Daniel Fogg I Bringing EVM compatibility to Bitcoin with Rootstock I Pragma Singapore 2024

[Music] with this we are ready for our next talk so for our next talk I want to bring on two amazing people here Daniel and Sasha from rootstock labs and rootstock Collective and we're going to talk about how do we bring evm to the Bitcoin Network so super exciting category and things that I'm personally interested in so without further Ado let's welcome Daniel and Sasha on stage how's that you hear me okay all right very cool nice to see you all thanks so much for coming um I'm going to talk to you today about a new phase for Bitcoin l2s you've probably heard a bit about this um Bitcoin l2s have become a very exciting space over the last 18 months and rootstock played a foundational role in that sector so I'm going to talk to you a little bit about that and how this relates to ethereum because we have a shared history so my name is Daniel fog I'm the CEO of rootstock labs if you like we're the foundation responsible for growing the ecosystem we've been core contributors to rootstock since the formation and the launch of rootstock six and a half years ago and we're Builders of Rift technology um I'm also joining the Audience by Sasha guts Sasha is the founder of the rootstock uh Foundation Collective sorry the foundation uh which supports the rootstock collective this is the first time we're saying this in public so we still haven't it's very new and you're going to actually get um a launch here today live so um so bear with us no demos though um and Sasha is going to join me on stage halfway through to run you through what the root St Collective is and why it matters for both the Bitcoin and ethereum ecosystems so rootstock Labs our vision really is to make sure that Bitcoin works for everyone we don't believe it works for everyone today um scaling Bitcoin is a real challenge it's very difficult Network to operate with um it's fantastic at storing value um but increasingly that value is held in a new technological Elite if Bitcoin is going to become something which is available to billions of people around the world and is useful every day it needs to be seen as much more than simply a store of value needs to be a cryptographic layer that um millions of people and millions of businesses can anchor into in their daily transactions this is obviously a big Vision uh and we are on a long journey to get there um but we're really excited about the emergence of l2s because we think it's a it's a way that that vision is being implemented right now so rootstock was designed in 20 5 and launched in 2018 it was always conceived to combine bitcoin's security uh the cryptographic security of the decentralized Bitcoin blockchain and the proof of work mechanism with the store of value that Bitcoin allows but also combine that with the programmability of ethereum solidity smart contracts ethereum virt machines E20 tokens and more and increasingly as the ethereum developer ecosystem has grown that also means all the incredible tooling all the incredible def defi technology that we've um we've come to rely on since the launch uh a Bitcoin L2 Market has emerged around us and maybe you know I'm talking here to an ethereum audience it might be useful to explain some of the innovations that have happened that have made this uh made this take place often these kind of emergencies within crypto are driven by technology triggers and the Bitcoin L2 Emergen is no is is no different so the big thing that happened was the emergence of bit VM so there was a cryptographer called Robin Linus uh that formed a way to do disputable computation on bit coin and this sha a light on a path for how you could potentially build optimistic rollups anchored into Bitcoin um this is kind of the first big innovation the second Innovation was the Advent of t r assets and some of the excitement around runes this basically took what was previous to this a relatively stayed and perhaps slightly uninova developer uh sector and turn it into a place where you can actually have fun you could launch meme tokens um you could have NF on bitcoin as well so it opened it up and made it a more creative and playful environment today about 40% of bitcoin's developers are working on l2s and there is a lot of venture capital flooding into this space some of the mature layers there you probably heard of root stock Stacks lightning and Liquid Lightning these are all different you'll probably notice that so the term L2 has been ported in from ethereum um but we're not talking about uh rollups here we're talking about any any significant scaling layer for Bitcoin so each of those four mature mature layers do things slightly differently so liquid founded by Adam back is a mechanism to do um partially permissioned um Enterprise grade Bitcoin transfers lightning is obviously a scaling layer for Bitcoin and is primarily for micro payments uh Stax is a um is a is a is a blockchain network which is primarily found its kind of prime use case around nfts and rootstock is focus primarily on bitcoin defi but there's a huge number of new entrance as well many of these are using bit VM to scale uh their Network and build a better bridge to bitcoin so over the next kind of uh 12 to 18 months you're going to see many of more many more of these grow um a little bit about root stock um some things that make it different so cryptographic economic and monetary alignment to bitcoin so we created the merge mining protocol which is a way that every single root stock block is hashed on the Bitcoin main chain that means every transaction every asset on roots stock is secured by Bitcoin proof of work and for doing this there are over 57% of um the Bitcoin hash rate is securing root stock today and we work with some of the biggest mining pools in the world to make sure that they are merge mining root stock as well we share 79% of the fees from rootstock with those miners this is really important because it means that rootstock contributes to the security budget of Bitcoin which is obviously a you know a big issue in the Bitcoin community and also monetary alignment there is no competing money token Bitcoin is the gas token on rootstock bitcoin is uh King on the network so couple of points uh today 28 second block time that's going to be dropping to 5 seconds in the next 6 to nine months as we launch the fast finality protocol so again this is Bitcoin security Bitcoin is an asset but with 5-sec transactions um we have over 155 protocols on the on the network uh this the interesting thing here is with the emergence of Bitcoin l2s um we've seen a huge growth rate in the number of protocols on rootstock um in around December this was 90 so we've seen 50% growth in the last eight months um today to give you an idea of scale of the network there's nearly 3,000 BTC locked in the two-way Peg the two-way Peg is the mechanism to bring Bitcoin from the Bitcoin Network into rootstock and we have around $200 million of additional tvl from either native or bridged assets so these are assets either launched on the network or brought over from other networks um one of the things that really differentiates rootstock from other Bitcoin l2s is it is still to this day the fastest and easiest way to build on bitcoin so again when you build on root stock You're Building uh protocols and launching tokens that are secured by Bitcoin proof of work and Bitcoin is native and comfortable on this network it is designed for Bitcoin however it also means that you can bring any defi protocol from any evm chain any asset from any evm chain and very quickly and easily Bridge it over to rootstock but crucially from a you know a couple of points from a developers perspective that really matter we've had 100% uptime in six and a half years some of the biggest blockchains in the world have not had this when you build on root stock you build a last you know you're building something that's going to be secure and isn't going to go down like salana um the other thing I'd sort of note here that's really kind of key for this audience we've been working really hard to make sure the best developer tools that are available on ethereum are also available on rootstock allowing people to build on bitcoin so uh Native on the network third web uh full implementation of the graph in gelato and I'm really excited to say that in the coming weeks we're going to be going live as well with Alchemy this means that the main developer environments and the main tools that people know and love from ethereum are available from day one when you're building on rootstock what does the ecosystem look like just to give you a flavor um we have some of the leading defi wallets that people know uh to love and hate like metamask uh but also Ledger which I generally think people love um but also we have many of the the major dexes from ethereum so Unis Swap and Sushi swap are natively launched on root stock um recent launches from leafi but we also you know this ecosystem has been around for a long time uh you'll probably hear from many l2s that there's been a um you know lots of things are being done for the first time as this Market emerges but the reality is we've had Bitcoin collateralized stable coins on bitcoin with money on chain for over four years uh The Sovereign dii platform which was La launched natively on rootstock in 2021 is a is a full defi platform built specifically for bitcoiners and built on rootstock and again there's loads of new protocols launching all the time and we're working hard to make sure this this is a fully composable ecosystem what's coming up um I talked before about bit vvm we have our own implementation that we've been working on called bit vmx which allows arbitrary computation um on bitcoin and we're going to be using this framework to build a better bridge to bitcoin and we're going to be talking more about that in the coming weeks our full architecture goes public bit vmx is a totally open- Source uh project um you're going to be able to uh use this for any of your other um anyone can use this uh we expect I think open sourcing of all of the code to happen early next year and we published a number of white papers on this already um this is really important because while we have one of the most performant bridges to Bitcoin today there is no other Bridge that's um been running for as long as rootstock uh we still think that you know it's not enough and uh we think using this optimistic rollup framework to build a better bridge to bitcoin uh is going to be extremely uh a big step forward for the ecosystem we're also in advanced discussions with institution grade um Native Bitcoin lending protocols um so this is going to be ethereum level tier one uh lending platforms and money markets launching on rootstock and offering um lending uh of Bitcoin on bitcoin um so this is going to be coming in the next couple of months super excited about this and then finally and this is really why we're here today and I'm about to introduce sasher on to the stage in a moment um democratizing root stock every L1 has the desire to essentially at a certain point rely on no organization or no entity to support its growth uh and and and to contribute to its its core code uh and root stocks no different rootstock Labs is here to grow the rootstock network but we increasingly want to make sure the community and the developers that build on the network from these 155 different protocols uh are have a stake in the future and have a stake in what happen happens to rootstock um and some incentives to do so and this brings me to the Bitcoin Builders dilemma and this is something which frankly we've been grappling with since day one the economic and monetary alignment to bitcoin and having Bitcoin as the native gas token means that unlike ethereum um uh incentives do not ACR to the developers they instead ACR to bitcoin miners so the Dilemma is how do you scale a Bitcoin L2 while maintaining that close connection to bitcoin if the value capture mechanism of the ecosystem only rewards the Bitcoin miners essentially the builders in the community are excluded and the liquidity which is why the L2 ecosystem has been growing so fast remains untapped again you have around I think it's 99.2% of all of the Bitcoin um in circulation is essentially on exchanges doing nothing or in Cold Storage only 8% of that is active in Defi and the majority is in wrapped BTC now that is changing and uh but this dilemma is why everyone's so excited about Bitcoin l2s um so I'd like to introduce to the stage Sasha guts Sasha has been a contributor to rootstock for extremely long time uh he's a he's a much trusted member of the community and he is now the founder of the foundation that's here to uh grow the rootstock collective so Sasha over you thanks a lot Daniel um when we were starting um to address like the Dilemma that Daniel just shared the Bitcoin Builders dilemma we were exploring different Roots we were looking at more classic all the way to more modern approaches that people took there and we found this guy Paul Samuelson once said the economy works best when resources flow freely to the most productive uses so this guy knows his stuff because he's a Nobel Prize winner for economics so he has done some work around it his common basically links the idea of efficient resource allocation to the way Dows operate creating the perfect bridge between economic theory and blockchain governance we like this route a lot so we decided to continue and Go a bit deeper on it before I move to the next slide I would like to ask a question to the audience like how many guys of you participate actively in a dow please raise your hands okay I can see a couple of hands that's great this is what why you guys are a great audience fantastic so but we do not only have people in the room that basically participating in Dows we also have people in the room that Pioneer breakthroughs when it comes to decentralized governance to Dows and to commun community-driven Innovation we decided to take those learnings draw inspiration from it while unleashing the full potential of rootstock and Bitcoin this was the time when the idea and the birth of the rootstock collective started but what is the rootstock collective so let me share some numbers it all started about a year ago as an initiative within rootstock Labs so we started slow we brought in some of the world's leading companies when it comes to Dows and how they get done so we brought in outlier Ventures for the toomics we brought in stable lab for governance and goto Market activities we brought in myosin for more goto Market activities some of the folks are here in the room thanks to you guys and we also brought in Cotto for the amazing design work that you can see in that presentation and we began the journey all together after that we decided to take the first decisions so we for instance decided to use the existing Rift token for governance but we also needed to get the financial sorted right because it all matters very much so we secured $10 million for the Dow treasury in year one this will help to fuel the growth but we're not only going for that we also decided to take 21% of all future rootstock transaction fees and move them into the Dow the remaining 79% will still go to the miners we also put 100% of all Rift protocol fees into the Dow and we truly believe that this will build a great foundation for that beginning phase of the Dow but what do we expect as output first and foremost there's a fair value capture for Bitcoin Builders and stakers and this is the most important thing of the whole presentation basically so if you remember one thing it should be this we we want to change the historical way how Bitcoin treated the value capture like it rewarded Miners and it also rewarded Bitcoin holders but what about those guys like nobody basically really took care of them so we are about to change this um we want to give uh opportunity for these two groups to really get rewarded for what they doing for the innovators like whether it's a small oneman show showing up at the hackathon all the way through you want to scale your proper business and grow it right we want to be part of that journey and we want to make sure that we can support them in the best possible way by providing a CR program to them all the way through a builder incentive Market which will launch pretty soon but we also of course on the other side want to make sure that the rift stakers also get their fair share of the cake so by giving them the power in actively pushing the growth of the decentralized community there um we give them also the opportunity to earn rewards through this you might ask yourself why does it matter for me what's in it for me and why am I telling you this today so there's massive opportunities we are opening the doors for all developers and we especially invite the ethereum builders here there's an easy way to tap into rootstock through uh to tap into Bitcoin through root stock due to the evm compatibility which makes it really really easy and there's Limitless opportunities in Bitcoin it has the biggest liquidity it is the biggest scale that's currently existing so it's quite easy for you to just move over basically and grow another business or expand your existing business to that audience and that whole thing it's bigger than compa compatibility sorry it's about breaking B boundaries innovate and Define the future of decentralized Finance together it's time to scale on Bitcoin now and we need you to join the revolution we need you to join the root the collective you can find all information details white paper Etc under the QR code or catch me later in the in the Forum or outside um it was a pleasure talking to all of you guys today thanks a lot and have an amazing rest of the day [Applause] [Music]