January 3rd marked the 10th anniversary of the Bitcoin’s genesis block and the 1st anniversary of RSK, the first Smart Contract Network powered by the Bitcoin infrastructure. Bitcoin has proved to be the non-turing complete safest settlement network for more than 5 years until Ethereum got into the space bringing smart contracts to life. One year later, RSK Labs, the team behind the RSK Smart Contract Network, brought together the programmability of smart contracts introduced by Ethereum and the integrity and security of the Bitcoin Network. November 2015 set a milestone on the short Bitcoin’s history: there was a team working day and night to bring smart contracts to Bitcoin through sidechains technology. This meant no need to compromise security in favor of business logic programmability, you can now have both! In December 2015, where the Ethereum Network market cap was approximately USD 60M and the 24 hours’ volume was around USD 600,000 (*), smart contract developers had no alternatives when it came to choosing their blockchain platform. Now they were able to deploy their dApps leveraging on the Bitcoin hash power to secure their solutions. Both Ethereum developers and bitcoiners saw a new future for Bitcoin that exceeded the P2P electronic cash system designed by Satoshi Nakamoto: RSK smart contracts. In the first three years of operations, RSK Labs has been working with international financial institutions, Central Banks, Government, regulators, insurance and NGOs to help them build their blockchain-based proof of concepts and take the quantum leap this early stage technology is eager to make. From gaming to loyalty, from procurement to donations, RSK Labs works day and night putting the technology at the service of social transformation to build the next generation blockchain-based financial system. Building the Internet of Value is what drives the business.
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