Ark Labs, the startup building a payments layer on top of Bitcoin, has raised $5.2 million in seed funding to expand its platform and introduce stablecoin support on the network.
Tether, the issuer of the world's largest stablecoin, joined Ego Death Capital, Epoch VC, Lion26, Sats Ventures and Contribution Capital in the round, with additional participation from crypto custodian Anchorage Digital and former PayPal finance executive Ralph Ho.
The company declined to disclose the round's structure or its post-funding valuation.
The raise brings total institutional backing for Ark Labs to more than $7.7 million, following an earlier pre-seed round led by venture firm Draper Associates alongside Fulgur Ventures and Axiom Capital.
Founded in 2024, the company plans to use the capital to grow its team from 10 to around 25 people, with investment going into hiring, developer relations, product development and partner onboarding.
Ark Labs' core product, Arkade, operates as a Bitcoin layer 2, a secondary network that processes transactions off the main Bitcoin blockchain to reduce cost and increase speed.
The platform handles transactions through a system called Virtual Transaction Outputs (VTXOs), which are presigned agreements that move value without requiring each transfer to be recorded on the main chain immediately.
The company is now extending that model to stablecoins, with tokens embedded directly within VTXOs to allow them to be issued, transferred and cancelled off-chain.
A built-in safety mechanism lets users settle assets on the main Bitcoin blockchain if the platform operator goes offline, using a form of embedded metadata called OP_RETURN.
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Chief executive Marco Argentieri said the goal was to address a long-standing limitation of Bitcoin compared with programmable blockchains such as Ethereum.
"Bitcoin is the most liquid digital asset in the world, but it has lacked the programmable infrastructure that financial applications require," Argentieri said.
The recap
- Ark Labs raised $5.2 million in a seed round.
- Round included Tether and multiple crypto and fintech investors.
- Company plans to grow staff from 10 to 25 employees.