The RSK project is continuing the legacy of Bitcoin pioneers by building turing-complete smart-contract capabilities for the Bitcoin blockchain. By partnering with iExec, RSK pushes these capabilities further by allowing its decentralized applications to access on-demand and scalable cloud computing resources.

Smart contracts are coming to Bitcoin

The world of smart contracts has emerged in recent years and is disrupting how modern business and trade are conducted across the globe. These self-executing virtual agreements have been popularized by Ethereum, but developers quickly saw the potential to enable them on the most famous blockchain platform as well: Bitcoin.

While the traditional purpose of Bitcoin is to establish itself as a payment alternative, the developers under RSK aim at adding value and functionality to its ecosystem by enabling smart contracts, near instant payments and higher scalability.

RSK is therefore the first general purpose smart contract platform secured by the Bitcoin network. The RSK platform uses Bitcoin as its native currency, thanks to a 2-Way Peg system that ensures a fixed conversion between BTC and SBTC (1 SBTC = 1 BTC).

iExec’s smart contracts deployed on RSK

Meanwhile, iExec is developing the first blockchain-based decentralized cloud computing network. This marketplace allows participants who need computing power to meet those who own computing power, thus supporting the most compute-intensive blockchain applications.

iExec’s technology relies on Ethereum smart contracts and allows the building of a virtual cloud infrastructure that provides high-performance computing services on demand. However, decentralized apps will ultimately rely on the execution of multiple smart contracts, across multiple blockchains, which has led iExec to adopt a blockchain-agnostic stance.

RSK will allow developers around the globe to create decentralized personal and corporate solutions that work in the safest and most popular blockchain protocol, with low transaction costs that fit an ample range of needs. For these reasons, iExec has successfully deployed its V1 smart contracts on RSK as well. This SDK allows developers to build applications that will benefit from scalable and free cloud computing capabilities.

The next steps of the partnership

On May 29, 2018, iExec will release its V2, the most-awaited component of iExec. This release consists of a decentralized marketplace for trading cloud resources, and marks the very beginning of the possibility of monetizing one’s cloud resources in a peer-to-peer market.

Once V2 is made compatible with RSK as a next milestone, RSK applications and their smart contracts will be able to access the same decentralized cloud that Ethereum dapps make use of. Compute-intensive applications in the fields of fintech, artificial intelligence, scientific research or gaming will be able to leverage these resources, making RSK and iExec the backbone of the Bitcoin ecosystem.