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Second @second.tech · 24/09/2026

5/ To give the plugin a proper showcase, we've also opened our own swag store. Pick up Second- and Bark-themed tees, hats, and more, and pay with Lightning or Ark through a BTCPay checkout running the plugin: store.second.tech/

A wall clock, a black zip hoodie, and a mug from the Second swag store, with the BTCPay payment option selected at checkout

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Second @second.tech · 24/09/2026

3/ With the Bark plugin, you don't need to worry about node ops, channels, or liquidity. Install the plugin, flick a toggle, and your store is immediately Lightning-enabled. Customers see one unified QR code offering on-chain, Lightning, and Ark.

BTCPay checkout on the Second swag store showing one unified QR code for on-chain, Lightning, and Ark payments

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Second @second.tech · 24/09/2026

1/ The Bark plugin for BTCPay Server is now ready for production. It's possibly the simplest way for a business to take self-custodial bitcoin payments (especially Lightning) on their online store, and you don't need to run a Lightning node to do it.

Bark plugin for BTCPay Server: dashboard, send and receive pages, and settings screenshots

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Second @second.tech · 10/09/2026

4/ This gives Cashu mints an on-ramp with no channel management. The mint adds a Payjoin offer to its deposit quote, the user's wallet app pays it, and the mint's Bark backend swaps in the board output. One transaction, paid by the user, lands in the mint's Ark balance.

Illustrated dog trotting with a cashew nut in its mouth, representing a Cashu mint deposit boarding into an Ark.

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Second @second.tech · 10/09/2026

1/ Payjoin boards have been available in Bark for a couple of weeks now, so we thought it was time to take a closer look at what they can do: boarding direct from external wallet apps, saving the user fees and time, and the same trick applied to on-ramping into Cashu mints.

Two illustrated dogs each leaping through an oval portal, one outlined in blue and one in orange.

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Second @second.tech · 07/09/2026

1/ It's hardening season. Bark 0.7.0 is all about improving security and reliability. There's nothing more important to be working on right now. Thanks again to Project Loupe and Greg Sanders for the disclosures behind several fixes.

A hand-drawn server rack with a riveted armour plate being bolted onto its side, representing a release that hardens Bark and the Ark server

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Second @second.tech · 03/09/2026

1/ Bark 0.6.2 is out. One call can now pay whatever a user wants to pay: an Ark or on-chain address, any Lightning destination, or a multi-rail BIP 321 URI. When a destination can be paid more than one way, Bark lists each option with a fee estimate.

A hand-drawn shape-sorter box with one hole that a lightning bolt, a pyramid, and a ball all fit through, representing one payment call that pays any destination

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Second @second.tech · 05/08/2026

1/ Two releases in two days...we hope you'll understand given the emerging security environment in bitcoin. 0.6.0 has some breaking changes you're going to want to pay attention to, please get updated asap. And thanks to @bonomat of Lendasat for the report behind a fix.

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Second @second.tech · 04/08/2026

1/ Bark 0.5.0 is out, and it comes with one of the features you've asked for most: restoring a wallet's full off-chain balance from its mnemonic.

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Second @second.tech · 29/07/2026

3/ The StartOS build of Bark Wallet ships with its own continuous backup system, credit to Matt Hill for building this! After every change in wallet state, it ships an encrypted snapshot to the backup targets of your choice: Google Drive, Dropbox, Nextcloud, or SFTP.

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Second @second.tech · 29/07/2026

2/ If you're new to it, Bark Wallet is an open-source wallet app from the Second team. Send and receive payments over Ark, Lightning, and on-chain, with no channels and no liquidity management. You can receive Lightning payments the second you set up a wallet.

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Second @second.tech · 29/07/2026

1/ We got a lot of requests for Bark Wallet on Start9 after launching on Umbrel last month. Well, here it is: Bark Wallet is now available on the Start9 Registry!

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Second @second.tech · 21/07/2026

5/ If they're building their own route, wallet apps will also require a gossip map. This is where another LDK feature comes in: the Rapid Gossip Sync server. This serves compact snapshots on-demand, with delta updates that cut sync time to a handful of milliseconds.

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Second @second.tech · 21/07/2026

4/ Because the onion is built by the client, the gateway is blinded to what's inside it. The destination, the full route, the hop count, and the precise amount live only inside the onion. The gateway turns into a dumb onion relay: it just ships what your Bark wallet hands it.

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Second @second.tech · 21/07/2026

1/ Wallet apps built on Bark have never done their own Lightning pathfinding: the Ark server works out the best path on their behalf. It works great, but some users want more control, or don't want to share destination data. New research from grubles explores an alternative.

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Second @second.tech · 21/07/2026

1/ Bark 0.4.0 is out, and receiving just got simpler. One BIP 321 payment request now covers Ark, Lightning, and on-chain: build it in one barkd call or straight from the SDK, and the payer's wallet app picks whichever rail it speaks.

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Second @second.tech · 29/06/2026

1/ Since launching on mainnet, we've been hard at work refining Bark's DX and UX, guided by the quality feedback we've been getting from integrators and users. Here are the best bits from releases 0.2.3 to 0.3.0.

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Second @second.tech · 12/06/2026

3/ With Bark as backend, connected wallets get self-custodial Lightning payments, but there are no channels to open, no rebalancing, and no force closures. Bitcoin-at-rest is held in your Ark balance, and can be exited on-chain if you ever need to. Fees are low and predictable.

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Second @second.tech · 12/06/2026

2/ If you're new to it, Alby Hub is an always-on bitcoin engine. It runs on a home server or in the cloud, secures your keys, and executes payments. Wallet apps like Alby Go, Zeus, Damus, and BTCPay Server connect to it over NWC, all spending from the same balance.

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Second @second.tech · 12/06/2026

1/ Bark is now a Lightning backend option in Alby Hub. Alby built the integration on the Bark SDK in record time, just days after our mainnet launch. You can now enable Lightning payments in your hub with no Lightning node, channels, or liquidity to manage.

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Second @second.tech · 11/06/2026

5/ Bark Wallet is an open-source working reference for how our own team would approach a wallet app, UX decisions included. All the basic functionality is already in place, so it could even make a great foundation for the vibe coders out there!

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Second @second.tech · 11/06/2026

4/ Bark Wallet started as a proof-of-concept for a Bark-based web wallet, by Carlos Marques. But it turned out to be the perfect frontend for barkd, our wallet daemon. So we polished it up, bundled them together, and the Umbrel team helped us get it listed in time for launch. Thanks!

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Second @second.tech · 11/06/2026

3/ Bark makes Lightning insanely simple. No channels to open, no liquidity to manage. Top up with a Lightning payment and immediately start paying out to all of bitcoin's major payment networks. Low fees, delivered fast and reliably. Plus Branta verification!

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Second @second.tech · 11/06/2026

2/ Bark Wallet is a simple, dependable bitcoin wallet covering the complete Bark experience: send and receive over Ark, Lightning, and on-chain, automated refreshes, and the all-important emergency exit (in case you ever want your sats back on-chain without anyone's permission).

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Second @second.tech · 11/06/2026

1/ Bark Wallet is now on the Umbrel app store. A number of adventurous users have already been installing the app and making payments, and with everything running smoothly, it's time for a proper introduction.

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Second @second.tech · 10/06/2026

5/ Native SwiftUI, so it feels right at home on iOS. Tap-minimized, with an X-Ray view for power users who want to see underneath the hood. Quirky and fabulous. Here's 100 bitcoin transactions in 2 minutes with Arké:

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Second @second.tech · 10/06/2026

4/ Arké is the work of Christoph Ono, a driving force in the Bitcoin Design Community. With Arké, he's shipped years of the community's open-source design patterns and pioneered brand-new ones for Ark.

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Second @second.tech · 10/06/2026

3/ The standout: self-custodial Lightning addresses on Ark. Payment requests are relayed to your phone, which generates the invoice itself. Between Noah wallets, the same address gets you free, fully offline Ark payments. Open source, on iOS and Android now.

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Second @second.tech · 10/06/2026

2/ Noah comes from the team behind Blixt and it's the Ark wallet you'd expect from veterans of self-custodial wallet software: all the essential Ark and Lightning features, and then some.

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Second @second.tech · 10/06/2026

1/ Bark went live with wallet apps ready to go on day one, built by bitcoiners who've been working alongside us since long before launch. Today we're showcasing the two most polished so far: Noah and Arké 🧵

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Second @second.tech · 09/06/2026

SECOND IS NOW ON MAINNET. Bark, our implementation of the Ark protocol, is available for anyone to start making bitcoin payments. Included in the launch are our mainnet Ark server, the Bark SDK, and multiple wallets to try from day one.

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Second @second.tech · 06/06/2026

1/ Hot on the heels of 0.2.1, Bark 0.2.2 is out, making Lightning sends crash safe. Outgoing LN payments are now checkpointed, so no more stuck balances after a mid-send failure. And settled invoices are recorded for good: your wallet won't ever attempt the same payment twice.

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Second @second.tech · 02/06/2026

2/ Wallet-agnostic unilateral exit: third-party wallets can now run a unilateral exit using their own signer and fee strategy, instead of leaning on Bark's bundled on-chain wallet. Bring your own wallet infrastructure and Bark gets out of the way.

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Second @second.tech · 02/06/2026

1/ Changelog catch-up. We're covering the best bits from three recent releases: 0.1.4, 0.2.0, and 0.2.1. First up, slim VTXO storage. Bark now keeps each VTXO in a slim "bare" form—around 200 bytes per VTXO, a 20–100x cut in memory for wallets with many or deep VTXOs.

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Second @second.tech · 25/05/2026

Nested MuSig2 now has a Python reference implementation. Beulah Evanjalin built it on secp256k1lab with tests, examples, and protocol notes—generally in a good state for review and discussion. This is the blueprint that will inform the secp256k1-based C work.

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Second @second.tech · 22/05/2026

2/ Intel SGX was a dead end. AWS Nitro Enclaves worked but needed excessive custom plumbing. Azure's confidential VMs seemed to be the sweet spot. An AMD SEV-SNP runs Barkd unmodified—the CPU encrypts every page of guest memory so the hypervisor only sees ciphertext.

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Second @second.tech · 22/05/2026

1/ Barkd is what you run when you want to enable bitcoin payments server-side. On a standard cloud VM, the provider, hypervisor, and co-tenants can theoretically read your signing keys from memory. We decided to run some tests to see if TEEs were the solution.

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Second @second.tech · 20/05/2026

New page up: a directory of wallets building on Bark. Most are open source, so you can see how teams are handling the Bark SDK and Barkd to deliver bitcoin payments over Lightning, Ark, and on-chain.

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Second @second.tech · 22/04/2026

1/ Small but mighty changelog for 0.1.3. Bark now ships an IndexedDB StorageAdaptor—the missing piece for browser-based wallets. Combined with the WASM and gRPC-web support from 0.1.0, you can now build Ark wallets that run entirely in the browser with persistent state.

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Second @second.tech · 05/04/2026

𝟭/ Here's a double changelog for Bark 0.1.0-beta9 and 0.1.0 (you know we’re getting closer to mainnet when the “beta” tag is dropped!)...

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Second @second.tech · 12/03/2026

Our technical docs just got a whole lot better. New platform, getting started guides for Rust, Go, React Native, and more, an API reference, and possibly the most comprehensive explanations on protocol mechanics for any bitcoin layer 2 out there.

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Second @second.tech · 11/03/2026

1/ Changelog time. Beta.8 is out. Bark servers now support fees across all major operations—boards, refreshes, and Ark/Lightning/on-chain payments. And yes that means the Second server now has a fee schedule defined in prep for our mainnet launch.

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Second @second.tech · 10/03/2026

Christoph Ono's Arké wallet keeps getting better. This is what happens when you unleash a designer armed with agents and the Bark SDK.

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Second @second.tech · 05/03/2026

Bark makes it ridiculously easy to build bitcoin wallet apps that supports on-chain, Lightning, and Ark payments. All self-custodial.

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Second @second.tech · 03/03/2026

Bark bindings now ship with every release, published to package managers automatically—pre-built binaries, no cloning repos, no local builds, no Rust toolchain. Just add the dependency the way you already do for everything else.

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Second @second.tech · 28/02/2026

1/ We caught a capacity overflow bug in Bark before it ever hit a user, thanks to the fuzz testing @luca0x46 has been running around the clock. A malformed VTXO could have requested an arbitrary vec size during deserialization, triggering a panic. Now it's patched.

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