In other words, asset minting occurs on the mainchain, but owners have the option to move assets off-chain. However, unlike Ordinals, Taproot Assets works with the layer 2 Lightning Network to offer improved privacy and scalability.

In brief, developers can embed arbitrary asset metadata directly within the block space via each satoshi - the same technique employed by the Ordinals protocol for Bitcoin non-fungibles and BRC-20 tokens. “Taproot Assets (formerly Taro) is a new Taproot-powered protocol for issuing assets on the bitcoin blockchain that can be transferred over the Lightning Network for instant, high volume, low fee transactions.”Īs indicated by the name, Taproot Assets utilizes improvements to the Bitcoin protocol that came with the November 2021 Taproot soft fork. A firm date for mainnet release was not given, only that the final product will be “coming soon.” The Taproot Assets protocolĪ Taproot Assets guide further detailed information on the protocol - which intends to foster greater Bitcoin use by adding quick, cheap, and scalable asset issuance capabilities to the network. The company said the protocol had been a year in the making, initially launching under Taro. Lightning Labs announced that the latest version of the Bitcoin Taproot Assets protocol is currently in the testnet phase - enabling multi-asset support via the Lightning Network.

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