Last month, the Rootstock community has held the first ecosystem summit of 2024 — offering an in-depth insight into the innovative dApps being built on Bitcoin’s longest-running and leading sidechain.
The virtual event kicked off with an address by Daniel Fogg, the CEO of RootstockLabs which is a core contributor to the growth of the Rootstock blockchain. Daniel revealed that 112 partners and projects have launched on this network over the past six years.
And in a sign that momentum is growing, 36 of those have made their debut in a six-month period — a powerful illustration of how vibrant the Rootstock community is right now.
“Our purpose is to make Bitcoin work for everyone. We think that the unparalleled security and decentralization of Bitcoin will make it critical infrastructure for the future of humanity,” he said.
Save your seat in the October Rootstock Summit on Luma.
Breaking down barriers for developers
Daniel explained that RootstockLabs is driven by a vision of supporting developers by creating “the easiest place to build anything on the Bitcoin network.”
Top priorities include breaking down barriers so new users and liquidity can flow into the ecosystem, resulting in an even more attractive environment for crypto entrepreneurs.
Making Rootstock work for everyone
Another involves establishing use cases for Everyday DeFi to ensure that BTC works for everyone — irrespective of their geography or finances.
This is already having a real-world effect, especially when it comes to workers abroad who want to send funds back home to their loved ones.
Remittances through traditional channels have long commanded high fees and long delays, eating into hard-earned incomes.
A crypto-powered alternative has now launched on Rootstock — establishing remittance corridors throughout Latin America, and connecting this continent with Europe.
“We’ve seen an explosion in usage in the last three months,” Daniel revealed. “In Q2 alone, there were over 37,000 transactions that we could tag and understand as cross-border remittance flows.”
He went on to describe this as an exciting new use case that’s witnessing impressive growth — and demonstrating how the security delivered by the Bitcoin network can play a vital role in meeting everyday financial needs.
Improving accessibility to the ecosystem
And while there’s already a lot to celebrate, Daniel says the hard work to ensure Rootstock reaches its full potential is far from over.
Declaring that he and his team have a responsibility to keep improving, he told the audience: “We’re doing a lot of work to improve accessibility and make the ecosystem experience a lot better. Monitoring protocols, making sure that the ecosystem experience is constantly improving, advising partners on how they can improve the experience for the users and lots of other stuff as well.”
Just some of the upgrades currently in the pipeline include faster confirmation times and lower gas fees — with an ambition for new blocks to be created on Rootstock every five seconds.
What’s coming up for Boltz integration
The Rootstock Ecosystem Summit also heard from Killan, the co-founder of Boltz, a non-custodial bridge that offers seamless swaps between different Bitcoin layers.
Killan explained that Boltz has been keen to integrate Rootstock and dramatically lower the barriers to entry for new users — and this includes making RBTC, “Smart Bitcoin” which is always pegged to the value of BTC, much easier to access than at present.
“Getting RBTC should be a matter of seconds and not hours,” he said.
At present, Rootstock’s official two-way peg app requires 100 Bitcoin block confirmations for transactions to finalize — and fees on the mainchain can surge during times of high demand. Killan says Boltz wants to offer a trustless alternative that uses the Lightning Network as a “connecting tissue,” and atomic swaps mean the platform never takes control of user funds.
What’s more, the upcoming integration of RIF Relay will help avoid the downside of an end user needing to own RBTC to acquire it.
“Once the integration is live on mainnet, we will be focusing on natively integrating with the ‘OGs’ of Rootstock to offer a nice UX for users to be able to obtain RBTC directly within the app or platform they are on without having to go to a separate website,” Killan added.
Sovryn is now supporting Runes
The summit also heard from Sovryn’s head of ecosystem growth Ingamar, who revealed that the platform’s dApp has been updated to support Runes — a new standard that allows tokens similar to ERC-20 to be traded on the Bitcoin mainchain.
“We’ve figured out a way to allow for these Runes to be bridged over to Rootstock so that they can be transferred and traded for a lot less in terms of transaction fees as Bitcoin, as well as usable and more programmable applications such as AMM DEXs,” Ingamar explained.
This has the potential to bring Runes to a much bigger audience, all while making swaps and trades cheaper and less complicated.
Rootstock World Tour on Galxe
That’s not all. Galxe is another platform that has integrated Rootstock — meaning that, for the first time, builders within the ecosystem can offer Quests that reward users whenever they complete certain tasks in their dApps. The ability to offer tokens and NFTs can help supercharge engagement and enable newcomers to learn more about how a platform works.
“There’s going to be some great rewards that are given away — including tokens — and for all the dApps in the ecosystem that are out there, get involved — you can come and join, run your own quests, and offer fantastic rewards,” Galxe’s chief strategy officer Jared Schwartz said.
This integration has directly contributed to the launch of the Rootstock World Tour, which boasts 10 quests across 10 different destinations in the ecosystem.
Behind the scenes
A huge part of Rootstock’s ongoing growth lies in the grants program, which is now in its sixth wave.
RootstockLabs’ senior venture associate, Ongun Ozdemir, revealed that more than 1,500 applications have been made for a slice of $2.5 million in funding to date.
Talented developers and entrepreneurs have had the opportunity to promote their concepts across about 50 pitch days — and some successful projects from earlier waves have gone on to join prestigious accelerator programs and raise funds from high-profile investors.
Ongun told aspiring developers: “We often do AMA calls if you have any questions — and if you think you’re ready to apply, rootstock.io/grants is the place to be. We have a very simple form that everyone who wants to apply for a grant submits, and once that’s done, our team starts processing it. More than one person looks at every application, and on pitch days we have a lovely friendly panel where we ask you to talk a little bit about what you want to build.”
Looking forward
The August session was the first quarterly Rootstock Ecosystem Summit introducing groundbreaking technologies and integrations, and showcasing the growth within the ecosystem.
As the ecosystem continues to grow, stay tuned for the next summit in October, where the community and core contributors will share more developments coming into the ecosystem!
Follow Rootstock on X to stay posted, and save your seat in the October event on Luma.