RSK Labs open sources bitcoin smart contract platform

RSK Labs, a smart-contract peer-to-peer platform built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain announced today the open sourcing of the RSK platform client.
The release, code-named Ginger, is the first step to bring smart contracts into the Bitcoin ecosystem, based on three main pillars of the RSK platform: an EVM-compatible virtual machine -RSK smart contracts are programmed on Solidity and RSK VM is fully compatible with Ethereum VM-, a merge-mined blockchain -which enables Bitcoin miners to mine on both chains at the same time with the same resources and with no performance harm on Bitcoin mining- and 2-way peg with Bitcoin -RSK uses Bitcoin as its native currency-.
RSK Labs is also making a Testnet available to the public. The Testnet will enable testing applications with nodes in a network similar to the upcoming production-ready network, or Mainnet. RSK stated its focus during this stage is to make sure the network is stable before going live. The platform is also set to undergo several security audits.
The RSK Labs team stated:

“This is the first of many releases yet to come. We will regularly update the Github repository with improvements. Our team is already working on features that will soon be available. You can visit our repository to find out what our plans are, what improvements are waiting in the development pipeline and the issues we have already identified.”
“Collaboration is essential to continue growing the RSK community and this is the time to join us. We welcome feedback, bug reports, improvements, ideas and all kind of contributions.”
“We want to thank all the partners that have been working on the private version of the Testnet during the last few months, for their invaluable feedback and findings, and their collaboration to make RSK platform better. We are also thankful to the Ethereum and Bitcoin communities for their contributions to the project.”

Check out the “Starting with RSK” guide to find out how to start working on the RSK platform.