Tether Backs $5.2M Round for Bitcoin Layer-2 Arkade @tether and @Anchorage participated in Ark Labs’ $5.2 million seed round to fund development of Arkade, a Bitcoin Layer-2 platform designed to support programmable stablecoins and DeFi-style payments. Arkade aims to expand Bitcoin’s capabilities with features such as escrow, conditional payments, and programmable settlement without requiring changes to Bitcoin’s base protocol. @ArkLabsHQ says the infrastructure could unlock stablecoin liquidity on Bitcoin, potentially enabling applications that tap into the roughly $184 billion supply of USDT across the broader crypto market.