Taro is really interesting to me because it enables assets (other than bitcoin) to be transferred over the existing Lightning Network. It also enables an architecture where only the interested participants need to keep track of assets they care about, and they can do this off-chain. This is one aspect where all "smart contract" shitcoin chains fail to scale in that their node operators need to keep track of the state for all tokenized assets on the base layer forever, even if they don't participate or even care about those contracts. It kills many, if not most, shitcoin narratives because "defi" use-cases can be handled off-chain (or in a layer 3, depending on how you look at it), due to this change in architecture. All you really need to enable defi is to exchange signatures off-chain, there's no need for a base-layer smart contract to pool liquidity of all participants, which introduces unnecessary risk as well.
It seems the main criticism against Taro is that it enables shitcoins on Bitcoin, which indeed it does. However, I'm starting to think of it as a sort of Trojan Horse, where as the user base of any shitcoin running on LN rails grows, they'll realize that they can now adopt a Bitcoin standard with practically no additional friction. As a LN node operator, you still benefit from this even without having to take part in that your node will simply route bitcoin as it currently does.
I wanted to compile a list of resources related to Taro so far so that I, and others, can learn more.
Here's the list that I have so far:
- Message to bitcoin-dev mailing list (also contains links to draft BIPs): https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2022-April/020196.html
- roasbeef's Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/roasbeef/status/1511361929507479552
- Lightning Labs blog post: https://lightning.engineering/posts/2022-4-5-taro-launch/
- Lightning Labs blog post via Medium: https://medium.com/@lightning_labs/number-of-people-go-up-or-bitcoin-as-the-worlds-protocol-of-value-d1df7cefca37
- Lightning Labs docs: https://docs.lightning.engineering/the-lightning-network/taro
- Marty's Bent: https://tftc.io/martys-bent/issue-1189-taro-hits-the-scene/
- Bitcoin Magazine: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/how-bitcoin-taro-protocol-works
- Coindesk: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/04/05/lightning-labs-raises-70m-to-bring-stablecoins-to-bitcoin/
- Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ninabambysheva/2022/04/05/elizabeth-starks-lightning-labs-raises-70-million-to-bitcoinize-the-us-dollar/
- CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/05/bitcoin-powers-a-fast-new-way-to-send-us-dollars-around-the-world.html
If you have more resources, please share!