Layer 2s and Scaling
July 18, 2022, 1:46PM EDT
• 13 min read

Scaling Bitcoin: RSK

Arnold Toh

Quick Take

  • RSK is a merged-mined chain that leverages the work of the existing Bitcoin miners
  • The concept of merge mining indicates some inheritance of Bitcoin’s security but it also relies on additional crypto-economic assumptions
  • RSK’s smart contracts are compatible with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), allowing RSK to leverage the existing Ethereum tooling significantly
  • RSK helps improve the programmability and transaction throughput for the Bitcoin ecosystem with the use of a Bitcoin pegged representation (RBTC) on RSK
  • The use of RBTC on RSK introduces certain trade-offs which may not be optimal for users

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