Bitcoin Firms Sign Agreement to Create Smart Contracts Federation

by

A group of global bitcoin firms have signed an agreement to create a federation to contribute towards the growth of and support a bitcoin smart contracts platform. Called the RSK Federation, it is based on a network of RSK smart contracts created by a startup based in Buenos Aires, called Rootstock.

According to Diego Gutierrez Zaldivar, the chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of Rootstock, the federation is a “a huge signal from the bitcoin ecosystem,” validating the ways in which various companies can leverage sidechain, a technology that was developed by Blockstream, a bitcoin startup, to make the bitcoin network functional. In a statement to CoinDesk, Zaldivar said: “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.”

The Federation

Some of the international companies that have signed the agreement to form a federation are Bitfinex, a company based in Hong Kong; BitGo, a company based in San Francisco; BitOasis, a company based in Dubai; BitPay, a company based in Georgia; Bitstamp, a company based in Luxembourg; BTCC, a company based in Shanghai; JAXX, a company based in Toronto; and Xapo, a company based in Alto.

All the above-mentioned companies are bitcoin companies, but some of them do not work only with bitcoins. For example, JAXX makes wallets for all cryptocurrencies while BitGo supplies blockchain security services.

RootStock says that RSK is a Turing-complete smart contracts platform, the first of its kind in the world, made secure by the RSK bitcoin network. It makes use of a hybrid security model combining elements of a private network with proof-of-work.

Gabriel Kurman, the co-founder of RootStock, said that the federation will provide a number of services and key elements for the development of real use smart contracts cases. The larger firms that form part of the federation will operate oracles to supply data and validate contracts for the network.

Opinions

Wences Casares, the founder of Xapo, a bitcoin wallet provider, says that the enterprise version of RSK will beat the abilities of Ethereum by supplying smart contract functionality with the robust blockchain technology. Xapo will be helping RootStock as much as possible, and that includes not only signing the agreement, but also providing wallets for RSK tokens and a number of employees.

Anthony Di Iorio, co-founder of Ethereum and CEO of JAXX, said that building bitcoin smart contracts will lead to the creation of a better blockchain ecosystem. Ben Davenport, CTO and co-founder of BitGo, said that his company will actively participate in the federation. He said: “Our decisions for what blockchains to support are largely customer-driven. But we like the Rootstock team, and the general idea of what they’re trying to do.”

So far, only the first letter of interest has been signed among the members of the RSK federation. According to RootStock, the final document that will recognize the federation will be completed by the end of 2016.