At the PoW Space in Lugano, Ark Labs announced the launch of Arkade, an open-source platform for programmable applications and financial services on Bitcoin.
On October 21st, the “Arkade activation day” event, hosted in Lugano at PoW Space, brought together developers and industry figures for the official presentation of the platform. Arkade aims to bring Bitcoin toward the concept of “programmable money” without compromising the principles of self-custody and security.
Built on top of the Ark protocol, Arkade is a programmable execution layer that enables the development of native applications on Bitcoin, including payments, lending, trading, and programmable vaults, leveraging the concept of VTXO (virtual transaction output), off-chain representations of classic UTXOs. The system allows for instant transactions and settlement, ensuring users maintain full control over their funds through unilateral exit mechanisms.
The arrival of Arkade Script was also announced, a scripting language for Bitcoin-compatible smart contracts. The infrastructure is open source, with SDKs available in TypeScript, Golang, and Rust for integration into wallets, payment applications, and decentralized services.
Alongside the mainnet launch, Ark Labs presented Arkade Assets, a framework that extends Arkade’s virtualization model to include support for different types of assets, including the issuance of stablecoins and other tokens.
Collaborations and interoperability
During the event, various panels and presentations highlighted the acceleration of interoperability and practical use cases made possible by Arkade:
Kilian Rausch, CEO of Boltz, in his presentation “Building For Interoperability,” illustrated how Arkade’s integration on Boltz enables rapid swaps and a seamless user experience between on-chain, Lightning Network, Arkade, and Rootstock.
In the “Next-Generation Wallets” panel, Roy Sheinfeld (CEO of Breez), Francis Pouliot (CEO of Bull Bitcoin), and Gareth Grobler (CEO of LayerzWallet) discussed how the evolution of the Lightning Network and Arkade’s model are making wallets, swap providers, and payment processors like BTCPay Server interoperable. A case study from the Baltic Honeybadger 2025 conference in Riga was cited, where approximately 1,300 payments were made through Arkade that, from the end user’s perspective, appeared identical to those made via Lightning. Francis Pouliot also confirmed that Bull Bitcoin is testing Arkade integration into BULL Wallet.
During the “P2P Finance” panel, Anna (CEO of Hodl Hodl) and Philipp Hoenisch (CEO of Lendasat) explored how Arkade offers a fast and secure solution for lending and collateral settlement in bitcoin. Hoenisch announced direct integration between Arkade and Lendasat, allowing users to use Arkade to deposit bitcoin and access small loans in a simple and immediate way.
The platform is already operational in beta (https://arkade.money) and ready for developers, but is expected to evolve rapidly in the coming weeks with the introduction of new features.
