DIA brings signed bitcoin prices to Arkade

Bitcoin DeFi holds about $4.4B in total value locked, roughly 0.27% of Bitcoin’s $1.65T market cap. Ethereum’s chain TVL is about eleven times larger (DefiLlama and CoinGecko, October 2026 snapshot). Most of the Bitcoin figure is staking and restaking, and it leaves out bitcoin wrapped on other chains. Credit and derivatives that settle on Bitcoin itself are a small share of the asset. Bitcoin holders who want dollar exposure or credit without giving up custody are the people that gap affects.

A loan or an option settles against a price, and Bitcoin Script has no native way to read one. Ark Labs CEO Marco Argentieri said in March 2026 that Bitcoin “has lacked the programmable infrastructure that financial applications require.” A contract that cannot see the price cannot liquidate a loan or pay out an option.

Arkade, built by Ark Labs, is an open execution engine and programmable extension of Bitcoin. Transactions execute offchain and instantly, then settle in batches on Bitcoin. Users keep custody and can always exit to Bitcoin L1. Arkade runs on Bitcoin today, with no consensus changes or network upgrades. Its contracts check external facts when they settle: the contract verifies a signature over the price it needs. Arkade’s example contracts can also take the median across several signers, so DIA’s feed serves as an independently verifiable input next to the other sources a design calls for.

DIA provides a signed BTC/USD price feed, part of DIA Market, sourced from more than 100 exchanges and aggregated on Lasernet, DIA’s Ethereum L2 rollup. Arkade checks DIA’s signature directly in its own execution environment. It needs no smart contract on its side and no bridge or relay.

Ark Labs publishes several price-dependent designs in its open repositories. Three show the range. Each one needs a BTC price that the contract can check when it settles. Holders get dollar exposure or credit while keeping custody. Institutions get credit terms they can audit.

A bond design lets borrowers mint credit against BTC collateral. Institutions working on Bitcoin-backed credit and corporate treasury are the natural users. Liquidation runs at a signed price, and anyone can trigger it. A borrower can check that a liquidation happened at the right level, and a lender can check that collateral was sold when the loan required it. Every margin call in the bond design settles against that price, the same dependency Bitcoin-backed lending has on its price source.

An options design lets a bitcoin owner write cash-settled covered calls on locked BTC and earn the premium. The buyer receives the payout in sats from the locked BTC at expiry, with no delivery of the full position. Settlement uses a price built from several signed prints, so one bad quote cannot move the payout on its own.

The same signed price also opens the door to liquidity designs, where market makers and solvers quote from their own inventory and every fill is checked against a price both sides can verify.

Teams building on Arkade that need a signed price input can reach DIA through diadata.org.

Arkade is an open execution engine and programmable extension of Bitcoin, built by Ark Labs. Transactions run offchain and settle in batches on Bitcoin, and users keep custody with the ability to exit to Bitcoin L1. Learn more at arkadeos.com.

DIA is blockchain price oracle infrastructure for institutional DeFi. It provides verifiable price feeds and reserve verification across 65+ blockchains and 250+ DeFi applications. Price any asset. Verify every feed.

For more information, visit diadata.org.