Nearly 16 years after the Bitcoin whitepaper was published, its full vision of seamless peer-to-peer “electronic cash” remains a distant reality. The means of transaction are either slow, custodial, or abstracted to other chains.

Ironically, it is stablecoins which have taken center stage for digital money. Albeit centralized, they address the core demand for a stable, accessible means of exchange, and for some, a novel form of fiat-denominated digital ‘bank accounts’. While there are signs of promise, the network fragmentation and constant proliferation of new stables impedes reaching the scale of payments taking place on legacy rails.

Bitcoin is the only network that will likely be around on every timeline; it’s the natural bedrock for a radically new global payment network. Yet, as it is, it cannot scale to meet global demand. 

The Lightning network enabled ultra-fast and ultra-cheap BTC transactions, but for onboarding millions of users with self-custody wallets and distributing stablecoins/other assets, Lightning’s design becomes extremely burdensome, if not impossible to work with. Other protocols have attempted to solve the same problem, but none have had the necessary components needed for Bitcoin to reach escape velocity.

Spark is built to address Bitcoin and Lightning’s remaining challenges, focusing on scaling self-custody wallets and enabling stablecoins on Bitcoin. Combining these two features unlocks Bitcoin’s fullest potential, helping it become the SMTP for money (Bitcoin, stablecoin, fiat). Spark is simple to implement and use, dirt-cheap, and fully interoperable with the current Bitcoin ecosystem. With it, developers can build novel applications once thought impossible on Bitcoin.`