Bitcoin-built smart contract platform RSK (a.k.a. Rootstock) is merging with an offshoot established by its founders. The partnership will allow it to spread its roots to Ethereum — and beyond.
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The company has been acquired by RIF Labs, a development lab that was established by a handful of RSK’s own founders, including CEO Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar and Chief Scientist Sergio Demian Lerner, who will both assume the same roles at RIF.
“The RIF Labs founders also comprised renowned professionals with decades of experience in the financial and legal realms such as Alex Aberg Cobo (RIF’s CFO), Malcom Pale and Joey Garcia (Advisors),” according to Gutierrez-Zaldivar.
Like the entity that came before it, RIF develops blockchain infrastructure with a bent toward smart contracts, and the merger will accompany RIF OS’s integration into RSK’s services[2].
But this merger is more than a mere acquisition. With it, RSK is opening the doors of smart contract interoperability, as RIF OS’s framework could allow for RSK to interoperate with other smart contract platforms in the future.
Enter Interoperability
When asked what RIF OS implements into RSK what it can’t do already, Gutierrez-Zaldivar told Bitcoin Magazine that RIF, which he described as an “upper layer” to the RSK network, will leverage RSK’s smart contracts to execute certain P2P services. The beauty of RIF, though, is that these services have the potential to transcend the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains, which RSK’s smart contracts currently support, to other platforms as well.
“While RSK technology is focused on creating an Open Blockchain for Smart Contract execution secured by the Bitcoin Network, RIF OS is focused on building P2P infrastructure services (data storage, payment channels, interactive name resolution, secure communications, oracling services) that rely on RSK Smart Contracts to enforce service level
