Learn about Rootstock (RSK). ICO or Exchange?

So Rootstock (RSK) has been working on something for a while that aims to add value and bring adoption to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is known as the OG of cryptocurrencies and is the largest in size of cryptocurreny marketcap. However people have always questioned what it can do. Now because of the maturity of the space more coins have different use cases and specific reasons related to blockchain integration.

One of the things that a lot of cryptocurrencies have utility for is smart contracts. A smart contract is an automated and digital contract that is used to cut out middle parties. For example it can be used for escrow services, lending, loyalty and rewards, distributed voting, and a lot more. Bitcoin doesn't have a utility for using smart contracts, all bitcoin as it is currently understood by investors can be used for is to send transactions and be mined. With the addition of having a smart contract platform secured by the bitcoin network, you will be able to use Bitcoin with a dApp.

It is a big thing that Bitcoin can support the creation of dApps using the RSK platform. The main blockchain that supports smart contracts and dApps is Ethereum but there are some others like Tron (TRX) and EOS (EOS) which can do the same only lack in getting thassame volume of developers that Ethereum can. What it will come down to is community, and the backing of which dApp platform people want to use, or it may come down to the one people think is best and easiest to use.

RSK seems to want to make it as accessible as possible for anyone to launch their dApp through its platform and have it secured by bitcoin's network. Their goal is to create a more flexible bitcoin network that is ready to be used to navigate decentralized applications. It is not any different than how you can use ETH to interact with a smart contract that was built using solidity. Instead of ETH being sent to the smart contract address it is going to be BTC but through the Rootstock platform secured by bitcoin's network which is in beta and can be used here.

The mainnet for RSK has already been launched early this year (2018) see the blockchain stats here. Rootstock accepts Bitcoin as the primary payment on its platform but it will also work by having a 2 part peg to BTC price and gives incentives to BTC miners by introducing something called merged mining. This function basically allows the Rootstock coin pegged to Bitcoin called RBTC to be mined simultaneously with BTC and at almost no extra cost. 1 RBTC = 1 BTC you can buy RBTC on huobi.

RSK is partnered with Bitmain and Antpool. The interesting new feature that allows RBTC and BTC to be mined simultaneously can be a reason why more people start to mine BTC. You are pretty much able to mine 2x as much BTC if you are mining RBTC as well and at the same time. Antpool owns about 23% of Bitcoin's hash power.

Read more about RSK and what it is about here