EIP-1559 added a mechanism for the Ethereum network to establish a base transaction gas price that dynamically changes depending on the load of the network, measured by gas consumed by blocks. This base gas price is called base fee by the EIP. In this article we show that EIP-1559 is…

In 2015 a group of Bitcoiners including myself started brainstorming on how to use Bitcoin to achieve true financial inclusion. True financial inclusion requires cheap and open access to essential but solid financial services such as savings, sending and receiving payments, receiving credit, and insurance. Because of the volatility of…

To be successful in building a new open financial system, blockchains need to scale. Scalability is a property of a blockchain design, an inherent ability of a system to handle higher usage or adoption. Scaling is not simply increasing the transaction throughput, and this often misunderstood. …

(or how RSK can become a Data Availability Layer for Rollups) Tl;dr; Ephemeral Calldata (ECD) is a new type of transaction calldata that is included in the blockchain but may be removed in the future. The hash digest of this data can be used by smart-contracts to verify Zero-Knowledge proofs…

In a previous article we discussed different fee sniping attacks and we analyzed how they could impact RSK. In this article we dig deeper into the simplest form of fee sniping attack and we present the results of the simulation of different fee sniping strategies. We show how the two…

For many years, it was believed that the federated model was the best method to secure the two-way-peg of a Bitcoin sidechain without requiring a Bitcoin hard or soft fork. All other more decentralized potential solutions required either a Bitcoin soft-fork or the use of a new competing token to…

The security of Bitcoin relies on the economic incentives for miners to extend the “heaviest chain”, which is the chain with the most accumulated difficulty (usually the longest). Currently, those incentives are provided by the block reward, which consists of the block subsidy and the transaction fees. But the subsidy…

Since the day Satoshi mentioned the possibility of merged mining in 2010, several techniques have been devised to take advantage of the Bitcoin hashrate to secure a sidechain or a remorachain. …

Taproot is the the second of set of exciting improvements that are coming to Bitcoin. First it was segwit, now taproot, and someday we’ll see the activation of covenants, drivechains and coinwitness. However, Bitcoin development must not be rushed. I’m surprised Taproot is coming so fast. RSK can benefit from…