CEO Elizabeth Stark said that Lightning Labs, the developer behind Bitcoin's Lightning Network, just tested a transaction with an asset created using its Taproot Assets protocol.

It is clear now that a protocol designed to enable stablecoins to be issued on the Bitcoin blockchain is working, Stark said.

"The idea is to have crypto dollars and stablecoins" on the Bitcoin blockchain, she explained speaking at the Financial Times Crypto and Digital Assets Summit this week.

"I really care deeply about solving real problems for real people, as opposed to meme coins or gambling," Stark added.

The ability to position stablecoins and other assets atop Bitcoin will facilitate new use cases and bring more people on to the internet of money and digital assets, she continued.

Stark also highlighted a post-halving wave of developer interest in Bitcoin, with "many builders coming back" to the blockchain. 

She pointed to developers building out decentralized finance (DeFi) on Bitcoin, as well as projects such as bitVM, which enables developers to build Turing-complete Bitcoin contracts.

The Lightning Network is a second-layer protocol designed to facilitate fast, low-cost transactions on blockchain networks, particularly Bitcoin. The protocol allows users to create payment channels between each other, enabling them to conduct numerous transactions off the main blockchain. These transactions are only recorded on the blockchain once the channel is closed, significantly reducing the load and associated fees on the network.

The concept of the Lightning Network was first introduced in a white paper by Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja in 2015.

Development of the Lightning Network gained traction in the following years, with several teams and companies contributing to its progress. Notable organizations like Lightning Labs, Blockstream, and ACINQ played key roles in its development and implementation. The first implementations of the Lightning Network were launched on the Bitcoin mainnet in early 2018, allowing users to start experimenting with real transactions on the network.