Skip to content
Back to Blog
Ecosystem Updates

New Rootstock Upgrade: Increased decentralization, lower gas fees and faster transactions

Read Time: 1 mins
New Rootstock Upgrade:  Increased decentralization, lower gas fees and faster transactions

The Rootstock community is always working behind the scenes to try and make things even better and this month has been a busy one. A major upgrade combined with the increase of Rootstock’s hash rate to 80% and a new transaction protocol have ushered in big improvements for both users and builders…

Let’s get into it 👇

Rootstock activates Lovell 7.0.0 upgrade, which will boost SECURITY and DECENTRALIZATION

The Lovell upgrade has gone live on mainnet, which brings major benefits when it comes to security and decentralization. How does it do this? In three ways:

  • It strengthens the PowPeg, Rootstock’s native bridge and the most secure Bitcoin bridge, ensuring that changes are verified before taking effect, and guaranteeing that locked funds remain safe and accessible.
  • It also lays the groundwork for increasing the number of PowPeg members (pegnatories) from 9 to 60, making Rootstock one of the most decentralized Bitcoin sidechains.
  • In addition, the Lovell 7.0.0 upgrade improves Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility, making it even easier to build on Bitcoin.

Not bad, right? 🔒

Gas FEES are going to be 60% LOWER

Thanks to the Bitcoin miners who merge-mine Rootstock, the minimum gas price per transaction has been significantly reduced. In fact, fees are now 60% lower.

What does this mean for the Rootstock community? Users will of course enjoy lower costs to interact with dApps and smart contracts, whilst builders will benefit from reduced expenses in deploying and maintaining smart contracts. Overall, these lower fees will help encourage greater innovation and usage, strengthening Roostock as the go-to place for building on Bitcoin. 🥳

Transactions are going to be EVEN FASTER

In addition, the FASTER protocol, which is coming soon, will enable faster blocks and higher transaction throughput, reducing transaction confirmation times from 30 seconds to just 5.

These updates support Rootstock’s mission to become a more scalable, decentralized, and cost-efficient Bitcoin-based smart contract platform. Since its inception in 2017, the Rootstock network has never stopped evolving.

Join the Rootstock Discord channel here and let us know about your experience!

To get more details on the Lovell 7.0.0 update, click here: RSKIP 435 Network Upgrade: Lovell

Recommended articles

Parallel Transaction Execution: Why Blockchain Needs to Learn to Multitask

Parallel Transaction Execution: Why Blockchain Needs to Learn to Multitask

As blockchain networks continue to mature, the conversation around scalability is changing. For years, the focus has largely been on increasing throughput and reducing transaction costs. Those metrics still matter, but they don’t tell the full story of what it takes to support applications at scale. Today’s blockchain networks are expected to support a much […]

Fundamentals
Introducing Atlas: The easiest way in to BTCFi

Introducing Atlas: The easiest way in to BTCFi

Most Bitcoin today is held, not actively used. Not because there’s no demand, but because using Bitcoin beyond holding is complex, costly, and dependent on intermediaries where tradeoffs around trust, cost, and control aren’t always clear. Borrowing against BTC or generating yield has traditionally required navigating fragmented infrastructure, comparing bridges, and making routing and security […]

Ecosystem Updates
Vetiver 9.0.2: Patch Release

Vetiver 9.0.2: Patch Release

This patch release fixes an issue reported by users after upgrading to Vetiver 9.0.0, which prevents some Testnet nodes from successfully completing a full blockchain synchronization, especially after a node restart. It also introduces minor performance and security improvements. Although this is not a mandatory release, Testnet nodes should be updated to this version to […]

Ecosystem Updates