Lightning Labs Raises $70 Million to Launch Stablecoins on Bitcoin Network

Key takeaways:

• Lightning Labs has raised $70 million in the Series B financing round
• The newly-acquired capital will go toward developing the Taro protocol, a new Bitcoin-based multi-asset solution for the Lightning Network
• The Taro protocol is currently in the first phase of its three-phase development cycle

Leading Lightning Network developer secures funding for Bitcoin-native stablecoins

Lightning Labs, one of the leading developers of Bitcoin’s Layer 2 scaling solution Lightning Network, has announced it raised $70 million in its Series B funding round, which saw participation from a number of notable investors, including Valor, Goldcrest, and NYDIG, to name a few. 

Today we're announcing Taro, a new protocol to issue assets on Bitcoin and Lightning, and our $70M Series B fundraise! 🍠

One small step for bringing bitcoin to billions. 🌍

One giant leap for powering the world's financial system with #bitcoin. 💱https://t.co/dpzdrwDMTZ

— Lightning Labs⚡️🍠 (@lightning) April 5, 2022

In addition, the company announced Taro, a new protocol for issuing digital assets on the Bitcoin chain. As a Taproot-powered multi-asset protocol, Taro integrates with the Lightning Network and allows new tokens to be issued within the Bitcoin blockchain ecosystem. The integration makes it possible for assets to be transferred with far lower fees and at much greater speeds than Bitcoin’s original network.

In practice, this means that digital assets like stablecoins could take advantage of the world’s largest decentralized payment network, without sacrificing transfer speeds or incurring high charges. Elizabeth Stark, CEO and co-founder of Lightning Labs, expanded on the above concept in the blog post:

“Assets like stablecoins will route through the bitcoin monetary network using Lightning. This new protocol [Taro] cements bitcoin in its place as the internet’s native digital money and protocol for value transfer.”

Taro is still in the early stages of development and will need some time for a full-fledged rollout. According to the team, the first step is to sift through the feedback provided by the community. The next phase of the Taro development is to engineer tools that allow developers to launch and transfer assets on the blockchain. The third and final phase will involve integrating Taro into the Lightning Network and making the protocol open to the broader public.