Rootstock: Bringing the Ethereum Virtual Machine to Bitcoin

Transcript

Bitcoin itself is not a good smart contact platform because the this the choices that Satoshi made are very very conservative um There Was You know the blog size work which basically solidified a certain path forwards which means that Bitcoin is becoming more and more of a stor value and less and less of a payment Network which is okay to me if we can build layers on top of Bitcoins [Music] hello and welcome to the protocol podcast I'm Brad count here with my

co-hosts Margot nykerk and Sam Kessler we're very excited to dive into Today's Show with the latest news and developments in technology behind crypto and blockchains first please do not forget to subscribe to our Weekly Newsletter the protocol on coindesk.com and let's dive right into it today we have uh somewhat of an OG Sergio Damian ler uh joining us from from buenos arees and uh Sergio just reading about your fascinating background and we're gonna get into a lot of this Sergio is the chief

scientist at rootstock which is obviously one of the leading Bitcoin layer two projects and but Sergio's had a pretty interesting wide- ranging career also as a researcher even before root stock and has been around at least since 2013 probably a little bit before that s 20 2012 probably yeah 2012 okay well just to get folks warmed up they may know you from rootstock or they may know rootstock but one of the most interesting things in your career is the research that you did on this pooshi pattern right which was essentially identifying this

unique Bitcoin mining pattern of the coins that satos she minded kind of before Bitcoin became popular and then determining that he had he had minted a million coins right and and but just tell us maybe a little bit how did you know the the brief cliffnotes version uh the three minute to four minute version how did you get on to that yeah so first thanks uh everyone for for having me very excited to be here uh so the story is that I I was working on the security of Bitcoin since 2011 actually the end of 2011 um reporting vulnerabilities and

trying to to harden the code to make it more secure um but I didn't own Bitcoin actually I worked for more than two years trying to improve Bitcoin without having any Bitcoin without having M any Bitcoin or bought any Bitcoin it was very hard to to access Bitcoin from from Argentina so at certain point in time in 2013 I say okay this is the time I have to have some skin in game I'm going to buy a little bit of it um and so I before that you know people I I come from cyber security and people from cyber security they are completely paranoid right they they did try to understand everything before you know taking a decision right so I want you to

know what what happened with the with the early Bitcoins because I wanted to know if they were all you know owned by certain person or they were equally distributed or what what had happened so I I was discussing this in Bitcoin talk forums and I I I made a very very simple computation I said if Satoshi was running a computer in the very early days of Bitcoin and that computer just run alone let's say for a few hours until everyone joined the network whatever and if he continued running that computer for a whole year he would have a million Bitcoins and it was as simple as that just assuming that the computer that Satoshi turned on in

2009 was on the whole year so for me it was very easy assumption to make but you know those times in Bitcoin Firs it was a lot of you know harsh environment sometimes and a lot of criticism and I I got you know people very angry at me because I was kind of uh dism ifying you know the figure of Satoshi so I I left the The Forum I went to my computer and say how what what evidence I can get about this and so I found that there was a leak of information in the in the all the early blocks during the whole first year and a half where certain information about the speed of the computer was being leaked

in every single block that was mine and so I could identify exactly which computers had the same exact speed of Mining and there are no two computers with the same you know speed right so I was able to link all these coin bases and one to the other until I get a picture you know in a in in a graph where it was super clear that there was just one computer I called this the SAT the pooshi pattern uh that was just one computer that had M you know about 1.1 million Bitcoins but I think that was not the the the most interesting Discovery I I think that the the the most shocking Discovery was that satosi

had not ever spent now he had played with Bitcoins in the early month like giving for free but he had never spent those Bitcoins along all those years which made Satoshi you know a people of you know most Trust on the system right so that two things I published in a blog post I think it was like 2 am in the morning I was very excited I published it and I just stare at the numbers at the the statistic and I saw that my blog post had you know 10 visit a day that was top and and and then I I started looking at the the numbers and it was like 100 a th000 2,000 3,000 and I got 35,000 th visits in just a day and a

half which means that everyone in the community at that point in time I I probably that was everyone had read my article and then there was a lot of a lot of uh discussions and and then the thing became uh a known fact like after many years it became like a research that everybody now trust and many other people have verified uh under several different methods like I found five different ways of identifying satui blocks so for me it was a I convinced myself that this was fair even if even if I I found a kind of a whale I convinced myself that it was safe so I started actually didn't buy any Bitcoin ever I just started working and have my

salary be paid in Bitcoin fascinating thank you Sergio what an incredible story and it's also convenient that it's just a nice clean one million it makes the uh calculation so easy I was just looking the Bitcoin price here which I won't ask you about the Bitcoin price but it is about $69,000 so we're talking about $69 billion do worth of bitcoin and it's just kind of sitting there presumed dead right I we don't know for sure but uh that is fascinating okay well we brought Sergio on for a number of reasons uh for this show and uh they are number one we've got the having

coming up and so we wanted somebody who really has been around Bitcoin a long time and really gets it to sort of talk about what we're what we're really going to be looking at for the having um what how this having might be a little different and then separately we want to talk about this Bitcoin Layer Two uh development that we've seen over the past probably six months or so um and become such a big deal and it's you know getting noticed outside of Bitcoin too obviously but sure uh well let's start with the having which is something that is really getting a lot of discussion

now Sergio and you've probably been through a few of these now I'm curious how is the 2024 having if not technically spiritually how will it be any different from from prior havs um I think that I always think that the hings are priced in it's not that you know I don't expect the having to produce any any big jump in in bitcoin price I think that from the community perspective it's a party it's a a moment for celebration that we have achieved such a long road long path of of becoming you know a mainstream uh uh uh

cryptocurrency from from just an experiment of a single person and so it's it's a cration and has a lot of significance in the Bitcoin Community I think it should have in all the the crypto the crypto Community uh but it's also important from the technical perspective because each time the price uh the emission the subsidy Hales it means that Bitcoin has more pressure to be sustainable in terms of transaction fees right so each time it becomes more and more important so for the system to be secure on transaction fees and I was very interested in in finding which are the you know the the the consequences of this and the and the ways to mitigate

any potential problem that uh low transaction fees can bring to the security of Bitcoin and I had this this opportunity to solve that problem when I designed rosto because rusto is a blockchain that has no subsidy it lives on transaction fees so the whole consensus mechanism of Roo is designed to be secure even in the complete absence of subsidy so for me it was the H halfing is very interesting because I I I look at the how the hash rate responds to it and I'm I'm trying to guess how close are we to a certain point where uh we may need to change or improve the protocol to prevent what is

called Fe snipping which is basically miners trying to reverse block to steal others minor transactions but we are secure at this point very very secure so for but for me it's very interesting to to look at what happens with the hash rate and uh and what is it exactly you're looking for with the hash rate just continual increases or or you want to see the the incentive continuing is that the main thing well the theory says that the the miners that have a lower you know um uh have a higher cost should should drop right should should leave the network but this never happened in the past like minor have been uh very resilient and have continued to to to

increase their hash rate even past hings but at some point in time the most the less efficient miners will have to drop and so I'm expecting I mean I don't know what will happen but I expect some some portion of hash rate will will drop and new hash rate with better equipment and and more efficient uh machines will take their place one thing that I might be interesting is that that I've thought about in connection with this having is we've had probably with with the approval of these Bitcoin ETFs yeah there may be more mainstream attention on this having

versus other having uh do you have any thoughts on that I mean is this people talk about how in outside of Bitcoin it's all about the marketing but I mean it's like a free marketing opportunity for Bitcoin right so I I don't want to predict bitcoin price it's not my my area of expertise but since the atfs allow anyone to to buy Bitcoin like any news any important event in Bitcoin history becomes you know an important event in in terms of of of trading activity right uh so I expect that this this this Hing will bring more interest from from uh you know anyone that wants to invest or

or buy Bitcoin for the future right yeah so yeah it's it is significant okay thank you Sergio and obviously there's a lot that's happening with this having there's uh in terms of various project launches too I I you may have followed that runes from Casey rmore um is uh is on tap to launch right at the having and also uh you're I I don't know if you consider Stacks to be a competitor but their Nakamoto release going live and uh there's a lot that's kind of timed around the having just sort of piggybacking on that but we already have we also have some some some very

important announcements really okay let's hear it Sergio no no it will be the next time next time I don't want to spoil it okay well um we uh we want to break that news Sergio when you're ready to Dish spill some SP some mate well let's talk about the layer 2 narrative and root stock maybe just a little bit about rooto is in in a nutshell is is an evm with Bitcoin merged mining as right I mean maybe shortly D it down too much

but maybe just real quick explain some of those design choices yeah so uh I I worked along balic in in the design of of etherum right I did the First Security audits for for the eum foundation and I was very very interested in in smart contact platforms because I had designed a smart contact platform one year before that was called cute quit coin so for me it was fundamental to to be able to stack on top of Bitcoin um a a a smart contract platform to for for me was very important for financial inclusion so I learned everything from that particular

period of time where where I I tried to help as much as I could for for creating the evm and creating ethereum my my part is is probably minor in the whole in the whole thing but but it was my contribution for instance the the proof of work algorithm that um ethereum use was based on on on a function that I designed um so but but my uh role my my aim my goal when I created RTO was to bring uh the evm on top of Bitcoin and and why I chose the evm because you know Bitcoin Max is will never like the evm because it's for foreign technology right but for me when I saw the

potential of the community and the community of developers uh working around found a new virtual machine I realized that that would be where the developers would be and the the tools that they they build and the languages that they use that was where you know the the fun stuff was was going to happen and if I wanted to bring developers into the Bitcoin ecosystem the the the theum developers then the evm was the right choice right it's every all EVMS are at at the end of the day compatible like you can emulate anyone with any other like the important thing is how easy is for the existing developers to to to work on your own on on your blockchain right so I took the

evm we did some changes especially internal changes related the data structures many of the changes that now ethereum must do we had the opportunity to redo after we saw how how ethereum design was was working and put that on top of Bitcoin and it has very interesting like components because it has a bridge and was the first uh like Federated bridge that that was created for Bitcoin it's uh it's rustock Bridge it has the merch mining component which was a completely new component uh that was redesigned it's not based on any of the previous uh merge mine protocols but it's a new

protocol it has the evm but internally all the data structures are were completely Rewritten we are Ro of is not based on the GU codee it's based on completely new code base so essentially we had this opportunity for instance the the the the data structure which in etherum is a it's the try it's in our case it's a binary try right it's in case of the is a very complex uh Patricia try it's a different data structure so we had the opportunity to rebuild it and make it more efficient so so the good thing about rosto is that you know anyone that knows solidity can use solidity tools but the native currency is brone it's a sorry it's it's

Bitcoins there I have a lot of questions actually based on that you talk about the native currency being Bitcoin a lot of what you hear from these folks who are launching these layer twos on bitcoin really does premise on the idea of value being locked into the Bitcoin ecosystem and at a scale that you know isn't the case for ethereum or other ecosystems and that being the driving Factor it kind of starts in ends there when you ask them why they're doing it on bitcoin it's because all the money is there I wonder if that's something that you've noticed um and whether that's kind of a sentiment that you share or you feel is kind of you know misrepresented or or misappropriated by by folks building on the ecosystem yeah so I

personally uh my my my goal when I deigned Roo was that it could be used for financial inclusion Financial inclusion is very interesting topic because it requires to have stable coins like people are not going to in invest or trade or or make payments in Bitcoin at the beginning people who are unbanked or financially excluded they need to be able to use stable coins at the beginning so for me rusto was the way to bring Bitcoin collateralized stable coins decentralized Bitcoin collateralized stable coins into this ecosystem so that people could use it for financial

inclusion to move dollar denominated um uh coins and then mve to bitcoin so for me the use case is financial inclusion and and I measure the success of rooto in terms of how many people are actually active users transacting sending money abroad uh paying receiving payment from abroad savings that's that's the metrics but of course the ecosystem uses tvl I don't know tokens uh all all other metrics that essentially they reflect the hype and reflect you know how much investors money is is coming into the blockchains and I don't disregard that I think that's also important it's not

exactly what I look into a blockchain what I look is active users and Technology if I can reframe my question um that was all interesting so I didn't want to interrupt you but I I I think I phrased that wrong where my question is more around um when people talk about building on bitcoin it's less around the technology of the Bitcoin blockchain and it seems more around the you know value of the Bitcoin blockchain so I'm not talking about like what you know what what what yours or or anybody else's TBL is it's more around Bitcoin tvl itself and the fact that that's why people are building on it is there anything fundamental to bitcoin's technology that you think lends itself really well to being a smart contract platform relative to other ecosystems that were built that way kind of from the ground up Bitcoin

itself is not a good smart contract platform because the this the choices that Satoshi made are very very conservative um There Was You Know The Block size Words which basically solidified a certain path forwards which means that Bitcoin is becoming more and more of a stor of value and less and less of a payment Network which is okay to me if we can build layers on top of Bitcoin so so the the the yeah so um maybe I I don't know if I respond to your question but but uh so that the people who who are on bitcoin are not specifically for the smart contracts but more and more and and I I I see people

around me there are people who want to save for a long time Bitcoins and they want to get collateralized loans on top on those Bitcoins and I see this a lot so they move their Bitcoins into a a layer two because centralized uh lending platform have shown to be completely a disaster so they are moving into these platforms to get stable coins loans and so they are able to periodically spend those those stable coins instead of spending their Bitcoin and you know if 1% of the the the the people's Bitcoins moved into layer twos then we will have a huge market for this now is there any concern obviously it's up to to to see you know um you you've um you've

historically you know um been been pretty deep in the um Bitcoin exper um ecosystem but you're also unique in that um it seems like you've been very exposed and involved in the ethereum side as well and obviously those are two distinct cultures where ethereum kind of came up with all of these Concepts that you're talking about in mind around smart contracts and the Bitcoin was the opposite like you just said um there has that I may interrupt you sorry it's not the opposite those concept were discussed in Bitcoin in 2011 and 2012 is that the people in Bitcoin decided not to pursue them it's it's not they were discussed they were discussed a lot but so maybe that's the question so has that changed and who's driving the change is

it people coming from the ethereum smart contract end or is it bitcoiners who are kind of just changing their mindset there is a mixture of there's a mixture of course there is a mixture there's people coming from ethereum that that still are bitcoiners and they want to see some some of these advances move to bitcoin many of the bitcoiners I consider myself a Bitcoin monetary maximalist but I'm not a techn how do we call it Maxi in the terms of technology I don't think that Bitcoin technology is perfect and should never be changed and should be aifi right I think it needs to change in order to support upper layers for instance rollups so for instance better Bridges with with with layers two with sichen Etc so there is a lot of

bitcoiners which do not identify themselves with strictly the the super Maxes but they just want to build on top of Bitcoin and over time I think this is the the the the the bigger group um sometimes they are attacked sometimes there's there's very heated discussions uh on bitcoin conferences on Twitter but it's part of the game you have to understand that if you engage with the Bitcoin Community you have to be ready to be criticized and I it happened to me it's very scary at first but then you then you you know you you you realize it's part of it's part of the game but I but when having been into ethereum Community uh I think that it's much more

open uh it's much more welcoming and and the developers the the number of Open Source tools that are being created every every every day it's fantastic and I love that and I want that's why I want to bring that culture into rooto and and and and Bitcoin layers too in general because I'm supporter of Bitcoin their to the the the whole ecosystem just to say it's it's good for my ego to hear Sergio that you also are terrified of crypto Twitter that is uh that's going to make me feel much better for the next few months but anyway we're going to take a quick break here uh we'll be right back with Sero Damian

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2024 and we're back with Sergio Damian lner of uh rootstock and let's see Sergio I'm curious you know you have been toiling away working on root stock for a while and the Bitcoin Layer Two n narrative it wasn't getting a lot of traction right and and now all of a sudden it's everybody's talking about it I'm just curious for your thoughts on that real quick yeah so several things happen I think that um I'm not particularly uh uh interested in in in nfts not

particularly interested in runs or or or or all these uh mems me things but what I I am interested in is building on top of Bitcoin and giving the freedom to developers so once you create a platform you don't censor anyone you just let anyone use a platform as they wish and and and then the creative the imagination and the creative of of the developers bring you know all the rest and that's that's key for any kind of software platform so what I loved about you know these new developments is the idea that people are uh again uh interested in in building stuff on top of Bitcoin um my personal interest is nothing related to that is financial

inclusion but I think that this is a benefit for all because you know the the the the interest the hype the developers are are coming back into into Bitcoin so that's why even if I'm not uh I have my you know my dividing line between what is a saen and what is not uh what is a real Bitcoin align project and what is not and I have my personal opinion I welcome every Layer Two to experiment to to do the best to to be Bitcoin align and we will see we will see what what happens but I think that the disrupting Factor after the this this uh brc2 nfts on bitcoin the disrupting Factor was um Robin L's discovery of BBM that changed

everything because now the community has a tool to BR to build a better Bridge a more decentralized bridge and so a problem that was thought to be you know impossible now it has a solution it's not a very efficient solution and I I I I must tell you that um uh uh a group of researchers and me we are optimizing BBM we will soon publish some very very interesting new things about how to optimize BBM and make it better uh but but but still you know the fact that some new discovery turned something that was considered impractical into something completely realistic and practical to build Bridges changed

completely the landscape so this is the reason new L l2s have really popped up in in the last month or or years and are you working with Robin lonus on that or is he or is that separate well I'm collaborating with him very exchanging ideas um uh obviously I'm following what he's doing but we have uh with with our group we have turned a different path we have decided that to choose a different design um Robin is coding his own implementation uh which he choose certain design decisions and we have chosen several different design decisions we we think are much more efficient in the long term so that's

what we are concentrated we are focused on a different implementation open source uh completely neutral for for any side chain or any um L L2 to use to build better Bridges um yeah I want to ask real quick you know we were previously just talking a little bit about the comparisons especially since you were in the middle between ethereum and Bitcoin and just to to set things up I'm I report on ethereum on the team so um I wanted to sort of get that perspective from you and I know you mentioned that you want to you know when it comes to building on bitcoin you want to bring that cultural community of like open sourc collaboration to bitcoin um I'm wondering too as well you know ethereum has had a lot of experience now

with building all sorts of different things um what are maybe what's the opposite of that like maybe what are the fuxa you're sort of like have watched what happen in in the ethereum space and like okay let's not do that on bitcoin well well that there there are several problems I would say one is the the the the Deep complexity of the protocol after proof of stake like in in this point in time there are several groups working in different part of the the stack and nobody knows completely how it works like nobody has a deep knowledge of every single piece and that's problematic in terms of computer security complex system tend to present

vulnerabilities um I I myself have reported uh two or even three vulnerabilities to the ethereum back bound because of of the complexities um so that I see that this this is a problem this and and centralization problem is is another another problem like moving to proof of stake was obviously something that the community had agreed to do but still is an experiment it's a it's a it's a huge experiment to see how you can actually uh sustain the network without much centralization obviously I I hope this experiment results in a in a in a best possible outcome but it's still an ongoing experiment the other the other

problem I see is that there was a decision made at certain point not to scale the base layer with charting and and and all different techniques but to let these layer twos these rollups to develop on on on ethum which I think that from the point of view of Entrepreneurship and BCS it's it's excellent like you let anyone experiment the same way that eum was an experiment now these new rabs are an experiment so you bring more developers and and everything but now you have a problem right we the ecosystem is too fragmented each one of these rollup may have their own tokens so there is no direct alignment with you so you know the the two sides of the same coin right you

have a lot of excitement and hype but at the same time you have fragmentation of liquidity uh fragmentation there's no share sequencer fragment there's some problems so um the fragment this is something yeah the fragmentation you're sort of attributing to the move to proof of stake or because just because it's just become um like an all-encompassing ecosystem like because of the different layers like on top of eum which is again it's great because it's growing it means it's growing but at the same time if uh each one of these new rollups brings uh a coin a token and then transaction fees move to these rollups and then you know there might be a lack of use on the base

layer and we will see um so the maybe the differ at this point between ethereum is and and Bitcoin and is is the the level of experimentation you can do right in Bitcoin is limited because it's moving towards store of value and that's the narrative and and you have to accept that and whatever is built is is probably will be built on top of Bitcoin in layers it's not going to be embedded into Bitcoin protocal and that's are the rules while in ethereum every Everything can change no it's it's part of the game you know it's part of the experiment uh and I love that but but I wouldn't choose ethereum as a store of value personally it's really interesting you

know that you bring up that proof of stake is still like an experi M phase because I feel like you know in blockchain we're now almost two years a year and a half out of the merge right and it sort of feels like it's dog years where we're like I don't know we've been there done that at Works we've had all sorts of different upgrades on the ethereum side um and then you also you know I know that you have came up with the algorithm for mining on ethereum um I kind of want to go back in time a little bit because I remember specifically like when there was this transition from proof of work to proof of State there are a lot of bitcoiners that were like this is not going to happen like we've had all these years of research you know proof of work Works um

I want to sort of hear you know we we are now a year and a half into this and and I I know you're like this is still an experiment but it's working for the most part I would say um so take me back sort of to that moment like where what camp were you in on that time um and also I kind of want to hear about what what happened to the miners like you you know I think you were sort of at this core uh the core of bringing proof of work to life uh or you know furthering it on ethereum um and now it's in a different place so yeah what what happened to all these people well first about the the the history of the movement from proof of work of proof of stake obviously maybe some ethereum core developer knows much

more than me about this but I was following the project and I saw that the proof of stake was being delayed and delayed and delayed and it is the reason because it's complex the the proof of work system is quite simple like you can explain it to to a toddler and he would probably understand and the proof of stake is much more complex because you have to protect from uh short range attacks long range attacks and and it's difficult to make a like client so there's a specific protocol for like clients and and then so there is a lot of problems which were pretty solved right there there were pretty pretty well solved but took a lot of time and so people were you know many people were not convinced when that would happen and

it was so but finally it happened but it didn't happen without problems like there was two or three papers after the move to proof of stake that actually proved that ethereum proof of stake algorithms has some flaws and were were solved because of those papers like it was not you know uh rose colors right it was it did had promise hopefully no no nobody exploited that prise that's a good thing but it it was it is still a complex protocol and if you take a look at how you know etherum know it's organized with a consensus client and and then execution part it's pretty complex but you didn't doubt like you

you were you you sort of understood that this is happening even though like it was years and years of research yeah I never yeah like it it is it was WR in the white when something is written in white paper it's it's it's what what the Community agrees to do so that what it there was no I think there was no choice to to to go back to proof of work or to to avoid the proof of stake that was part of the path people bought into etherum because they believed in proof of stake and and so that had to happened um obviously it happened a little bit late on the project but it happened and and I'm I'm glad that the project accomplished one of the the the it Mains uh objectives

right i i find I sorry I find a certain problems in proof of take which is basically the nothing as take problem the problem of about old keys and and all but you know in practice most of the theoretical attacks that you can you know think of in practice never happen so maybe maybe that that never never that attack never never really materialized Sergio just to you know I think we're we're going to we're getting close to the end here but just uh wanted to ask a question about the culture of upgrades on bitcoin there's a whole debate going on now about how to get these bips through and

how hard it is to just get you know even get a number for your Bitcoin Improvement proposal and then you you have ethereum where there still are upgrades relatively major upgrades at least once a year you know with kind of a big package of stuff and and there's a disc you know there's ongoing discussions about that whereas Bitcoin it seems like decentralization equals kind of lack of any formal organization at all and you mentioned uh the bit VM and that was a that's been a breakthrough right is because you don't need any changes to

the code of Bitcoin right and yes and then root stock is this side chain right but the bid VM is it's going to allow these you know layer twos on top of Bitcoin to be more like rollups in ethereum right uh is that correct would you agree with that here BBM is a is a optimistic or disputable Computing Paradigm so it's not meant to replace to bring smart contracts right into Bitcoin in a sense like those contracts are not as responsive and as fast as you know rusto smart contact or etherum smart contact where you have you know 10

seconds 30 seconds interaction with the blockchain so these contracts in Bitcoin require a lot of time for potential dispute resolution right maybe month of of dispute resolution so so essentially the main application of BBM is to build Bridges or some other sort of layer too it's not meant to you know create a smart wallet on top of Bitcoins that's not the idea the idea is to bring Bridges and other components that connect to layer twos into Bitcoin so you can think about that as a you know as a part of a operating system and then once you create a side chain or an L2 then that's where you know the the

common standard trading or Dex or whatever smart Contra really leave with this Innovation do you see root stock changing over from I mean the current structure of of side gain with this two-way Peg with the Bitcoin and the merge mining do you are is this a better structure yeah I see two major events happening in the future one is we are we are working to present to the Russo Community a better breach based on BBM that's a fact we are working towards that and we will soon have you know news papers announcements and and obviously it's up to the community to decide side but we think that we can build a system that is much more decentralized and and

even more secure and we have invested the community has invested several years in securing the the rosto bridge so for us it's very you know it's very moving to to reinvest and and you know um innovate on top of our own protocol to bring this to to rostock uh but uh what what I see really happening in Bitcoin is that once we have this uh these new Bridges the chance that a new up code is added to bitcoin to replace all the complexities of BBM BBM is not simple it's complex it's the it be much higher because you would if you have if you can do it in a complex way there is no

reason why not to introduce some changes to do it in a simple way because you can do it anyway so why why would you oppose to have you know an OP code that does multiplication bit doesn't have a currently an upcode that does multiplication and all the BBM stuff invests a lot of upcodes to build multiplication by su stive additions right why wouldn't put a multiplication code on top of Bitcoin if you know you are doing it anyway or why would you introduce the cat the upcat op code if you can simulate that with you know Blake three hash function or whatever so once we have these Bridges with BBM I think that the mentality of the most Bitcoin will have to change okay

obviously it's my opinion maybe never changed but I think that uh the the the situation is completely different once you can do something anyway um and then you you just propose to do it more efficiently yeah fascinating well we're going to wrap it there Sergio uh wow what an incredible episode this has been thank you so much for joining us really fascinating and um and you're right in the thick of it so uh we'll be watching rootstock and uh thank you for sharing the news with us uh that you discussed that is a wrap for this week's episode of the protocol podcast

uh thank you for listening and thank you to our producer Michelle muso and our Booker Mel Monas and if you have any questions about any stories or comments please reach out to us at podcasts at coindesk.com subject lineth protocol you can listen to US Weekly on coindesk podcast Network or wherever you get your podcast also please subscribe to our Weekly Newsletter the protocol on coindesk.com see you next week