News linked to both this project and an event.
Polymarket has integrated Spark, a Bitcoin Layer 2 payment protocol, allowing users to make instant deposits via the Bitcoin Lightning Network.According to the report, Spark will provide underlying payment infrastructure for Polymarket, enabling users to deposit directly with BTC, with funds arriving in seconds. Compared to traditional on-chain Bitcoin transfers, which take 30 minutes to 1 hour for confirmation, this offers faster speed, lower costs, and greater privacy. This integration is also part of Polymarket's ongoing efforts to enhance the Bitcoin payment experience, following its earlier move to support Bitcoin deposits. (Digital Assets)
According to Bitcoin Magazine, Tether plans to natively issue USDT on the Bitcoin network via the RGB protocol, with UTEXO leading the commercial deployment. The solution combines the Bitcoin UTXO model with the Lightning Network, supporting sending and receiving USDT on Bitcoin addresses as well as private, instant settlement, aiming to enhance privacy, reduce transfer and exchange costs, and decrease reliance on intermediate service providers. The report indicates that the product is expected to launch within the next few weeks, or in July.
Bitcoin News posted on X, stating that nearly a decade after becoming an early adopter of the Lightning Network, Bitrefill is once again supporting a new Bitcoin payment network, adding Arkade payments that enable instant payments with zero fees.
: Bitcoin infrastructure company Breez has added a new feature to its developer toolkit, allowing users to send USDC and USDT directly from their Bitcoin balance to over 30 blockchain networks, without the need to convert in advance or hold stablecoins. This feature combines the Lightning Network with an automatic conversion mechanism. After the user enters the recipient's wallet address, the Breez SDK identifies the target blockchain, calculates the conversion route, and displays the amount, network, and fees before the payment is confirmed. The transaction is then routed through liquidity providers such as Flashnet and Boltz, converting the sender's Bitcoin into stablecoins and delivering them to the blockchain chosen by the recipient. Breez states that users still hold Bitcoin while initiating the payment, while the recipient receives stablecoins on their preferred blockchain. The feature operates in a non-custodial mode and initially only supports sending stablecoins outward. Future versions are planned to support receiving stablecoins from external blockchain networks.
According to Bitcoin Magazine, Block’s payment platform Square has enabled Bitcoin payments by default for approximately one million U.S. merchants. Eligible merchants can accept BTC payments via the Lightning Network, with the system converting payments to U.S. dollars nearly in real time in the background—settling transactions in USD by default to mitigate exchange-rate volatility risk. This automatic rollout began on March 30, reaching a peak rate of one new merchant enabling the feature every eight seconds. Block also stated it is advancing tap-to-pay Bitcoin functionality leveraging NFC and the Lightning Network, and continues expanding Bitcoin payment and self-custody-related products across its ecosystem.
According to Businesswire, Paystand, a blockchain-based B2B payment network, has announced the launch of USDb, a stablecoin built on the Bitcoin ecosystem. USDb is backed 1:1 by U.S. dollar reserves and is natively deployed on the Bitcoin sidechain Rootstock, while also being compatible with the Liquid Network and the Bitcoin Lightning Network. Notably, USDb is primarily designed for traditional corporate finance use cases, including accounts receivable/payable, cross-border payroll, and treasury management.
Odaily News Bitcoin Core has released version v31.0. This update primarily improves the Mempool logic. Nodes can now more accurately assess the overall value of a set of related transactions to decide whether to retain, forward, or include them in a block. The impact on regular transfer users is minimal, but users employing RBF, CPFP, the Lightning Network, complex wallets, or server-side wallets may encounter changes in transaction acceptance/rejection behavior. The private transaction broadcast feature has been enhanced, supporting broadcasting sendrawtransaction via Tor/I2P, preventing recipients from obtaining the transaction initiator's IP address and geographical location.
According to GlobeNewswire, Solv Protocol announced a strategic integration with Utexo to launch a native Bitcoin yield solution built on the RGB protocol and the Lightning Network. This solution enables atomic swaps between native BTC and USDT—without wrapping, cross-chain bridges, or custodians. It emphasizes self-custody, privacy protection, and final settlement, aligning with Tether’s prior announcement of natively issuing USDT on an RGB-compatible Lightning Network. Additionally, Solv participated as a strategic angel investor in Utexo’s $7.5 million seed funding round, led by Tether.
According to The Block, Avihu Levy, a researcher at StarkWare, published a paper proposing the Quantum Safe Bitcoin (QSB) scheme, claiming it enables quantum-resistant transactions under Bitcoin’s existing script rules—without requiring a soft fork. This scheme replaces elliptic-curve cryptography with the RIPEMD-160 hash function via a “hash-to-signature” puzzle, thereby enhancing resilience against quantum attacks. The paper notes that QSB’s current per-transaction cost ranges from $75 to $150—significantly higher than today’s average transaction fee—and involves complex user experience; thus, it is recommended only as a “last resort.” The scheme remains constrained by script opcodes and size limits, and does not yet support all use cases—such as the Lightning Network. Compared to BIP-360—which requires protocol-level changes—QSB needs no modifications to the Bitcoin protocol, but remains experimental.