Arké is free and open source. All of the code is public, and so are the design decisions behind it.
Why open source
Bitcoin is open source, and the tools built on it should be too.
Part of why Arké exists is to show that a bitcoin wallet can be well designed, carefully built, and completely open at the same time. If other builders see it and raise their own bar, that counts as a win no matter how many people use Arké.
A closed-source wallet asks you to trust it. Arké asks you to read the code.
The Bitcoin Design Guide
The Bitcoin Design Guide is a community resource on how to design bitcoin wallets well. Arké puts those practices to work in a real app, on a real protocol, with real users.
Where the guide is clear, Arké follows it. Where it's vague, Arké makes a call and writes down why. Where the guide could be better, those notes go back into it.
The Ark protocol
Arké is built on Ark, using Bark, the implementation by Second. It's meant to be a reference iOS wallet for that ecosystem: a working, open app that other developers can learn from, fork, or build on.
Getting Ark into people's hands sooner is one of Arké's goals, and a solid reference wallet helps with that.
Building in public
Arké is developed in the open. Big technical and design decisions are written up as they happen, so anyone following along can see what was built and why.
That takes more effort than building quietly, but it's far more useful to everyone else working on this.
Code
The source code is on GitHub. Issues, pull requests, and honest feedback are all welcome.
Get involved
If you work on bitcoin UX as a developer or designer, Arké is as much for you as for the people using it. Read the code, open an issue, send a fix, or just follow along.
You can talk to us on Discord. The wider Bitcoin Design community is at bitcoin.design, and Bark's documentation is at docs.second.tech.