Q – 1 from a telegram user @songlandak

What was your motivation for starting this project? and what is your vision for $RIF?

Diego Gutiérrez Zaldívar:

Our motivation at IOVLabs has always been the same: https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/rootstock-merges-bitcoin-ethereum-help-world-bank-drive-financial-inclusion-1528902

As you can see we are pretty consistent over time.

Our main goal is to create the financial infrastructure that will serve anyone regardless of the conditions they were born into. And we decided to create that on top of Bitcoin because we wanted the foundations (Store of Value) to be as censorship-resistant and solid as possible. That’s why we choose to make bitcoin the RSK native currency and use merge mining to protect the network (stats.rsk.co)

Our vision is that we are part of a greater construction that we called the Internet of Value and that by definition is a network of networks to protect and transfer value. In our vision this Internet of Value will be built in a layered way being decentralized store of value Layer 1, agreement settlement Layer 2, P2P infrastructure services Layer 3, and above that the application level. So year after year we go building block by block our vision and demonstrating the potential of the stack as it grows. 

Q – 2 from a telegram user @Magoy12

In looking over the whitepaper there is both “Smart Bitcoin”, RBTC, the native token for, RSK Smart Contracts, which appears to be only to pay for tx fees/gas. Is there a reason that RIF Token is truly necessary, or in theory could everything have been done with RBTC? Thx.

Diego Gutiérrez Zaldívar:

The reason why we create RIF is that we envision the RIF economy serving all the smart contract crypto economies and we plan to port RIF token and the RIF Marketplace to other crypto economies like Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, EOS, Cardano, etc.

We are also working on Enveloping transactions that will enable RIF applications to operate fully with RIF while Enveloping providers pay the Bitcoin miners in RBTC.

That will be available for any token running on RSK so developers will be able to have single token applications while RSK remains in full alignment with Bitcoin.

Q – 3 from a telegram user @nyo_cant

Hi, one of the main goals of your project is helping the less-favored people, which is really praiseworthy and could be of great help for developing countries. However, you decided to establish your organization in Gibraltar, which seems to be quite the opposite. What advantages bring Gibraltar in for your project? Thanks!

Diego Gutiérrez Zaldívar:

Well, we choose Gibraltar for the HQ of our purpose-driven organization because after evaluating multiple jurisdictions we found one where the government and regulator really understood the nature of what we were building and was willing to collaborate to also implement this technology. Small jurisdictions have the motivation to innovate faster and we found in Gibraltar a place that not only had this motivation but that also took the time to properly study the technology.

Regarding helping the less favored I think although we have them as our main focus I want to say that we don’t want to create a financial system for the poor, we want to create a financial system that is so efficient and open that is inclusive by nature.

Q – 4 from a telegram user @CryptoZaratustra

Please share key performance indicators of the chain, such as the number of blocks per second, time to completion of a transaction, transaction speed, cost per transaction, or something else? Can you compete with other payment networks?

Diego Gutiérrez Zaldívar:

You can check most of this info here: stats.rsk.co but on average RSK validates a block every 30 seconds, has the potential of scaling to 100 transactions per second (TPS) in its current state but with improvement, we have in progress and reach 2000 tps preserving the ethos of Bitcoin of independent and affordable validation for an individual. The cost per transaction for bitcoin is 1 cent USD and for tokens around 4 cents USD. We are building the RIF Payment protocols in order to achieve levels on pair with Payment Networks like Paypal (190 tps), VISA (~3K tps on average), or even Alipay (85K peak tps).

Q – 5 from a telegram user @konditer_rolex

Is RSK Mainnet another layer for the BTC blockchain? Do you want to improve BTC or use it to secure R-BTC and your network?

Diego Gutiérrez Zaldívar:

RSK Mainnet is a separate Blockchain with a different consensus protocol (DECOR+) that has currently 40% of the economical security of Bitcoin and twice the economical security of Ethereum. Given its native currency, RBTC is backed 1 to 1 with bitcoin and the network is secured by the Bitcoin miners via merge mining we see RSK as part of the Bitcoin Ecosystem and as an extension to core Bitcoin capabilities.

Q – 6 from a telegram user @carlos3766

How are the important decisions taken on the platform? through the Federation?

Diego Gutiérrez Zaldívar:

Nope the RSK Federation is only used by the Bitcoin peg the RSK platform itself is protected by proof of work and upgrades to the protocol are proposed by us or the community and independently accepted by miners and node operators in the same fashion as Bitcoin but of course without the same level of decentralization yet 🙂

Q – 7 from a telegram user @sangmark1

For a project development first of all main priority is having enough funds. Is the RSK team financially capable to run this project? Does RSK have enough funds for its development? Can you tell us that how RSK generates profit?

Diego Gutiérrez Zaldívar:

IOVLabs (RSK is an open network) is a purpose drive organization so all the revenue is invested back into Ecosystem and protocol development, it has more than 5 years of runway which is enough to fulfill its objectives. IOVLabs supports core projects in the RSK ecosystem and has a revenue-sharing with them so as the ecosystem succeeds IOVLabs sustainability is assured. On top of that IOVLabs has a pool of RIF tokens that will use to promote ecosystem and protocol development and also receives revenue sharing from miners transaction fees.

Q – 8 from a telegram @Bit_Top

What do you think of a public chain with privacy features? Many public chains are considering adding privacy features, such as adding zero-knowledge proofs, will RIF develop in this field?

Diego Gutiérrez Zaldívar:

Zero-Knowledge proof is already possible on RSK and a team already implemented the Zokrates libraries successfully. On the protocol level, we are fully pro-privacy and we have a couple of projects that go in that direction. As I stated before I think we need to find the balance where we avoid the platforms to be used as mass surveillance systems while also avoiding full confrontation with enforcing agencies but that’s my personal opinion, as said full privacy solutions can be built on top of RSK regardless of my point of view 😊

Q – 9 from a telegram user @Rifat118molla

Most platforms take a substantial cut, meaning creators only see a portion of their rewards. So How does the RSK Platform solve this problem? Is the value that creators receive on the RSK platform always optimal?

Diego Gutiérrez Zaldívar:

Yes in RSK creators only pay per use of the platform to miners and as I shared before the costs are very low and stable (http://rskgasstation.info/), around 1 cent for an RBTC transfer, 4 cents for a RIF or any other token transfer and some pretty complex contracts cost 1 USD to use. IOVLabs has no control over who uses the platform is a truly P2P platform run by the community

Q -10 from a telegram user @malachi456

Have been working with ETH solidity, what is the modalities involved, and the incentive for me to Port my Ethereum projects to RSK. WHAT’S THE competitive advantage for me?

Diego Gutiérrez Zaldívar:

Well on one side you have to do zero modifications to your contracts, recently a project ported to RSK, and they were happily surprised that they only had to change their private keys :). On the cost side, the cost in RSK is most of the time much cheaper than on Ethereum but more important because of the fees model they are extremely stable so you have predictability on your running cost. The other key element is all the things you get solved out of the box thanks to RIF, a great example is the rWallet one of the few Bitcoin and RSK open-source wallets for Android and iOS (https://developers.rsk.co/wallet/rwallet/). Finally, you have the second safest network after Bitcoin and the safest more efficient way to interact with bitcoin using Smart Contracts.