RSK: The Tool to make Bitcoin an Infrastructure of Open Source
RSK is a smart contract platform secured by the Bitcoin Network aiming to assemble Bitcoin miners to realize smart contract, instant payment and high scalability through side chain, so as to add value and practicability to the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Nick Szabo, the earliest proponet of the concept of smart contracts, had an intuitive evaluation of RSK: RSK, Bitcoin side chain, is the most valuable part of Bitcoin (currency and settlement system) as well as the most valuable part of ethereum (smart contract programming environment).
RSK is the first open source smart contract platform to be two-way peg with bitcoin where miners were rewarded for working together to participate actively in the revolution of smart contracts.
“Drive chain + notary/side chain” realizes two-way anchoring of assets
Actually, the term “side chain” is relative to the main chain. When the performance of the main chain face an obstacle or some functions cannot be extended, relevant transactions only need to be executed on the side chain by transferring the assets of the main chain to the side chain, so as to share the pressure of the main chain and expand the performance and functions of the main chain. Side chains are designed to achieve two-way peg, allowing an asset to move from one blockchain to another without changing the value of the asset. The most difficult point is that the protocol modification should be compatible with the existing main chain, which means, it cannot affect the work of the existing main chain. And all two-way peg systems require a third party to vote on when to unlock bitcoins and where to send them, ensuring that the third party is an honest node.
In the driver chain, the miner is essentially the custodian of the money, and the driver chain gives the miner the oversight to lock the bitcoin and allows the miner to vote on when to unlock the Bitcoin and where to send the unlocked Bitcoin. The higher the participation of honest miners in the driving chain, the greater the safety of the whole system.
However, as a side chain of bitcoin, RSK is still in the early stage, and the number of Bitcoin miners participating in joint mining is not enough to achieve high decentralization temporarily. Therefore, notarization voting (multiple signatures) is mainly used to determine the locking and unlocking of Bitcoin so far while These notaries are made up of bitcoin companies with high global technology and security standards, and the community can vote to add or remove notaries to ensure a high degree of community autonomy. In the medium term, miners and notaries (with different weights) vote together on which Bitcoins to lock or unlock, and RSK dynamically adjusts the voting weights based on the degree to which all Bitcoins are working together. In the long run, notaries’ voting rights will be removed when more than 90 percent of Bitcoin miners participate in joint mining, leaving only miners with the right to vote.
Joint mining is the accounting method adopted by RSK, which allows bitcoin miners to use the same hardware and consume the same power to dig mines at the same time on the bitcoin and RSK blockchain to get transaction fees without affecting the performance of BTC mining. All the miners need to do is adjust the mining software. RSK uses the DECOR+ block bonus sharing scheme to achieve the same security as Bitcoin by co-mining with Bitcoin to reduce competition and allow miners to converge without further collaboration.
RSK’s smart contract is an electronic contract that automatically executes based on trigger conditions. Similar to Ethereum’s smart contract, RSK’s smart contract is a mechanism that can be automated in various business environments.
RSK is also a turing-complete virtual machine and compatible with ethereum virtual machines. Ethereum contracts can run on RSK virtual machines. RSK’s goal is to reach a block time of 20 seconds, 300 transfer transactions per second (TPS), and expand to 1,000 TPS.
The biggest benefit is that the joint mining part with Bitcoin, which has the same level of security as the bitcoin network, is meant to be profitable to attract miners to join in.
How Does RSK Achieve Its Goal?
RSK, as a side chain, is isolated from the Bitcoin main chain as well as parallel to the main chain so that the side-chain assets can transfer to each other with the Bitcoin main chain.Bitcoin can be sent to the side chain or sent back from the side chain to the main chain of bitcoin. The transcations between two chains wtih both speed and security guaranteed would not cause the problem that community participants and miners lose investing value.
RSK: The Fuel for DeFi
The services of DeFi products can be implemented without a central authority, or the mechanisms controlling financial products are distributed among different entities.
DeFi products include decentralized loans, decentralized exchanges, decentralized derivatives or decentralized stabilization currency issuance, while many people consider decentralized payments already as a DeFi product where BTC is the most used cryptocurrency for payment.
The DeFi protocol has been getting a lot of attention since early 2018. Although Ethereum is considered the dominant protocol in DeFi’s development, developers and investors have been looking at the potential of Bitcoin, the most liquid cryptocurrency, in DeFi.
This intense interest has led many development teams to find the best way to achieve this goal, which will create more competition between bitcoin and ethereum and possibly all new smart contract platforms. However, such competition is essential to drive the development and realization of the vision of an open decentralized financial system.
