Lightning Labs is making significant strides towards ‘Bitcoinizing the dollar’, aiming to foster the creation of stablecoins and other assets on the Bitcoin blockchain through the use of the Lightning Network.
Lightning Labs launched “Taproot Assets” on the mainnet, facilitating the issuance of stablecoins and other financial assets on the Bitcoin blockchain.
According to the press release, these new developer tools are expected to evolve Bitcoin into a multi-asset network, elevating the protocol to a whole new financial level.
“This means that people all over the world will be able to access the global payments network of the future with just a mobile phone,” said Ryan Gentry, Lightning Labs Director of Business Development.
Gentry further explained that this innovation primarily targets people in emerging markets due to their increasing demand for digital dollars. He emphasized that stablecoins would likely be the main focus as users “just want to make USD transactions with high speed and low cost.”
The mix of Lightning’s instant settlement, global reach, and low fees, coupled with Bitcoin’s security and decentralization, is expected to significantly transform the network, attracting vast amounts of liquidity and transactional throughput.
Since August 2021, the Lightning Network has seen a staggering growth of 1,212% in terms of monthly transactions. The incorporation of these latest features could potentially drive this growth even further.
Gentry is hopeful that Taproot Assets will act as a “decentralizing force” for the Lightning Network, attracting more users, increasing network volume, and boosting routing fees, encouraging node operators to add more liquidity to the network.
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