So it’s Ethereum but not as secure? Rootcoins

So it’s Ethereum but not as secure? Rootcoins

I just wish that team would just go work on Ethereum already. I hate how Bitcoin has multiple projects doing essentially the same thing. It’s such a waste of development resources.
Why you already own Rootcoins?
It came to our attention that many of you wish to invest in RSK by buying Rootcoins in some kind of crowdfunding. We really appreciate you sharing our enthusiasm on this project, but there is something we would like to explain about Rootcoins.

If you wish to have Rootcoins, get some Bitcoins.

Rootcoins (RTC) are just Bitcoins (BTC) living in our blockchain, which is pegged to the Bitcoin blockchain. What does this mean? One RTC is going to be always equivalent to one BTC. But as Bitcoin does not offer full Smart Contract capabilities, we need to convert them temporarily into RTC to be used as fuel in our blockchain. We are not mining new RTC, nor they have speculative value (other than Bitcoin´s) and you can always convert your RTC back to BTC, and your Rootoshis to Satoshis 😉 on a 1 to 1 conversion rate.

Once a BTC is converted to one RTC, it gets locked. When the job is done and you want to convert your RTC back to BTC, the RTC is burned and the BTC is unlocked. There will always be one BTC locked for every single RTC in our blockchain.
You can peg Bitcoin to RSK 1:1, meaning you can move freely between the 2 chains. There is no premine. You lock Bitcoin in the Bitcoin blockchain and get equivalent RSK in the Rootstock blockchain. When you are done using the RSK’s or you want to exchange them back to Bitcoin, you do so by sending a msg back to the Bitcoin blockchain and your Bitcoins will be available to use again.
The new chain will be merged mined if the mining capacity is high enough. If not, it will be a combination of designated signatures together with merged mining.
Since more op_codes are available in this sidechain, and many more features are enabled, you would be able to run Turing complete scripts, aka. full blown applications that are decentralized.
It helps Bitcoin by increasing Bitcoins usability to pay for programmable services in a side chains, thus Bitcoin is the currency for a growing ecosystem.
It can run all the apps build for Ethereum and pretty much makes Ethereum useless since there will for certain be more mining capacity on this sidechain.
Miners increase their revenue by mining this chain, thus more power, thus more security on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Side Chains only have SPV-level security, so if a sidechain gets big and is holding a lot of BTC, then the majority of miners on that sidechain can work together to steal all of these bitcoins. This will destroy the sidechain and prevent future mining fees, but probably it’ll be very much worthwhile overall for the miners to do this. This can’t happen on Bitcoin due to the existence of full nodes, which follow the rules no matter what: If the majority of Bitcoin mining power tried to steal bitcoins from someone, then they would succeed in stealing bitcoins from the perspective of SPV wallets, but most of the economy is (or should be…) backed by full nodes, so any coins miners misappropriate in this way will be mostly worthless. Due to the way sidechains work, sidechain full nodes have to follow the majority of mining power, whereas with Bitcoin, full nodes can and do ignore miners when they break the rules. (This is why full nodes are so important in Bitcoin and Bitcoin experts get really worried when the node count is falling: if the economy is not substantially backed by full nodes, miners would have every incentive to steal bitcoins from people.) Furthermore, for side chains that have very little mining power (maybe because they don’t offer much or any incentive to mine on them), the merged-mining allows Bitcoin miners/pools to attack the sidechain in this way very easily and almost for free.
Therefore, AFAICT side chains are only useful for small-value things, situations in which federated peg is acceptable, or testing in preparation for adding features to Bitcoin. Rootstock is taking the second route: their Federation will need to approve all transactions going in or out of the sidechain, and they could steal all bitcoins in the sidechain (maybe they’d also need the cooperation of the majority of Rootstock miners to steal bitcoins – I’m not sure). This doesn’t mean that Rootstock won’t be useful, especially if the Federation is composed of many trustworthy independent entities, but complete decentralization would be ideal.