As 2022 is coming to a close, we wanted to provide an update on the future of ARK. We hope that everyone has been enjoying the recent improvements to the ARK product suite and the faster pace of development. One of our top priorities in 2022 was improving our development pipeline and we believe we have made solid progress on that front.
While we love the ARK product suite, we know that a lot of developers and individuals have been following the progress of Bearmint closely and we felt like we needed to provide an update on the status of the project.
When I became CEO of ARK SCIC last year, one of my main tasks was to take a hard look at our products as well as our overall direction as a company. From my perspective, it was very important that I be able to look at the situation objectively as a CEO and make the best decisions for ARK and our supporters, without being biased by the past.
As it stands currently, we are building amazing products that everyone should be proud of, but we are building them on a layer one blockchain that is not competitive. That is not an opinion, it is our reality. In order to build lasting products, we need to go to an ecosystem that is thriving, with both developer and community support. Through internal conversations and discussions with our external partners, we believe that Polygon is the better layer one solution and provides ARK with the best opportunity to collaborate, grow, and contribute within their ecosystem as a key producer of meaningful applications.
What Does this Mean for ARK Core and Bearmint?
Throughout the past year, we have been working with the team at BaseCode on Bearmint. While progress has been fruitful, our internal testing and the current timeline to complete Bearmint have given us enough information to determine that neither Bearmint nor ARK Core are optimal solutions for the future.
What this means for ARK is that we will be migrating to the Polygon network and all support for ARK Core and Bearmint will be sunsetted. We know that ARK Core had a large amount of architectural debt and fundamental issues that continue to plague the consensus engine. Time, effort, and developer resources are better spent on creating great products. While ARK Core will no longer be receiving support, our existing ARK products will continue to work as they do now post-migration.
All existing ARK Core and Bearmint resources will be made fully open-source as we prepare for the migration to Polygon.
Migration to Polygon
The migration to Polygon will be offered as a 1:1 transition from ARK <-> Polygon for existing holders. The migration will be conducted within ARKVault which will be updated to support the ARK ERC20 token on Polygon. The swap will be a one-way swap with more details coming in a future update.
By migrating to Polygon, we will be able to expand our product line, incorporate new web3-based features, and create a more robust and interconnected suite of products, while simultaneously taking advantage of the immense developer support and partner network we have built within their growing ecosystem.
We are proud of what we have accomplished with ARK, but we also realize that the ARK Network is decentralized and some users may choose not to migrate with us. We want to make it clear that our company will no longer be developing ARK Core or Bearmint and will be fully shifting our effort toward building products around the ARK ERC20 token on Polygon.
While we know this is a major transition for ARK, we could not be more excited about the opportunities this move will present for our products and for ARK to contribute to a greater sense of ecosystem moving forward.
Future Updates
As we make this transition, understand that nothing above will be occurring overnight and we’ll keep you updated as we make progress toward migration. Our next blog will detail the benefits migrating to Polygon brings to the ARK Ecosystem. Make sure to stay tuned to the blog at ARK Ecosystem SCIC for future updates.
