Tether’s investment arm has joined a $5.2 million funding round for Ark Labs to support the development of stablecoin infrastructure on the Bitcoin network.
The investment will fund development of Arkade, a programmable execution layer designed to enable faster issuance, transfer and settlement of stablecoins such as USDT on Bitcoin.
The funding round brings Ark Labs’ total capital raised to $7.7 million and included investors such as Sats Ventures and Contribution Capital, with participation from Anchorage Digital.
Arkade is intended to allow developers and institutions to build applications including payments and financial services on Bitcoin by enabling programmable transaction logic beyond the base layer.
The investment comes as stablecoins remain concentrated on other networks, with about $161 billion hosted on Ethereum and around $86 billion on Tron out of roughly $315 billion in total stablecoin market capitalisation.
Tether said its investment arm deploys capital from company profits and reserves into infrastructure across digital assets and related technologies.
The funding reflects growing efforts by developers and institutions to expand Bitcoin’s role beyond simple transfers into programmable financial applications.
At the time of reporting, Bitcoin price was $71,643.71.