After nearly seven years since the Lightning Network brought faster payments to Bitcoin, a new technology is pushing the world’s strongest digital asset into its next phase. Ark Labs has launched the public beta of Arkade, a much-anticipated Layer 2 protocol built directly on Bitcoin. The project makes Bitcoin faster, programmable and capable of supporting complex financial tools like lending, trading and even stablecoins – all without changing Bitcoin’s core, or sacrificing its security. Bitcoin is the most secure blockchain in the world with a hashrate that no other network matches, but it was never built for programmable finance. Its …