The opponent of Lightning Network has arrived ->Learn some brain teasers (decoding series No.33) I have been following Ark for a long time and slowly researching his technical architecture in my spare time Ark @ ArkLabsHQ and Lightning Network have taken completely opposite technological paths. Lightning emphasizes long-term channels and pre locked liquidity, while Ark plays with batch trading trees and instant liquidity. One requires users to deposit money before receiving money, and the other allows you to receive money by opening your wallet Essentially, off chain batch processing is achieved through pre signed transaction trees, allowing for direct receipt of payments without the need to pre allocate liquidity like Lightning Network ⚡ Technical Core The core lies in the design of vUTXO - essentially a set of pre signed transactions that can be redeemed on the chain at any time. Each user is nested within a transaction tree, and ASP serves as the coordinator responsible for constructing the entire batch processing. The most wonderful thing is the exit mechanism: As long as the user remains online, they can unilaterally restore funds to on chain UTXO at any time, unless they choose to trust ASP (custody) for a short period of time The biggest difference between it and the Lightning Network is the handling of finality. Lightning trading can be fully confirmed off chain, but Ark must create new batches on chain through 'batch exchange' to achieve finality. The design of connector output is used here to ensure atomic interchangeability - either the new and old batches take effect together, or both fail. The liquidity mechanism is also quite unique. The liquidity of the entire system is fully provided by ASP, and they need to withstand the set expiration time to recover funds. VUTXO can be atomized and exchanged for lightning channels, and this complementarity may give rise to some interesting hybrid architectures However, it is still early to replace the Lightning Network, as the existence of centralized coordinators has always been a problem Ark is generally a very interesting project, and I myself have been following it. Offchain's path is a major direction for BTC expansion, with various schools of thought involved For example, RGB/Lightning Network/Ark and various niche genres