Who are 'Arkade'?
I think I have a reasonable understanding of the tech (vUTXOs, 'rounds', ASPs), but I curious about the community around it.
Is Arkade a community of FOSS people, or a commercial profit-making entity? I couldn't find any of that info on the wallet
I'm really excited to use Ark(ade), and also to find out more about who is driving this and how this can drive more free and open source software
Arkade is the server operated by Ark Labs.
It is a commercial venture. All of our coe is FOSS.
Thanks for the quick update! When you say "server" I guess you mean Ark Service Provider?
And multiple other servers can be setup, by a variety of individuals and organizations, using that open source software?
If Alice is connected to server X and Bob is connected to server Y, then I assume/hope there is a way for Alice to pay Bob easily? Maybe something like the following:
- Bob's wallet asks Y to generate a Lightning invoice, where paying that invoice will lead to an increase of Bob's Ark balance within Y.
- Alice's wallet asks X to decrease their balance in X, and to pay that invoice
(I get that 'balance' isn't the perfect word, it's all about (v)UTXOs, but I'm just trying to simplify)
And so Ark and Bob, despite being on different Ark servers, can seamlessly pay each other. Lightning is used by the ASPs to pay each other. The only risk might be that either of the servers might be missing the relevant Lightning balances and liquidity to be able to facilitate the payment.
If that's correct, then it's very exciting to see this system - and the code - out there. In this kind of open model, I wish everybody - commercial and otherwise - success 😀
(I guess the smaller ASPs might even form a Ark with each other, where a big ASP acts as their "meta ASP")
Servers should be run by professional entities and there is little incentive to have too many small servers.
Indeed, every user can use Lightning to interact with one another but Ark operates best in a hub and spoke model (just as Lightning nowadays really).
I don't want a single server dominating, and that important for lots of reasons
I'm not saying I expect a billions of servers to appear, but - if Ark eventually succeeds in onboarding a billion users - then I don't want it to be dominated by just a dozen servers. I'd like to see many thousands of servers in that scenario
1000s of servers might be overkill but sure a single one is probably not ideal either.
There will be a sweet spot.
