Cryptocurrency wallet app Edge, today announced support for Rootstock (RBTC) in its latest development release. RBTC is used in the smart contract platform Rootstock (RSK), which is a sidechain of the BTC mainchain.
Many in the BTC development community like sidechains because they allow developers to freely experiment without changing the Bitcoin blockchain which can be dangerous and highly contentious
A Bitcoin sidechain allows a holder of BTC to lock up funds in the Bitcoin blockchain and be credited the same amount in a BTC sidechain, use that network with its native asset, and then be able to exchange those units back into the original locked up BTC. Users might move their assets over into a sidechain to take advantage of some of the extended features and capabilities that aren’t available on the Bitcoin blockchain.
The RSK sidechain enhances the usefulness of BTC by providing a Turing-complete Virtual Machine (RVM) which allows complex smart-contracts to be constructed and utilized. These smart contracts could be used for escrow services, asset creation, securitization, micro-lending, decentralized exchange, and many more use cases.
