RSK it's an open-source platform that brings smart Contract capabilities to the Bitcoin Blockchain and also it’s a Bitcoin side chain (it's any mechanism that allows token from one Blockchain to be securely used within a completely separate Blockchain but still move to the original (main chain) chain if necessary), it means that RSK has its own Blockchain network, but allows Bitcoin to be transferred to it from the Bitcoin Blockchain and used within its network, Bitcoin can also be transferred back from the RSK Blockchain and used on the Bitcoin Blockchain
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Decentralized nodes send and verify the transaction, which are grouped together into blocks, that are then hashed and chained in chronological order, RSK is connection and ultimate dependence on Bitcoin
RSK aims to bring affordable decentralized financial services to the world also aim to leave the discussion of who should join our leave the Federation to the member of its network, RSK hopes to leverage Bitcoin security and censorship resistance to create more robust financial services for the planet's unbanked population unlike Ethereum that aims to function as a decentralized general-purpose computations platform (Leverage Bitcoin security to bank the unbanked, Transaction with RSK, Gives liquidity to Bitcoin, Allows faster transactions without sacrificing security, User decided how to spend their Bitcoins)
RSK wants to leverage the security of Bitcoin, both at an economic level, by pegging it's token to Bitcoin, and a network level, by using the immense hashing power of Bitcoin's miners, to do this successfully RSK relies on two processes, a two-way peg, and merge-mining
Two-Way Peg is a process of transferring and using Tokens from one Blockchain on another Blockchain, To return your Bitcoin just send your SBTC to the RSK bridge contract, which would then alert the member of the Federation that you want to exchange your one SBTC for one BTC, The member of the Federation would then sign a transaction on the Bitcoin Blockchain that would transfer one Bitcoin to your wallet
RSK Miner, it's basically someone who has an RSK node and a Bitcoin mining node running at the same time, the miner creates an RSK block and hashes it and then enters that hash as data in the Bitcoin block that he's mining, To Mine RSK Block, a Bitcoin miner just needs to include the RSK block's hash in the data field of their Bitcoin block's coin-based transaction, In essence, they are still only mining Bitcoin blocks but because the RSK hashes are included in these blocks, they benefit from the same security, it would be just difficult and expensive to change the RSK hash in a Bitcoin block as it would be to change an actual Bitcoin transaction
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RSK relies on a bridge mechanism (The bridge is a multi-signature Bitcoin wallet
where each of signers belongs to the RSK Federation) that logs bitcoin as collateral and releases a token called smart bitcoin, in a one to one ratio, to be used within the RSK Blockchain, to release the Bitcoin that locked in this bridge you would have to pay an equal amount in smart Bitcoin which would then get burned
RSK Bridge Contract Can send and receive smart Bitcoin function like an ERC20 Token contract
Once you have an SBTC on your RSK wallet, you can use it to, Interact with smart Contact, Deploy your own smart Contacts or call a function in existing contracts, You can also transfer funds from one wallet to another, also RSK can use all Ethereum functionality
The RSK Federation it's comprised of 25 prominent cryptocurrency companies including Jaxx, Bitpay, Bitoasis, these company the majority of which are wallets or exchanges, must sign off on a transaction before Bitcoin can be released from the RSK bridge back to the Blockchain, This Federation is Responsible for securing and redeeming collateral
Exchanging BTC for SBTC is instant, but the reverse take a little longer
The RSK team uses this scheme in an attempt to make the Federation more decentralized, the sign off process on this multi-signature wallet follows a MofN scheme, where a minimum of M members out of a total N members must sign off on a transaction before it can be processed
in terms of functionality, RSK is rather similar to Ethereum, You can deploy and run a smart contract on their platform and use smart Bitcoin as gas to run a computation on the network also You can even use Ethereum languages and frameworks like solidity and truffle to write and deploy your smart Contacts