The Bitcoin network is suffering from the burden of ordinals and BRC-20 tokens. Lightning Labs' "Taproot Assets Protocol" should provide a solution.

Bitcoin developers Lightning-Labs have unveiled a protocol upgrade to deal with blockchain overload caused by BRC-20 tokens. The newly renamed "Taproot Assets Protocol" offers a more efficient method for storing assets on the blockchain. The developers announced this in a blog post on May 17.

More efficient transaction mode

Taproot Assets v0.2 "provides core functionality for developers who want to issue, send, receive and discover assets on the Bitcoin blockchain," according to the announcement. What makes it special is that the latest version can create or move an unlimited number of assets in a single on-chain transaction. "For example, a user can create three new tranches of three different assets at the same time, paying only one miner fee."

The Taproot Assets Protocol is designed to "operate to the maximum extent possible outside the blockchain," "especially to provide the kind of blockchain overload that we have seen recently to avoid".

What is meant here is the high demand for blockspace, which can mainly be attributed to the chaos surrounding BRC-20 tokens and NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain. In recent weeks, this has caused chaos in the fee market. On May 8, a Bitcoin transaction cost an average of more than $30.

So far, the upgrade is available in a test network version. However, support for mainnet is "coming soon." In addition, Lightning Labs says protocol users will soon be able to integrate BRC-20 assets into the Lightning network.

Stablecoins op Lightning

The developers also announced that they will continue to work on implementing stablecoin integrations on the Lightning network. Making Lightning a "multi-asset network" and "specifically enabling Stablecoin support for users in emerging markets" is Taproot Assets' "ultimate goal."

Due to a trademark dispute, the protocol formerly known as "Taro" had to be renamed and is now known as the "Taproot Assets Protocol."