Ark offboarding

Offboarding is the standard, cooperative way to withdraw bitcoin from Ark back to your own on-chain wallet. Users should always prefer offboarding over emergency exits—emergency exits should be reserved for situations where the Ark server is unresponsive.

The offboarding mechanism is identical to on-chain payments. On-chain payments are for paying third parties and will use whatever combination of VTXOs (including partial VTXOs) is needed to complete the payment. Offboarding is for withdrawing funds to your own wallet—either a specific whole VTXO or your entire Ark balance.

Offboard vs. emergency exit

	Offboard	Emergency exit
Server cooperation	Required	Not required
Cost	Single on-chain transaction	Multiple on-chain transactions
Speed	One transaction to confirm	Multiple sequential transactions to confirm
Use case	Normal withdrawals	Server unresponsive

If the server is unresponsive, users can fall back to an emergency exit. While more expensive and slower, emergency exits guarantee users can always access their bitcoin without server cooperation.

Offboarding fees

Offboarding fees are the same as on-chain payment fees.