Dover, DE, Jan. 20, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Unspendable Labs today announced plans for Kontor, its Bitcoin metaprotocol, to achieve three major scaling capabilities: low-latency confirmations of 1-2 seconds for real-time usability, high throughput of over 1,000 transactions per second for mass-scale adoption, and dramatically lower fees, roughly 1/100th the cost of standard Bitcoin transactions — all while settling entirely on the Bitcoin blockchain.
The announcement makes Kontor the first protocol to address Bitcoin's core scaling limitations without compromising its industry-leading security.
"Bitcoin's 10-minute blocks are a feature, not a bug, they're what make it the most secure blockchain in existence," said Adam Krellenstein, CEO. "Kontor doesn't try to change Bitcoin. Instead, we've built a layer that gives users fast confirmations, high throughput, and low fees while Bitcoin continues to do what it does best: provide unmatched security and finality."
Kontor Network
How Kontor Works
Kontor operates as a metaprotocol, every Kontor transaction is simply data stored inside a regular Bitcoin transaction. This approach, called embedded consensus, means Kontor inherits Bitcoin's security guarantees by design: if Bitcoin is secure, Kontor is secure.
Low Latency: 1-2 Second Confirmations
To achieve speed without sacrificing security, Kontor introduces optimistic consensus. A network of stakers runs BFT consensus to assign transaction ordering before Bitcoin confirmation, enabling 1-2 second confirmations backed by slashable collateral. Users receive explicit economic finality — they know exactly how much stake backs each transaction and can calibrate acceptance thresholds accordingly.
High Throughput: 1,000+ Transactions Per Second
Kontor employs aggressive payload optimization to dramatically increase transaction capacity. The network can process over 1,000 transactions per second — compared to roughly 10 TPS for vanilla Bitcoin — without requiring any changes to the Bitcoin protocol itself.
Lower Costs: 100x Fee Reduction
Kontor's payload optimizations — including BLS signature aggregation, registry-based ID compression, and binary encoding with Zstd compression — reduce transaction costs to roughly 1/100th of equivalent Bitcoin operations.
By the Numbers
- Low Latency: 1-2 second confirmations with economic finality (vs. 10+ minutes for vanilla Bitcoin)
- High Throughput: 1,000+ transactions per second (vs. ~10 TPS for vanilla Bitcoin)
- Lower Costs: ~1/100th the cost of standard Bitcoin transactions
- Security: 100% on Bitcoin — no sidechains, no rollups
"We're not asking anyone to trust a new blockchain or move their assets somewhere else," said Krellenstein. "Every Kontor transaction settles on Bitcoin. The ten-minute blocks remain, as strong as ever, Kontor users just no longer need to wait for them."
Press Inquiries
Adam Krellenstein
adam [at] unspendablelabs.com
