Ark Labs
A Bitcoin layer-2 payment solution based on the Ark protocol
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About Ark Labs
Ark Labs, a Bitcoin layer-2 payment network, was founded in May 2024 with the mission of advancing the Ark protocol for scalable and user-friendly Bitcoin payments. In August 2024, it closed a $2.5 million pre-seed round led by Tim Draper and Draper Associates, with participation from Fulgur Ventures, Axiom Capital, and angel investor Stephen Cole, marking early validation of its vision. In September 2024, the company released a closed beta of Ark Node, an Ark-enabled wallet for sending, receiving, and swapping bitcoin over Lightning, demonstrating its first consumer-facing product. In January 2025, it introduced the Ark Wallet SDK, a TypeScript toolkit enabling developers to build wallets with both on-chain and off-chain transaction support, expanding the ecosystem's developer foundation. In March 2026, Ark Labs raised $5.2 million in a round led by Tether, with support from Ego Death Capital, Epoch VC, and Anchorage Digital, bringing total funding to approximately $7.7 million. This investment, aimed at making Bitcoin ready for stablecoins and payments, marked a strategic shift toward programmable finance on Bitcoin, with its flagship technology Arkade delivering programmable infrastructure. These milestones highlight Ark Labs' evolution from protocol development to real-world deployment and ecosystem building, positioning it as a key player in Bitcoin's second-layer scaling landscape.
In March 2026, Ark Labs raised $5.2M in a seed round backed by Tether, Ego Death Capital, Epoch VC, and others, with participation from Anchorage Digital and former PayPal VP Ralph Ho. The flagship product Arkade went live on Bitcoin mainnet in October 2025, processing first payments at the Baltic Honeybadger conference. By mid-2026, Arkade Assets extended VTXO support to fungible tokens like stablecoins, enabling swaps and collateral use cases. Partnerships include Lendaswap (now Satora) for non-custodial swaps and Hodl Hodl for escrow integration. Future roadmap focuses on scaling Arkade as an open execution layer for programmable money, expanding asset types, and deepening Lightning interoperability via batched settlement and professional liquidity providers.
Marco Argentieri (CEO): Long-time Bitcoin builder since 2013, co-founded Italy's first Bitcoin ATM and cash brokerage. Head of Products at Vulpem Ventures, now CEO of Ark Labs, building ArkadeOS for Bitcoin Layer 2.
Simone Giacomelli (Co-founder): Bitcoin developer, core maintainer of BTCPay Server, open-source contributor. Co-founded Ark Labs with focus on scalable payment infrastructure.