Bitcoin Forum

The Takeaway

• Under development by the LNP/BP Standards Association, the RGB protocol entered beta in June.
• The second layer network promises to bring smart contracts and tokenized assets to Bitcoin with a Lightning Network-esque technical design.
• RGB could be used to issue tokenize securities and nonfungible tokens (NFT), and to offer a more private means of stablecoin issuance and transfer.

Smart contracts and Bitcoin. These technical phenomena are rarely associated with each other, often because people believe Bitcoin’s paired-down scripting language can’t support the smart contract applications that have become the darlings of the Ethereum ecosystem.

https://www.coindesk.com/rgb-smart-contracts-bitcoin

Been a while since I saw any mention of RGB!

Also, been seeing a lot of movements with Rootstock (now acquired, part of larger IOVLabs and a full stack of products now) and chatter about Bitcoin Defi (naturally!). Not sure I like all these wrapped Bitcoin nonsense though.

I've asked in 2016 and still, can't even find a simple BTC escrow smart contract to use right off the bat...

They have been developing it avoiding too much attention. RGB, being the next step after colored coins, need to be really ready to be taken seriously by the bitcoin community. It looks like they are doing a good job so far but as you correctly point out a simple BTC escrow smart contract to use right off the bat... will have to wait.  :)