congestion that we have observed recently. In this release, an unlimited number of assets can be created and/or moved in a single transaction,

the Lightning Labs developers stressed.

According to them, with the new version of Taproot Assets the team is advancing toward its goal — to make LN a network with multiple assets, including support for stablecoins for developing markets.

After finishing work on the payment-channel components, users will be able to use the existing LN infrastructure and almost 5500 BTC of network capacity for global currency routing without the need to create a separate liquidity ecosystem, the developers added.

The OmniBOLT project team is working on integrating into LN BRC-20 tokens “for faster and more efficient transactions”.