Bitcoin Smart Contract ‘Federation’ to Launch With 25 Startups

Bitcoin smart contracts are getting their own cooperative.
Announced today, a group of international bitcoin companies have signed a letter of intent to form a federation that would find them supporting and contributing to the development of a smart contracts platform that would utilize the bitcoin blockchain.
Unveiled today, the RSK Federation is built around the RSK smart contract network created by Buenos Aires-based startup Rootstock.
Rootstock co-founder and CEO Diego Gutirrez Zaldvar described the federation to CoinDesk as “a huge signal from the bitcoin ecosystem” and a validation of how companies can leverage sidechains, a technology developed by bitcoin startup Blockstream to add functionality to the bitcoin network.
He told CoinDesk:
“The whole extension of bitcoin, and solving some of its biggest challenges with richer scripting, will solve a lot of shortcomings of bitcoin in the coming years while protecting the intrinsic value of bitcoin.”

This post was published at Coin Desk on August 2, 2016.