Bitcoin Forum

Two months after launching Rootstock, some people are still not aware of bitcoin having a smart contract capability. So let us expound the way to improve bitcoin for not just a exchange medium or digital currency , make it a service where it can be a working platform or an ecosystem.

What can it do? How does it work?  ???

If you're aware of Ethereum and how it functions, basically Ethereum is known to be turing complete in how it is programmed and smart contracts can be written that way by making use of a programming language called as Solidity. This wasn't the case in Bitcoin (it may be intentionally not turing complete - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script) and hence something had to be built as a layer on top of Bitcoin to enable turing complete smart contracts. Rootstock enables this and runs as a sidechain while also facilitating support for handling more transactions than the Bitcoin blockchain (about 300 transactions per second in about 10-20 seconds). Basically since it's a sidechain you'll have a currency called as a Rootcoin which can be exchanged back and forth to Bitcoins. Hence if Rootstock allows people to create smart contracts, people can use it to sign contracts and prove that it exists as this relies on proof-of-existence which again is stored on the blockchain.

So think of the various smart contracts that you can create with it soon (Without any middleman). To create ICOs and digital tokens (new altcoins) based on the trust from the Bitcoin Blockchain network, A contract between you and the pharmacist and the doctor where in Pharmacy benefit managers are removed as a middle man (where they make an extra buck for nothing)  - https://www.prolifics.com/blog/healthcare-blockchain-how-smart-contracts-could-revolutionize-care-delivery or a basic smart contract between you and the seller with a fix terms of the contract defining when the contract should be deemed as "complete" and broadcasted on the blockchain (to prove that it exists) thus increasing "Trust".

Usually there are Oracles (Oracles make use of information that otherwise can't be accesses by the blockchain in order to validate a smart contract and to provide information to it) that handle providing information to the smart contract like - Price rates, information on seasonal harvesting weather conditions (in case a smart contract is created for selling turnips during a particular seasons to determine yield).

Here's a good article explaining it : https://medium.com/novamining/rootstock-rsk-smart-contracts-on-bitcoin-9ef28e135193
Their Wiki on Github provides information on how to create a smart contract : https://github.com/rsksmart/rskj/wiki/Starting-with-RSK-Smart https://github.com/rsksmart/rskj/wiki/Creating-Smart-Contracts-in-RSK and https://github.com/rsksmart/rskj/wiki (use the links on the right to navigate)

Additional reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPQD7-AOjMI (What does it mean to be Turning complete in a programming language?)

Hi!
Rootstock was renamed RSK a couple of years ago.

The RSK sidechain mainnet has been active since January 2018. The Beta testnet was active for two years without problems.

The currency in the sidechain is not called Rootcoin anymore (because some other alt-coin took that name). The coin is called Smart Bitcoin (SBTC) (but don't confuse with a new alt-coin self-called SuperBTC :(  that an exchange listed also as SBTC).

The RSK sidechain has a federated 1:1 peg with Bitcoin. In the future we would like it to become a drivechain.

More info in the RSK website https://www.rsk.co/

Of course we want bitcoin smarter than the others, therefore we are waiting for the next step