What is Rootstock?

Rootstock’s full technology stack is built on top of Bitcoin: From Rootstock smart contracts to the Rootstock Infrastructure Framework. The stack is designed to create a more fair and inclusive financial system.

See The Stack

Bitcoin, is a store and transfer of value. The blockchain is secure because miners with high infrastructure and energy costs create new blocks to be added to the blockchain every 10 minutes. The more hashing power they provide, the more secure the network is. Rootstock is the first open source smart contract platform that is powered by the bitcoin network. Rootstock’s goal is to add value and functionality to the bitcoin ecosystem by enabling smart-contracts, near instant payments, and higher-scalability. RIF is an all-in-one suite of open and decentralized infrastructure applications and services that enable faster, easier and scalable development of distributed applications (dApps) within a unified blockchain environment.

Rootstock is connected to Bitcoin in terms of how its blocks are mined, and also in terms of a common currency. Rootstock is also compatible with Ethereum in terms of its virtual machine (which executes smart contracts), as well as the RPC (external API) that it exposes. Let’s briefly look at each of these areas.