When Vitalik Buterin proposed an enhancement to the Bitcoin protocol to enable smart contacts, the community refused to adopt it, and so Ethereum was born, supporting this capability “out of box.”
Said capability enables developers to create decentralize apps — aka “dapps” — that run inside a blockchain, so it’s fairly important. Actually, it could be critical, as the ability has helped make Ethereum the second most popular cryptocurrency in the world.
And so there are a few companies and developers trying to make Bitcoin compatible with smart contracts.
Enter RSK
RSK, formerly known as Rootstock, is one of those companies with a bitcoin smart contracts platform. Available in beta, the solution would enable what is the largest blockchain community to get into dapps, without switching to other platform like Ethereum or NEO.
The problem, however, is that the Bitcoin community won’t accept changes that easily, prompting RSK to find its way around current limitations. And that way around involves a sidechain with tokens moving from the main bitcoin blockchain to a compatible network operated with the help of 25 companies.
Like Ethereum’s implementation, RSK’s sidechain will use a Turing-complete language and issue blocks roughly every 10 seconds.
RSK’s CEO Diego Gutierrez Zaldivar believes that even with this workaround users will get the same level of utility. “This is the first time that there’s going to be a smart contract platform powered by the bitcoin network,” he told CoinDesk.
Not everyone’s sidechain
The mentioned sidechain is now in beta, enabling users to test it out by moving money onto it.
From what we’re getting, the technology is still not ready for prime time, thus RSK developers are relying on a group of companies — known as a “federation” — who collectively control the money put into the sidechain. In comparison, the original dream of sidechains involves moving money back and forth between the main Bitcoin network and the sidechain without trusting anyone.
Together with its business partners, RSK has been running experimental smart contracts on the testnet for some time. At the moment, they are the only ones who can access the so-called “smart bitcoin” (SBTC) which is used by smart contracts on the sidechain.
“The network will still have limited access until we finalize the onboarding on most of the bitcoin miners and federation members,” said RSK co-founder Gabriel Kurman.
After all security concerns are cleared, the onboarding of the RSK Federation members completed, and more hashing power added to the network – the company will open the access to the general public.
Growing interest
If you own bitcoins, you want to hear it’s growing all the time. And it is technology like smart contracts that could help the world’s first cryptocurrency yet again reach new heights.
So, unsurprisingly, while it won’t “let new tech into the main chain,” the Bitcoin community — or at least some part of it — is looking at what RSK is doing with enthusiasm.
In addition to the 25 companies that are part of RSK’s federation, it is said that a few bitcoin miners have also “expressed interest” in being involved.
“The idea is to start on the mainnet, strengthening the security of the platform, and hopefully by May, we can announce the production version of the mainnet,” Zaldivar said.
Meanwhile, RSK is running its bounty program, offering developers up to $5,000 for discovering any loopholes in its smart contracts technology. Later on, the same global community will be able to vet and test the platform, to eventually help push Bitcoin to break even more records. Did someone say $28K?