Lugano-based Bitcoin infrastructure startup Ark Labs has raised a $5.2 million seed round backed by Tether and Anchorage Digital. The funding aims to advance the expansion of stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets on Arkade, its programmable Bitcoin layer. The technology processes transactions off-chain with fail-safe measures for users to retrieve their Bitcoin if the system fails.
Tether and Anchorage Digital have backed Bitcoin infrastructure startup Ark Labs in a $5.2 million seed funding round. The Lugano, Switzerland-based firm plans to use the capital to bolster stablecoin and real-world asset activity on its programmable Bitcoin layer, Arkade. The funding round also included participation from PayPal’s former vice president Ralph Ho and other venture capital firms, bringing Ark’s total institutional backing to over $7.7 million.
Arkade seeks to improve Bitcoin’s scalability by executing transactions off-chain, a design that also prevents the public broadcast of fund movements. Although users must lock up Bitcoin and trust a central server, the system is designed with a fail-safe recovery mechanism.
“If the server happens to go offline for whatever reason, you keep a copy of your latest Bitcoin balance as a pre-signed transaction that the server gave you,” stated Alex Bergeron, head of ecosystem at Ark Labs. “And then if the server goes away, you get to broadcast those transactions on-chain, and you’re left with vanilla Bitcoin.”
Bergeron added that Tether hasn’t yet committed to issuing its flagship USDT stablecoin on Arkade, noting support for assets beyond Bitcoin isn’t battle-tested. The firm hopes to become part of USDT‘s $184 billion footprint by year-end and has already secured a smaller issuer widely used across the Global South.
Tether ended support for USDT on the Bitcoin Omni layer in 2023. The stablecoin issuer unveiled the second phase of its partnership with Lugano earlier this month, a $6.3 million commitment to build digital sovereignty.
