Seriously who do you have to talk to for access to play around with Ark? nostr:npub1hf5sgehj874r3y2hps9r36qap20cffauc7t895var2ajlsg32mcqa7dp8n
Discussion
That doesnāt sound very decentralized š
lol, well thereās a piece of software out there somewhere I just donāt know who has it.
Jokes aside - it isnāt decentralized and wasnāt supposed to be. Itās just a design for a non-custodial payment service. The software is open source so anyone can *provide* the service, but Ark was never supposed to be some decentralized network.
Ah ok. Iām admittedly uninformed about Ark still.
If you actually wanted an explanation:
Think about it like a system that would let an LSP exist entirely off chain with thousands of users and all using āvirtual channelsā instead of opening real ones on chain. Basically every person had the ability to take their āvirtual channel balanceā to the chain with or without the Ark provider being around, but donāt want to because inside the Ark they can make a bajillion transactions for cheap and privately. The Ark or any other user can bridge out over Lightning too. So pay any Lightning invoice from anywhere no problem.
Lightning makes it decentralized, the software is just a really cool type of aggregate node for users that doesnāt require incoming channel balances, on chain funding transactions or any of that mess. You just get a virtual UTXO and if anything ever goes wrong, you just broadcast and get your coins.
If you didnāt want an explanation, then you are welcome anyway š
We have everything open source! Wallet daemons like Fulmine, applications like CoinFlip or if you interested in integrating it we have Go, Rust and JS libraries.