At first it was the banks which started exploring the potential use of bitcoin technology for inter-bank fiat transfer and now it is the World Bank which is interested in using same technology for drafting smart contracts as part of micro-lending programs. RootStock, a new cryptotoken that combines the goodness of both Ethereum and Bitcoin is leading the latest cause.
Rootstock picks its technical capabilities from Ethereum and combines it with the Bitcoin like security and transparency. The Rootstock smart-contract peer-to-peer platform is a bitcoin blockchain based application which has Ethereum Virtual Machine as a sidechain. Even though the side chain has Ethereum Virtual Machine, it doesn’t use ether. It instead uses its own cryptotoken called Roots. These routes do not have any monetary value of their own. However, it can be exchanged with bitcoins and used for smart contract generation.Roots is the fuel used by RootStock platform and even though it has almost all the properties of an altcoin, it isn’t one. Unlike other cryptocurrencies, bitcoin/roots is the only currency pair possible. The founders of Roots — Diego Gutierrez Zaldivar and Sergio Lerner have been working on developing tools for the microlending industry for a while now and Zaldivar has also been in talks with various development banks and nonprofit organizations to implement these tools. The platform aims to bring about financial inclusion among the underbanked and unbanked population of the world. The technology is currently being implemented in few slums near Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo.
The project is being supported by Nick Szabo, a well-known personality when it comes to the smart contracts domain in the cryptocurrency industry. Rootstock will be soon launched at the upcoming LaBitconf happening in the Mexico City on the 4th and 5th of December.
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