Welcome to RSK

The Developer Portal is the home for RSK documentation for end users and developers. Check out our quickstarts, tutorials, API reference, and code examples.

What is RSK?

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

Bitcoin, is a store and transfer of value. The blockchain is secure because miners with high infrastructure and energy costs create the new blocks to be added to the blockchain every 10 minutes. The more hashing power they provide, the more secure the network is.

RSK is the first open source smart contract platform that is powered by the bitcoin network. RSK’s goal is to add value and functionality to the bitcoin ecosystem by enabling smart-contracts, near instant payments, and higher-scalability.

How RSK is connected to bitcoin?

Merged mining with Bitcoin

The first point of contact is through mining.

The bitcoin miners do what is known as merged mining, securing both networks with the same infrastructure and energy consumption.

They create blocks on the bitcoin network every 10 minutes, including transfer of bitcoin from different addresses and in the process they create new bitcoins.

On RSK, blocks are created every 30 seconds, to secure the execution of smart contracts. This does not mint any new coins in the process, but does earn a reward from the merged mining.

Check out mining.rsk.co to learn more about mining.

2-way peg with Bitcoin

The second point of contact is the 2-way peg, also known as the bridge.

This component connects both networks to allow the transfer of bitcoins to RSK, thereby allowing developers to interact with smart contracts. They pay gas using the same bitcoin, the smart bitcoin.

To do so, you send bitcoin to a special address, where they are locked in the bitcoin network. Next, in the same address over in the RSK network, that same bitcoin is released to the user for use in the RSK network. This is called peg-in.

You can do the reverse operation called peg-out, by sending your bitcoin to a special address in the RSK network, and receiving your bitcoin back in the bitcoin network.