Lightning Labs eyes improving stablecoin settlement with launch of updated Taproot Assets

Lightning Labs announced that Taproot Assets v0.4 has been released on mainnet, ushering in the ability to mint digital assets like stablecoins on Bitcoin and then send them via the Lightning Network.

"With Taproot Assets, users can make instant, low fee asset transfers, bringing trillions of stablecoin volume to bitcoin," Lightning Labs posted to X.

An earlier version of Taproot Assets, launched on mainnet late last year, did not include Lightning Network support.

Now, "instead of each asset issuer needing to bootstrap their own sub-network of liquidity and routing nodes, all issuers can leverage the existing network effects of the 5,400 bitcoin allocated to the Lightning Network," the company said in a blog post. "We now have the ability to make bitcoin and Lightning multi-asset networks in a scalable manner anchored in bitcoin's security and decentralization."

Lightning Labs proposes to transform Bitcoin into a scalable multi-asset network. Its developers hope to bring added efficiency to the massive stablecoin market which primarily relies on the Ethereum and Tron networks. 

Last year, Lightning Labs's executive Ryan Gentry said that, as a stablecoin protocol, Taproot Assets will be both less expensive and safer.

"It will integrate with the Lightning Network, which provides the instant settlement and low fee experience that stablecoin users continually demand," he said. "And it settles onto the Bitcoin blockchain, which is by far the most secure and reliable."