Adrian Eidelman: RSK – The Bitcoin-Based Smart Contract Platform #B006

Transcript

i'm here with adrian einemann he is co-founder of rsk labs so we had rsk on the podcast about five years ago so it's been a really long time and i'm sure that most of you probably don't remember that episode uh some of you probably weren't even listening back then but nonetheless we're excited to have rsk on again because lots have been happening um in the rxk sort of ecosystem and also i think like it's we often cover projects in the smart contract uh platform space that are like around uh building on ethereum or like building on you know newer uh blockchain platforms and

there's only you know so many projects that are trying to do this sort of like scalable smart contract platform on top of bitcoin of course we had stacks on just recently and rsk is uh one of those projects that's been around for a long time um so we'll be speaking with adrian today about the vision for sk what has been going on in the project for the last for the last five years since we last had them on and we'll also get into the technology so adrian thanks for joining me today thanks for inviting me i'm very happy to be here so it's been about five years like i said we had sergio lerner um on about five years ago so what's been the the journey for rsk since

um since then like how has the project evolved and you know maybe tell us a little bit about the organization that um that acquired rsk labs and sort of what that means for the project yeah yeah absolutely it's uh actually five years ago it's more or less the time when we started uh to build rsk so uh definitely a lot of things and have happened uh since then uh not only in our escape but the whole grips of space for sure and yeah well basically we we when we started working five years ago with the vision of building on on top of bitcoin as you said

and basically bring in smart contracts to bitcoin uh that was our main uh goal at the beginning of the project in 2016 and well basically uh uh the the after after that uh we put our heads down in in building the the basic uh building blocks of of the rsk uh platform of the usk sidechain and we launched the mainnet in early 2018 so uh rsk uh also commonly known as rootstock uh was launched three years ago and it's been uh in

maine uh working since then right and we are still working on on rsca there's a a lot of stuff to do and the ecosystem has has grown a lot and there are other very important players contributing to the yeah to the platform and to the ecosystem and yeah we have also uh started working on different layers on top of rsk all of them looking for building more decentralized uh technologies for for other projects or other entrepreneurs to to to build decentralized uh applications on top of bitcoin right people who've been in the space long

enough will remember that you know back around 2014 2015 you know there was um there were like a few projects that were trying to build on top of bitcoin and like one that i remember and that i think a lot of people from back then remembers was counterparty um and then like rsk i think had like a very different vision and approach so like counterparty was trying to build like a token system essentially using uh like bitcoin op returns and so like it had to parse the entire blockchain and like that that didn't you know there were some early projects that were trying to use that and it you know didn't really play out of course there was colored

coins as well and like rsk had more like broader ambitions to build a smart contract platform um on top of bitcoin you know early on like where did you see that rsk could bring value compared to some of these other projects that were trying to like build platforms up on top of bitcoin and like what was the long-term vision here back in in 2015 and and probably even before that uh some well you mentioned sergio he was already working on this idea of smart contracts and in the idea of a touring complete uh virtual machine that like it's much richer in terms of the

possibilities that it gives to to developers and and yeah and people developing on top of uh this uh of the smart contracts platform so uh back then uh of course in 2015 we had the ethereum launch and like the the yeah the richness of the um of the possibilities for developers were much much uh broader and much more powerful than than the the projects you mentioned before so uh yeah we we like that approach but we have the vision at that time that uh this uh had to be built on top of

bitcoin right because uh bitcoin well also five years ago it's not now probably much more clear but it was uh already uh the most secure platform it has several years working with no big issues so uh although we loved what ethereum was proposing back then we were sure that that had to be built on top of bitcoin right so that's why we envisioned this idea of building a sidechain right so um rsk is basically a smart contracts platform it works similar to what ethereum is however you need bitcoin to transact

you need bitcoin to pay for the transaction fees to uh deploy a contract to execute a contract to transfer uh native tokens yeah i think that was uh the key in in the vision we had and probably different from the approaches you you mentioned before uh and and thinking about that independent blockchain where you need bitcoin to transact and that i we we think it's like the one of the best ways to have bitcoin evolve right um and and and the vision in we had in mind was basically about building a more inclusive uh financial system now it's like

probably uh more uh uh common to to in terms of how the d5 movement evolved but by back back then without using the the term defy open finance we were already thinking about this idea of decentralizing the financial system especially uh coming from like latin america where that needs uh so like clear and visible to anyone living here but we we we knew at that moment that uh we needed like technologies that could enable developers to build as i said like uh more more uh

richer yeah solutions and and that's where we kind of try to bring together this idea of smart contracts and ethereum and building on bitcoin and that's where we uh started working on rsk but but always with the vision of of making a more decentralized financial system yeah yeah i think that's one of the things that uh permeates through my conversations with people who are either from or have lived or worked in latin america uh is that you know there's a there's really like a visible need a tangible need um to you know to build and work on these systems and

i think like the most recent conversation that i had with camila russo you know she talks about this in her book and she also talked about during the podcast it's like you know one day she could you know trade um her her argentinian pesos for dollars and then the next day she couldn't and yeah um and this is yeah and actually uh yeah it's hard for for people here uh like having to deal with all these like uh limitations as you said not only being able to get access uh to the as camilla said american dollars because the argentine peso is like uh it's uh there is an inflation uh of 20 to 50 percent

every years uh for the last 15 years so uh basically you get uh pesos and you need to act quickly before they get depreciated right uh so um that's why there is a big community here in latin america around bitcoin because it's been a way for people to escape or minimize these obstacles they have had what and they actually have today and that's why like uh and many people even without access to any financial service like uh to a bank account to the possibility of of uh having their money uh safe in a bank

account and i mean it's like a very basic needs that uh even here uh we we usually uh don't see but if you like open your eyes a bit you will see it clearly that bitcoin and all these decentralized technology play a very important role in in making a more decentralized and freer world and in the last five years you know since since you guys have been working on rsk have you been able to you know observe um some like tangible benefits that uh you know people in your

surroundings like in argentina and are like you're also like living in uruguay now have you been able to observe tangible improvements that bitcoin and just generally you know decentralized technologies with you know ether ethereum whatever have been able to bring to people's lives like has you seen like sort of tangible benefits um to people perhaps like outside the crypto space you know like the non-crypto nerds yeah yeah i think it's we still in in early stages of this like saying that it has changed the word the life of of a significant amount of people i i wouldn't say that's that's true maybe it's where we are going uh because when you see all this defy

movement with we found like uh very interesting uh still the users are probably not the ones in this uh facing these problems i mentioned before however uh yeah you you can see people going to bitcoin uh you can see people trading bitcoin probably in slums in buenos aires and other places like i i talk mostly about latin america because it's where i am and it's where i can see like this more more clearly i'm sure this probably happens in other places also uh but yeah you can see that you can see people

going to stable coins to try to protect their uh their money and their value before it gets as i said depreciated it's i think it's it's growing a lot i wouldn't say it's massive yet people get very creative here about how to escape all these controls and limitations so uh yeah for the last few years you've seen people go to bitcoin and even though it's like as you know it's volatile it's even much better than sticking to like the local currency uh and and yeah i think we will see that becoming bigger with with time

but you can already see that happening uh so uh yeah there is a a a big bitcoin community in latin america and i think it's it's uh it's not uh casual i mean it's it's not something that happened uh it was something random but basically because of all this um the reality that people face here so uh but again i think it's not like something like massive yet but i think it will we will see that growing a lot in the following couple of years so let's get into um let's get into the meat of things here let's talk about

rsk and we want to like dissect you know the technology and all the different uh aspects of like how aerosk works we want to talk about the peg to bitcoin obviously rsk leverages merged mining so we can talk about that there's uh there's this unique mechanism called pow peg which we should also get into um but but first you mentioned earlier the building blocks uh the rsk building blocks let's let's maybe you know for our listeners like draw a picture of what those building blocks are and how they interact with each other at a high level and then we can kind of like drill down into each of them yeah sure so like uh in a natural you they're like as you say it's a few

building blocks that are the ones that um yeah it's important to to mention to understand rsk right first of all rsk is a it's an independent platform it's not like uh working using the bitcoin protocol it's an independent platform it's an independent network it runs its own nodes and all of these nodes run a client implementation from the app for the rsk protocol which basically uh or or mainly runs an ebm compatible virtual machine so that it's able to

run and execute uh smart contracts right it's in that sense it's similar to ethereum uh but then there is a couple of strong connections with the bitcoin network and that's why we call it a sidechain right the first one as i mentioned is that uh the native token for rsk it's bitcoin there is no other newly minted token or other native token for rsk and that's basically achieved through a bridge and usually called a two-way peg between bitcoin and our skates that technology that let users

transfer their bitcoins from bitcoin to the rsk blockchain so that they can transact and do everything within the smart contracts platform and of course they can do the other way around like taking their bitcoins and rsk back to bitcoin and get their bitcoins back on the bitcoin blockchain so that's one of the uh most critical uh components and and most important the other link with um with bitcoin as you mentioned before is that the the merge mining like the the consensus mechanism for rsk which is basically merge mine with with bitcoin so those two strong connections with bitcoin

uh it's what makes uh rsk in our like mindset of seeing our scale as a whole as a smart contract layer on top of bitcoin right it's a we see as bitcoin as a layer one or here is layer zero like store up value uh layer and on top of bitcoin rsk where you can get access to all the benefits of a smart contracts platform as as we usually know one of the things that i think is important to mention here is that rsk is an evm compatible uh blockchain so uh that means people can deploy

um you know any smart contract that they would have written in solidity for ethereum they can um deploy on on evm uh and then the other interesting thing is that rsk uses bitcoin as its native currency so in order to use rsk pay fees uh for instance you have to move bitcoin into the platform and and rsk achieves this um by by a peg by way of a peg and we'll get into the the peg functionality but so i'm looking at this diagram here that uh i think like really kind of sums up um the the different components of rsk really well and so you know you have people that are using the platform right

like what we might call economic actors and they're interacting with rsk um primarily well at first i guess through this bridge contract so like they would send uh bitcoin to the bridge contract and that would allow them to uh to get sort of like rsk bitcoin or you know some might call them like wrapped bitcoin somehow like on the rsk platform and that allows them to uh interact on the rsk platform um but then there's these other actors so we have miners um and miners are participating in a marched mining protocol um then we also have the um the the pow peg nodes and power peg nodes are

running in hsm and you know we'll get into the details here but i think what these nodes are doing are um holding the bitcoin that are in the bridge contract um and then we have these armadillo nodes and it's not so clear to me what the armadillo nodes are doing but you know we can we can get into the details here so you know let's let's unpack this picture and maybe describe how all these participants are uh working independently and like how they work together to form you know the rsk security model and then of course like executing smart contracts yeah exactly so the the actors you mentioned are the the most important ones uh when you get to armadillo it's

actually not something like it's more like secondary but an important component in rsca but probably no not like that at the at the most important level uh of understanding what rsk is so yeah so we have you mentioned that the mining pools yeah the mining pools uh are giving like the economic security to towards k through merge mining uh basically uh merge mining is a technique by which uh using the same hashing power and using the same hash rate uh miners can secure two blockchains at the same time

right so uh basically by reducing the the the shares or the or or the jobs that's the the actual miners i mean the the the hardware sends to a mining pool and in our case uh the primary blockchain is bitcoin of course and the secondary blockchain is is rsk and yeah basically these mining pools can uh since in service case mine at a lower difficulty than bitcoin all these shares that the mining pool received because the the the actual miners the hardware are asked to send shares or jobs at a lower difficulty that it's needed

to mine bitcoin those shares can also be used uh to mine uh rsk so uh basically rsk as you said it's a merch mine platform and using a proof-of-work uh consensus model right so the same again the same mining pools mining bitcoin can mine uh rsk at the same time with no additional cost and with no impact to to their bitcoin mining uh operations and basically the benefit for them is that they will get bitcoins that comes from the transactions fees that are paid on on our escape right currently

uh well it goes ups and downs but on average in the last couple of months there's been uh around 60 of the bitcoin hashing power uh securing the rsk network uh and i would say that the top bitcoin mining pools are contributing to to the platform to to protect that so it's uh it's we're like very very happy to have their support because it's it's a massive amount of caching power and and makes that the smart contract platform like very very secure in terms of a 51 percent attack right regarding the uh you mentioned the paul

pegg and and and the signatories of the pope basically a pope is a name that we've given to the uh evolution of the rsk2 apec with bitcoin right so when we when when rsk was launched in 2018 of course there there was a two-way peg available there there are several ways to achieve a two-way peg to achieve this bridge mechanism that any sighting needs to have to transfer bitcoin back and forth between the two the two chains right basically we've evolved through different uh security models and and the last one is what we call the pope right it's uh

the latest uh uh security model for the two-way peg at the beginning when we uh when we launched rsk in 2018 the model was different it was like mostly mostly like a um a hybrid sbb federated pay right it's basically a federated bridge where there are set of functionaries that participate in a in a multi-signatory uh custody of the of the assets in this case of the bitcoins right and we evolved into this pulpit uh version where there are as you as you mentioned hsms involved and one of the the characteristics of

the power pack is that these hsms uh are doing a proof of work validation of the of the transactions of the commands or the requests that uh the po hsms we call it receive right so this like drastically improves the security like going from this uh hybrid spb federated model where these uh federation members have control over the keys that have access to the funds right and and when i say the funds i mean the bitcoins that get locked in the bitcoin blockchain and to this new model where the keys are inside this hsn this hardware

security uh device cannot be taken uh or access to to get them out of the device and basically this hsm will only execute transactions pay out transactions when they are coming from the bridge contract and when they have enough proof of work okay and going back to the merge mining explanation since there is around 60 percent of of of the bitcoin hashing power uh it's really really uh safe uh to have the keys and and the payouts uh commanded by by this hsn so that's what has changed

drastically in terms of security between the original two-way pair in 2018 and now the ballpark version that we have recently launched so can you maybe go into detail as to how it's more secure because or maybe just uh it helps just to remind uh to give a reminder of like how a federated peg works and then how the proof of work peg uh improves upon it because i'm not like quite clear there on how that works so yeah absolutely so uh from from the user perspective maybe it's easier to understand it from the user perspective so you have bitcoins that you want to uh move them to rsca right to have your bitcoins

used in a like defy protocol or uh to build your own smart contracts or whatever you want to do on rsk so you start by uh with the need of having bitcoins on rsk right there are different ways to get uh bitcoins on rsk but the native one is by going through these to waypath by going through this bridge so users what do is basically send their bitcoins to a mood signature in bitcoin to unlock the signature address in bitcoin and uh well at the end of the process they get bitcoins on rsca right the the kind of magic that happens between

uh sending your bitcoins and getting your bitcoins uh in rsk it's what the two-way peg does right so uh these are bitcoins that are locked in a multi-sig those keys for the multi-c guy are controlled i i'm talking about the original um model in 2018 i controlled by what we call members of the federation right they are running a uh a narrow sk node with some additional capabilities and and basically uh they have a control of one of the keys of the multi-signature and so they play an important role in releasing the bitcoins

when the users want to go back from rsk to bitcoin right so uh when users want to go back to our escape from bitcoin there well there is a bridge contract it's a smart contract living on the rsk blockchain that basically orchestrates all this flow flow with uh taking care of uh validating different things that there are enough confirmations on rsk and there are well a bunch of validations that need to be done but when everything is like okay they will ask each of these federation members to sign the release transaction right and each of these federation members holding a key for that they will sign it and the bitcoins will be released the the problem with this

approach is that basically it's what i have already said is that each member of the federation has control over this one of the keys of the multi-signature so uh in this model the federation members could collude to get access to the bitcoins that be locked right so if those funds are lost then you will not be able to go back uh to bitcoin uh using your bitcoins on rsk we we've evolved that first of all we get to a stage where we started to use hsms that was like a couple of years ago basically these signatories

moved to uh security security i think the keys inside an hsn like a similar to a hardware hardware wallet that anyone uses where uh it has it has a secure element so like it's pretty much safe uh and and almost impossible to get access to those keys so that the the signatories of the federation basically did not have any access to the uh keys right but they could eventually collude uh to get access to all the hsms and have uh access to the funds right because that version of the hsm was

not that intelligent in terms of it will secure the private keys but it would sign the transactions anyway i mean with no additional logic and finally we got to uh the evolution of that model which is the potent right that uh basically this federation is replaced by a set of what we call a peg naturalist right each of them also running an hsn but this hsn follows the blockchain proof of work consensus right so uh even if that they collude and get access to all the hsms

they will not be able to sign any payout transaction if it doesn't have enough proof of work and if it doesn't come from the bridge right so basically it's impossible for them to collude and get access to the funds with this um new model so it's uh i don't know if that's uh it's it's now clearer uh but basically in summary like describes the evolution we have from the hybrid sbb uh two-way pair until this version that we call uh popeg uh where there is no no way the these signatories can can get access to the funds

um so basically the the role of these spignatories is mainly to keep their hour and their notes uh connected and alive at all times that's their important role here right so they can access so that the payout transactions can be signed neither the hybrid spb version or the uh version one now the pope the signatories play a role in transaction validation or or creating blocks or anything like the the role of these members is basically to uh they participate in the payout uh uh workflow right like people wanted to get

bitcoins out of their bitcoins on on a risky okay i know that makes a lot of sense so just kind of to sum up here like in a federated peg we have participants that are holding different parts of a key of a multisig uh key and um they essentially hold the bitcoin that then gets you know transformed into bitcoin rsk like they're they're operating the peg um the issue here is that they can collude and there's there's no sort of like layer in between um the user and that multisig there's no extra security layer and uh it would just necessitate some sort of collusion uh for those bitcoins to um

to be extracted from the system however with the power peg you you know and also like you know in the first version keys could be stored in in hsm and they probably were at some point or you know like the security of the key uh is sort of um separate from the risk of collusion in in this pow peg uh mechanism the pegnatories as they're called uh have this sort of special hsm and the special hsm protects users from this form of collusion because the hsm not only stores the keys but also validates it also validates transactions that are coming from the network so it verifies that a transaction uh has been included in a

block presumably like verifies that it's been uh that that block has uh that there's there's been like a certain number of blocks since then uh and uh also it verifies some other things like it verifies that the those transactions are actually coming from the bridge itself and so that adds an extra layer of security for uh for users of the system because they they can trust that dj these hsms are in fact executing transactions as they should be yeah i know just one comment uh yeah it's pretty accurate what you say uh and when when we when we uh consider the pulpit as a proof-of-work uh based uh two-way page it's basically

a a peg-out command that is requested to the hsms it will wait uh not only for a certain amount of blocks but also for a certain amount of work accumulated right so that's that's very very important so i want you to add that well i mean there's like a few things here i guess like in terms of trust these hsms i mean like they're not your standard hsm like that you would find and say like an aws stack or something like that they're like specifically manufactured for uh for the rsk chain correct no actually no when we when we started working on htms we our security team

like did a broad research about the different possibilities of of devices even consider the possibility of manufacturing this ourselves how we consider like all the different hardware wallets available in the market and and basically the uh we although it's uh we we have plans to like be more um i mean to have other devices so that it's like a more multicultural uh two-way pay in terms of the devices that it runs the hsms that are run are not like manufactured by ourselves it's like they are the version that is currently running is

a ledger device right with a special firmware that we we developed right so and and i think that's important because ledger has uh i mean that their product is it's great it has a secure element it's uh very secure in in terms of and of protecting the keys and at the same time it's uh i think it's good in terms of security that this is not manufactured by ourselves in terms of uh minimizing the incentives of a manufacturer uh supply attack or something like that i mean later already is storing billions of dollars in cryptocurrencies

i would think that it's it's not something that uh could be in the manufacturer mind of uh doing some kind of supply chain attack of course we we always consider any possibilities but the fact that these are like uh devices uh well known and improved and and that's already protecting a massive amount of money in cryptocurrencies i think that's a a good uh point and strength for this uh model of authenticity okay no that's interesting i didn't know that it was a ledger device so in my mind i was thinking like this is like a

rack like a rack device in like some server room um no i don't know it's uh yeah it's pretty easy and yeah i mean the spagnator is basically as i said i had the the responsibility of uh running uh the the pulpit node which is a narrow sk node with additional capabilities to basically to to be able to to participate in this workflow and they basically are running an a lecture device that has all this logic uh inside of it right that's basically acquire some ledger devices and then you've um flash those devices with your own firmware like firmware

that's been [Music] how does that work like i i didn't think that one could just flash a ledger device without having ledger's signature well yeah actually it's um it's uh it's not that it's flashed and and that's a good point that that you mentioned because maybe flashing is not the right term here but like yeah basically overwriting the firmware yeah yeah it's it's it basically works that way so there is a setup for the pignatories to uh and secure setup and we are very close to also releasing the attestation firmware so that anyone will be able in the community in rsk

anyone willing to validate that uh the uh the the signatures of the pignatories are coming from a device from an hsn from an original lecture device and that it's running uh a well-known uh uh firmware which is like a software uh code uh like any any other program uh can can validate and verify that that's very important for us uh to give transparency uh on this but going back to your question yeah basically the the pignatories can get the ledger uh and and i think that's also good it's not something that

uh we are as i said manufacturing and providing uh to them and they don't know what's inside they can validate that and yeah there is a basically a process a secure process or ceremony uh as we usually say where this uh firmware is updated basically the signer is updated with all this logic i mentioned before i'm trying to like break this see where i can break this apart if if i can at all but couldn't all of the pignatories collude to write their own firmware and then all of them together having the same firmware essentially like bypassing this the security of like validating uh that there's been enough proof of

work and like you know couldn't they just store the keys kind of on the hsm and then um or somehow bypass that security or is there something in the bridge contract that's that where there's also like some dependency there for for the verification yeah yeah short answer is no they cannot do that they cannot do that i mean they could eventually change the firmware but that will make them basically uh not be able to participate in the in the protocol itself right and that's because there's some external like the bridge contract or some other uh component is verifying the framework or the yeah the signatures if they change that everything will change

and they will not be able to participate yeah so uh basically basically they will be automatically out of the system right okay yeah i guess the the hardware was one of the things that you know going into this i was where i was most concerned with but it seems that you guys are relying on third-party hardware manufacturers and you know perhaps at some point like i don't know if this is the case but you could you could imagine like having treasure or like some other uh hsm manufacturer also being supported and so then it's sick you know you you basically have this you know you can use any commoditized hardware to do this as long as you're running the you know of compatible version of the

firmware uh absolutely there are ways to improve that it would be uh good i think to have other devices and we have plans for that in and i would say if you want to like uh be and i think it's important that we improve the security as much as we can and we have like a roam up for this uh to continually improve this uh paul uh peg uh system but we can we have even uh thought about having the like the pignatories or proposing the communities of course to uh run two devices right so it's it would like give like a backup uh mechanism in case anything fails but uh i would say that

currently this two-way peg system is the most secure that has ever existed so here we are very proud of it so so the only real like risk that one faces here i guess is is like a denial service attack or a situation or like all the pignatories uh being down or like that's and then and then the risk there is that the bridge wouldn't work but you know this wouldn't affect people's bitcoin like basically it would just it would just render the bridge unable to to function but it wouldn't affect people's funds well uh actually what that's that's an interesting point basically uh what would happen

if the majority of the pregnancies turn their like uh notes off right that's uh what you're saying what basically happens there is that users will not be able to uh so that the pick out commands will not be executed you will not be able to get bitcoins from your bitcoins on rsk right so everything in rsk will continue working uh exactly the same you will also be able to do peggings so you to get bitcoins in rsk uh using your bitcoins but there will not be uh enough bagnatories to issue or to sign the

payout transactions and get your your your bitcoins back that's what it will not work that's not something although a lot of other things will continue working it's a critical component of the of the workflow they're like things we are of course all the time our research team is thinking about that the the the first uh solution or the short-term solution for that it's basically what's we call a time lock emergency uh recovery right it's similar to what liquid has uh in short uh if uh bitcoins uh and and this is coming this is coming the next network upgrade for

for rsk which is iris and expected to to to to be released probably most probably during april and basically what that means is that the funds are uh are not moved for a certain amount of time let's say one year it's it's how it's it it's working in in iris then those funds will be be available for a set of uh of a fallback pignatories to uh to move right so in that case they would recover the funds

and uh and basically uh get them back uh to the users but it's true that that would happen only after one year of the funds not being uh used right it's like a an emergency procedure uh that's uh can uh like a kind of escape hatch for that situation but it takes time for those funds to be to be available right so that's like a uh edge case that it needs to be considered so it's a good point you mentioned again no this is uh this is interesting i i i i feel like i get the

the pow peg mechanism a lot better now um and so what are armadillos and what do they have to do well yeah yeah yeah it's uh it's an interesting uh technology we've developed lately it's basically uh a suit of tools that are designed uh to uh protect the aeroscape blockchain from uh merge mining attacks basically right it's like an alert system uh or monitor system and and basically its role is to to ensure that that the the merge mining works as

expected like to to say uh clear so basically what are the attacks that can occur in merge mining that we're talking about here yeah well basically it's uh the attack in this case would be an rsk fork right so uh uh so uh a significant amount of hashing power doing merge mining uh basically uh building a narrow scale fork and then reverting the blockchain and and doing probably a double spend attack or something like that i mean other blockchains have suffered from this especially ethereum classic lately uh because uh also their their hashing power was quite low

and in the case of iris case it's as i said it's uh it's uh it's high around 60 or even more of the hashing power but we need to consider the possibility of the attack coming from the same miners that are doing merge mining right so what basically in a nutshell what armadillo does is like it's able to monitor this by uh inspecting the bitcoin uh merge mining tax right so basically it's looking into the bitcoin merch mining tax to see if the blocks that should be mining rsk uh from from the ones that have been mining bitcoin are

being like uh actually mine that are being sent and that they are not being like kept by a single miner or a set of miners and if that happen it can trigger alerts or even uh maybe uh stall certain operations to avoid a double spend attack that's that's in a natural what what armadillo does it's based on the assumption that this attack uh comes from miners that do do not want to lose the possibility of mining bitcoins right because the attack would be like uh really really expensive if they don't do that right uh so that's basically it but

yeah it's it's more than armadillo notes it's like a as i said a suit of tools or a monitoring system to protect from from that kind of attacks so so armadillo monitor is is is not like uh they're not notes um so to speak but when you say it's a set of tools like what form does it take is it something that you guys are running or yeah yeah it's yeah actually it's uh well probably you can say notes yeah it's a like this technology that we are now running from iob it's not like it's running on armadillo no it's not part of the economic uh incentives of the of the platform it's not that you

at least for now it's not that you by running an armadillo monitor you get rewarded or things like that which i i think it's it's where you you you were probably uh trying to understand yeah so it's not part of the of the incentives of the network what happens then when a fork is detected and what kind of mechanisms are in place to mitigate that event in that scenario i would say that there are two main things that you need to protect one of one of one one is the two-way pair basically delay the payout transactions until the the situation is safer to

resume operations right so it doesn't mean that uh basically the the two-way peg will keep the request but wait for for uh for the uh emergency to uh to be finished in order to continue processing the payouts right and and the other uh aspect that you need to protect is basically exchanges right because it's probably an attack uh that can make someone like get out or or exchange their bitcoins in our escape for bitcoins so that when they revert the blockchain they get their bitcoins on our escape

back like a traditional like double spend attack right so it's important that exchanges get notified that about this situation that they probably hold the training for certain amounts of time and protection if they i mean it's like what we we do is like basically raise the alarms right it's this is happening and of course it's it's up to them to decide what to do but basically that's why i say it's a monitoring system we are like basically uh raising an alarm and say this is a situation where you may want to uh basically delay uh or add more confirmations to uh withdrawals of bitcoins on rsc and so does this sort of thing happen

often or like is this an attack that is no no it hasn't happened it hasn't i'm i'm not like super familiar with like merge mining and the types of attacks that that can happen there and so i feel like this is a an area that where it's it's a little bit blurry for me but like yeah no no no no it's not common it hasn't happened in our skate but we've seen that happen in other blockchains so uh basically we want to be prepared for those possibilities i i if you ask me i probably it's not like something very uh usual but if that happens it can be a big headache so we want to be

protected and protect the the that the protocol protect the user funds right uh regarding merge mining like like maybe this will help you understand that when you do merge mining the bitcoin blocks contain a a merge mine tag that basically includes a hash or there is a hash of the of uh of a block in in in our escape i mean there is a a link in the bitcoin uh block itself with a link to to rsk so basically uh that way by monitoring that you can detect if a miner is

uh basically contributing with blogs to the bitcoin uh blockchain but not contributing to rsk like it's mine in our escape blocks but it's like uh keeping that them for for themselves so that probably doesn't look good it's probably a sign of a possible like uh reversion of the blockchain it suddenly sends a lot of blocks and the blockchain gets reverted so that's i don't know if that's uh clarifies a bit yeah basically based on monitoring the bitcoin blockchain and the merge mining tax for rsk so let's talk a little bit about the um the evm

here and what what kind of interoperability does that provide rsk with ethereum and you know i know this doesn't exist now but you know could there be um a sort of a peg on the other side um where you you could have like right wrapped ether on rsk or like in the other direction having rsk tokens or sort of like a wrapped bitcoin version of our like an rsk version of rap bitcoin getting sent into um into ethereum okay yeah um so regarding dbm rsk bm is uh fully compatible

with the evm actually the rsk client uh comes from a fork from an ethereum client and of course that was long ago and we diverted from that but basically the vm it's uh the the rsk vm is a fork of the ethereum vm right so one of the things that we uh we of course have to work on is on keeping that compatibility i mean if uh there is new opcodes or native or pre-compiled contracts in ethereum we take care of yeah of implementing them in in rs case so that we keep that

compatibility but uh that makes the vm uh fully compatible in terms of the operations that the pm can run and of course we have uh also taking care of being compatible at the interface level i mean the the the way you can interact with an ethereum node uh it's uh the same way you can interact with a rsk node so that's basically uh lets developers to use the same tool chain the same developer uh tools and so moving or or running your uh

application or your adapts in ethereum in in rootstock in our skates pretty straightforward right uh so any solidity contract can run on rsk so metamask you know like uh truffle all these tools are compatible yeah hard hat uh as long as we take care of uh of implementing the things that ethereum is implementing and that's something that we we do all the time uh we keep that compatibility uh in at the ibm level and at the interface level also so it's easy it's really easy for developers in in companies working on on ethereum

to run their their uh solutions on rsk uh like seamlessly yeah speaking of developers um what are people let's talk a little bit about sort of the ecosystem and like what are people are building on rsk and like how big is that ecosystem uh today the the ecosystem is it's um evolving a lot lately um there are like very interesting projects uh that are being built on on rsk all of them with the mindset of building on bitcoin right because that's probably the most important value proposition for rs case that it's building on bitcoin and and

building this uh defy uh ecosystem on bitcoin so uh we have a lot of interesting projects uh to name a few we have money on chain it's a it's a bitcoin collateralized uh stablecoin they have different tokens uh but basically uh based on on on having a leverage on on on bitcoins and getting some additional revenue from for for your bitcoins but the the main the main uh product they have is the uh dollar on chain which as i said it says usd stable coin backed by bitcoin so it's it's really really interesting and a great team behind that

uh sovereign uh it's a very interesting project it's a landing and margin trading platform running on rsk also bitcoiners wanted to build these solutions on top of bitcoin there are other lending uh solutions coming soon now lending there are decentralized exchanges like rsk swap similar to uni swap where you can trade tokens in rsk there is a marketplace people from crypto market i don't want to forget anyone collectibles uh uh with with watafan uh and and uh wallets uh like defiant

uh a lot of what it's implemented in rsc i mean it's it's it's we're very happy because we've seen this growing a lot lately uh around this idea of building on bitcoin and building defy solutions uh for bitcoin what is what we want to to to achieve right from from in this case from iob labs like providing these technologies for these uh amazing companies to to build their their their companies their uh yeah businesses on top of rsk and on top of bitcoin no that's cool i mean like it's cool that there are sort of the basic building blocks it seems like like building blocks to growing and defy

ecosystem ecosystem on top of rsk so you mentioned like uh lending like a swapping mechanism a stable coin and these are all the types like these are basically the the building blocks that you know um have been built on ethereum over the last couple years and you know from there like all the ecosystem kind of built there um you know i'd like to i'd like to maybe take a step back a little bit and ask you about does bitcoin in your view in the future play a significant role in securing you know some uh d5 ecosystem i don't know what the market cap of like rsk the rskd5 market is today i i think i saw somewhere it was like around

300 million or to be honest i i don't have that that number in my head yeah okay i mean i i recall like looking this up maybe like a month or two ago and it was like somewhere around that so that that pales in comparison to like the the d5 ecosystem on on ethereum you know do you expect that to continue to grow to become something that is you know big enough to attract investors and projects and to essentially create like a decent size ecosystem there and what do you think is necessary for that to happen [Music] yeah so most of the defy of of course movement has been built on top of

ethereum so far and they have done a great job in building this community and this ecosystem and all the network effect that they have achieved it's it's something that i find yeah i think they've done a great job and and i think it's it's fair to recognize that and uh probably coming from the bitcoin uh ecosystem maybe i guess that's until recently probably a a significant part of the bitcoin ecosystem have like not been not paying attention to this

defy movement i mean uh ethereum has been live for several years now and uh i would say that the d5 movement it's like the most interesting things we've seen so far it's been quite recently and when that took off it was not that easy to build that stuff on top of bitcoin although there is like a huge community of bitcoiners that are willing to uh basically to have access to these uh protocols with their bitcoins and that's i think uh going back to your question i think that's will definitely happen yeah based on the vision we had initially of

this needs to be built on bitcoin because it's uh the most secure and it's the most uh stable platform and decentralized platform so it makes sense for us to build this on bitcoin right and now the tools are available it's i think yeah we will see uh apart from all these uh projects i mentioned before we will start seeing a lot of uh of other ones building on top of bitcoin hopefully on rsk but hopefully we will see uh other uh bitcoin side chains building on top of bitcoin

and i think that's something that it's good and it's something that will definitely happen uh and and the evolution of bitcoin uh will happen in in technologies like rsk you know that uh bitcoin it's uh intentionally uh the development of bitcoin is intentionally careful and it's intentionally slow so it's good to to to have and and that's great i mean it's a strength of of bitcoin and as long as the layers about bitcoin like rsk give enough security and give enough of transparency and are

decentralized enough uh i i i'm sure this will definitely happen uh on bitcoin and then we will see like a strong defy ecosystem built on on bitcoin time for sure yeah i mean like there's just so much capital there and you know some of it has moved over into ethereum you know through like some form of rap bitcoin there's there's a lot of capital like that's kind of locked there in in bitcoin and isn't being allocated in any meaningful way um you know and i think it would be great to see all of that start funding things and actually creating

value and i think like a lot of people um who are you know who are early into bitcoin and and have bitcoin and one and are along bitcoin you know probably want to have opportunity they probably would like more opportunities to uh to be able to you know invest um in in projects i mean like myself included i mean like so uh as someone who you know holds bitcoin um i've been reluctant to move that bitcoin into uh ethereum i mean just because like this whole like rap bitcoin thing i'm like not super comfortable with it you know like i'm not extremely comfortable with like doing the rap bitcoin thing also there's like high fees there

um and so yeah it's not being allocated towards anything meaningful it's just huddling and like yeah yeah great to have that sort of uh ability absolutely and this these uh projects as i mentioned money and change sobbing they have that vision in mind i mean it's uh these are protocols for bitcoiners to use their bitcoins and yeah it's uh like uh and incentives are better the line in terms of having your bitcoins on rsk where the token the native token is bitcoin where the incentives uh to the miners are paid in bitcoin so uh but yeah but you know still like

uh a lot of things to do to see that like massively happening but we we're starting to to see that happening and and yes i said before i'm i'm i'm sure this will we will see this like getting larger uh in the in the upcoming couple of years absolutely cool so where can people go to find out more about rsk and like you know what is your call to our listeners you know what uh what would you like our our listeners to do in terms of engaging with rsk is it like building an rsk uh is it you know deploying their like ethereum dapps on rsk like what's the goal like for for yeah so uh uh yeah i

i mean for for developers as as i said before uh it's really easy uh to build on rsk you you will uh be able to use the same skills and same knowledge and the same tools you you use if you're all currently building on ethereum uh and and well in in and at the same time uh with uh transaction fees that are significantly much lower and but i would say that uh it would be great for like uh other companies and other projects you to to build on rsk and build on bitcoin and and yeah of course we are uh

from iob labs of course we are here to help uh we have uh our developers portal in its developers.rt.com the the um there is an open slack for anyone that wants to uh know more about the the platform or ask any question it's open hyphen rsc hyphen dev of course uh all this is open source uh you can get access to the uh all the projects in rsk and in uh other technologies like rsk infrastructure framework and everything is in github.com rsk smart there is an open forum

uh to discuss community things which is research doctorsgate.dev and well that's a most important thing i mean we are like really looking to have more people develop on our skate technologies we are helping them uh their grants and and and other uh opportunities uh to get incentives for doing this so uh yeah several ways to reach to reach out and we we will be uh here to help great well adrian thanks for joining me today it's great to uh to connect with the rsk project again

and i'm looking forward to the day where you know there's a massively thriving ecosystem of uh apps and projects and um and lending protocols and like yield farming and all this kind of stuff happening on top of bitcoin i think it would be like really beneficial for for the ecosystem as a whole and since there's so much capital there it would uh give you know this possibility for uh for like an even larger uh ecosystem and you know coming coming from bitcoin i think like there's some unique things about that community and like origins about of bitcoin that would like you know shape shape it in in ways that are like different from

the way things happen on ethereum so excellent yeah absolutely and thanks for having us uh it's a pleasure to be here because it's a it's a great uh learning podcast for everyone so thanks and congratulations thank you