Startup Ark Labs said it has raised $2.5 million in a pre-seed funding round led by billionaire investor Tim Draper.
Venture capital firm Draper Associates, Fulgur Ventures, Axiom Capital and angel investor Stephen Cole also participated in the round, Ark Labs said in a news release.
Ark Labs launched in May with a plan to bring seamless and scalable payments to Bitcoin by advancing and maintaining an open implementation of the layer 2 Ark protocol.
“Ark’s architecture allows for seamless Bitcoin payments, in a way that stays true to its core principles of decentralisation and self-custody” said Draper, founder and managing partner of Draper Associates, who funded Tesla, Skype, and Hotmail, among others, at the seed stage.
While the Lightning Network has made progress in improving Bitcoin’s scalability, it still presents challenges for merchants and non-technical users, according to the news release.
Ark addresses this by offloading the complexities of transacting with Bitcoin to trustless servers called Ark Service Providers, enabling users to start sending and receiving payments immediately with just a wallet.
This eliminates the need for deep technical understanding or custodial solutions, making Bitcoin more accessible.
The company sees Ark becoming a go-to solution for consumer-facing payments and remittances, while Lightning continues to play a leading role in enterprise applications, the release said.
