Liquid is a sidechain running on top of Bitcoin, enabling individuals and business to transact Bitcoin faster and with more features than the original Blockchain, it was created by Blockstream and was recently launched with the cooperation of 23 of the industry’s biggest exchanges including Bitfinex, Bitmex and others.

Liquid’s native asset called L-BTC is two-way pegged to Bitcoin and can be redeemed for on-chain Bitcoin anytime, its confidential transactions ensure that the amount and the asset type is only known to both transacting parties, making transacting Bitcoin a Monero-like operation.

The side chain also has Issued Assets which tokenizes traditional assets like fiat, gold or securities and gives them Bitcoin-like features.

Liquid Network will in the future add many other features like Green Address support, a new Liquid wallet and support for hardware wallets like the ledger nano and Trezor.

Read full announcement here