Introduction.
It is my personal belief that Bitcoin will become the base layer of our society. It is the only true decentralised public space for free commerce and the sending and receiving of value. A network and an asset that cannot be stopped, censored, or seized and is open and available to anyone in every corner of the world.
The problem
At the moment, even though blockchain technology has already proven its value. It is still hard to use for newcomers. Developers find it tricky to create new protocols using blockchain, and for established companies or service providers, it is not as straightforward to integrate as we would like.
In order to drive the massive adoption that we know is possible and help everyone come on board in this new wave of innovation, which has the power to completely change the way in which we organise ourselves and operate with each other, we need to build the infrastructure and UI to make it more friendly, understandable and approachable.
This is what RIFOS seeks to solve.
What is RIFOS
It stands for RSK Infrastructure Framework Open Standard. As the title suggests, it is native to the RSK blockchain. I have written previously about this blockchain and why I am so excited about its fundamental proposition. I have also written about some of its use cases already available for anyone in the world with an internet connection. A quick summary of its main qualities are:
-Side chain of Bitcoin allowing for Smart contracts and secured by the Bitcoin Miners (making it the most secure smart contract platform in the world).
-EVM compatible (everything built on Ethereum could be built on RSK and leverage the Bitcoin network for security).
-Scalable (capable of 100x speed of transaction over Bitcoin and at least 20x Ethereum).
-Fees on the network get paid to the Bitcoin Miners (Making the Bitcoin main Chain even stronger and more profitable).
-The native currency (RBTC) is collateralized one to one with BTC, it follows its price movements flawlessly and can be interchanged back and forth from one to the other at all times.
RSK is a sidechain created by Bitcoiners with the ethos of Bitcoin in mind. It seeks to always add value to the main chain and the underlying asset, BTC. In this sense it is not a competitor of the main chain, but an addition. Which allows for a lot more use cases, while helping the network grow, expand and be adopted by more users.
RIFOS is an open standard, meaning anyone can use it, and no one controls it. The main contributors behind it are the IOV labs team — a group of people from all corners of the world and all walks of life united by their love of Bitcoin. Many of them come from emerging economies like my home country of Argentina, where it is painfully obvious to everyone why these decentralised technologies are so important.
The main goal is to develop the infrastructure to make building on RSK easier, cheaper and expand it to more users. They are doing an incredible job, with a lot of platforms already operating, and more than 100 million in total value locked across the ecosystem. It is still early but the vision of a unified world operating on Bitcoin is one that more and more people are waking up to.
At the moment they already have a marketplace built, for renting decentralised storage and purchasing domain names, which will serve as digital identities (I already own WeAreBitcoin.RSK). There are plans to continue to expand the marketplace and add more services like payment gateways, encrypted messaging and much more. There is a token that people can use to pay for these services called RIF (RSK infrastructure framework) with a very unique and interesting design (Which we’ll cover in future articles).
Adoption
Once the infrastructure is in place and more people are aware that building smart contract platforms on Bitcoin is possible, I think a great deal of adoption will happen. Especially as we venture more and more into uncertain grounds at a macro-political and economical level. The utility of an immutable ledger and a token that cannot be diluted, stopped, censor or seized cannot be understated. There is a real need for these types of technologies to reach the masses and the RSK ecosystem is filled with teams working tirelessly towards this end.
I am extremely excited and happy to be a witness of the future being built before my eyes and proud to play my little role as best as I can. I’ll continue to study it to the best of my abilities, communicate, teach and share everything I find and everything I learn to anyone who wishes to be a part of this movement. As with many technologies, early adopters are the ones who stand to gain the most from a paradigm shift. I do not believe it’s an exaggeration to say that we are living through the most important time in the history of our species. Whatever happens in the next 10 years could very well define the following 100.
With that in mind, I’m putting all my efforts and energy behind Bitcoin, and I urge everyone to do the same.
Follow the channel if you want to stay up to date with my latest research, and visit www.WeAreBitcoin.World for more information.
