Birkan Kayadibi: The Growth of the RGB Ecosystem at Tuscany Lightning Summit 2026

ByRGB Team

At the Tuscany Lightning Summit 2026 in Viareggio, Italy, Birkan Kayadibi, COO of the RGB Protocol Association, talked about the work of the Association for RGB Protocol on Bitcoin, the growth of the RGB ecosystem since mainnet and the arrival of USDT.
Watch the full interview in the video below.

Note: the interview dates back to May 2026 and reflects the views of the speaker at the time.

In Brief

  • Association: a non-profit organization in Switzerland with a two-part roadmap, brand awareness and technical development, and education at the core
  • Ecosystem: from a fragmented landscape to companies raising money on RGB, such as KaleidoSwap and Utexo, and new integrations such as LNFI Network
  • USDT: a source of liquidity and volumes for the Lightning Network, and the most anticipated development for Birkan Kayadibi
  • Developers: rgb.info, the RGB-Tools and rgb-protocol repositories, and SDKs from ecosystem startups as starting points

The Role of the RGB Protocol Association

The RGB Protocol Association is a non-profit organization based in Switzerland. The board elected Birkan Kayadibi to run the Association, so he manages the daily operations and the relationship with the members and with the board. At the beginning of the year, the Association defined a roadmap in two parts: brand awareness of RGB on one side, technical development on the other, for example through a bug bounty.

The Association also acts as a bridge for startups, members and outside teams in need of support with the RGB integration, and helps technical teams integrate RGB v0.11.1 through the RGB libraries and the expertise inside the Association. Above all, the focus is on education at every level: businesses, end users and developers with only a high-level knowledge of RGB.

The Growth of the RGB Ecosystem Since Mainnet

According to Birkan, the RGB ecosystem was more fragmented a few years ago, to the point that some companies building on RGB did not even know about each other. The mainnet release of RGB v0.11.1 marked a key milestone; afterwards, the Association invested in community and education, with round tables, meetups and side events where developers from different companies could meet, share ideas and discuss open issues in the RGB code and on the business side.

Education also targets investors and businesses, and the growth of the RGB ecosystem shows on the business side as well. Today, companies such as KaleidoSwap and Utexo raise money with RGB at the center of their narrative, while companies with existing volume and liquidity have integrated RGB, like LNFI Network, a DEX operating in Asia. The market now knows that RGB can bring faster and more private transactions to Bitcoin.

USDT on Bitcoin and Volumes for Lightning

Birkan looks forward to having USDT on Bitcoin through RGB. In his view, bitcoiners spent years on scaling Bitcoin and partly overlooked the potential of stablecoins, while the market shows an enormous demand for them, especially from emerging countries and in trading, settlement and liquidity routing.

For the Lightning Network, USDT can bring liquidity and volumes, one of the current limits of the network. On the Lightning Network, each channel update commits a new RGB state transition into a new commitment transaction, and each routed payment gets a dedicated HTLC output, as described in the documentation.

Where Developers Can Start with RGB

The first stop is rgb.info, with tools, explanations and code examples for a first test of RGB from the terminal. Next, people can check two GitHub organizations: RGB-Tools, with ready-to-use libraries that remove much of the complexity of a build from scratch, and rgb-protocol, the main reference from an educational point of view, with the core libraries listed in the documentation.

Finally, some startups of the RGB ecosystem offer SDKs and services for teams with no need to work directly with the libraries. The choice depends on the level of control a team needs and on the time available for the integration.

The full interview, with more details on the growth of the RGB ecosystem, is in the video above. For more videos from the RGB ecosystem, follow @RGB_Bitcoin.

Further Reading

Interview recorded at the Tuscany Lightning Summit 2026, Viareggio, Italy. Video on the RGB Protocol YouTube channel.

Birkan Kayadibi, COO of the RGB Protocol Association

Birkan Kayadibi

COO of the RGB Protocol Association.

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