Bitcoin smart contracts are getting their own cooperative. Announced today, a group of international bitcoin companies have signed a letter of intent to form a federation that would find them supporting and contributing to the development of a smart contracts platform that would utilize the bitcoin blockchain.
Unveiled today, the RSK Federation is built around the RSK smart contract network created by Buenos Aires-based startup Rootstock .
Rootstock co-founder and CEO Diego Gutiérrez Zaldívar described the federation to CoinDesk as "a huge signal from the bitcoin ecosystem" and a validation of how companies can leverage sidechains , a technology developed by bitcoin startup Blockstream to add functionality to the bitcoin network.
He told CoinDesk: "The whole extension of bitcoin, and solving some of its biggest challenges with richer scripting, will solve a lot of shortcomings of bitcoin in the coming years while protecting the intrinsic value of bitcoin." Included among the 25 companies announced today are Hong Kong-based Bitfinex; San Francisco-based BitGo; Dubai-based BitOasis ; Atlanta, Georgia-Based BitPay ; Luxembourg-based Bitstamp , Shanghai-based BTCC , Toronto-based JAXX; and Palo Alto-based Xapo .
Described by the company as the first Turing-complete platform to run smart contracts secured by the bitcoin network, RSK uses a "hybrid" security model that combines elements of both proof-of-work (popular among fans of bitcoin’s public blockchain) and a private network.
"The federation is going to provide several key elements and services to develop real use cases of smart contracts," Rootstock co-founder Gabriel Kurman told CoinDesk.
Some of the larger companies who signed the agreement will also operate oracles that would validate contracts and provide data to the network.
RSK launched its initial testnet, called Lotus, in May 2016, but is still almost a year away from having an enterprise ready solution available, according to their own timeline. Member support To bridge that gap […]
