On average, the network currently generates a block every 30 seconds. Miners can reduce the average block time to 15 seconds by optimizing their merge-mining operations. Systems that receive payments over RSK in exchange for a good or service outside the RSK blockchain should wait a variable number of confirmation blocks, depending on the amount involved in the payments. A minimum of 12 confirmations is recomended, which corresponds to an average delay of 6 minutes.

The RSK network is highly compatible with the Ethereum network at various layers:

Virtual machine is EVM compatible

Interprocess connectivity is JSON-RPC compatible

Smart contract programming language – Solidity is supported

Javascript programming interface – web3.js is supported.

RSK Virtual Machine (RSKVM) is highly compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), but the RSKVM offers additional features not present in the EVM. To make use of these improvements, some changes to the smart contract source code are required. Furthermore, the RSKVM has specific precompiled contracts that provide the bridging functionality with Bitcoin. Approximately once a year, the Ethereum community performs a hard-fork to add new functionality. The RSK community has, in the past, incorporated these changes through corresponding hard forks on the RSK network. These trends are expected to continue in the future.

The RSK blockchain is secured by merge-mining, with some additional security measures. The RSK blockchain is mined by the Bitcoin miners, which are part of the largest and most reliable blockchain network in the world. Currently, more than 35% percent of the Bitcoin hash rate is simultaneously merge-mining RSK.

The 2-Way peg is said to be a method to transfer BTC into RBTC and vice-versa. In practice, when BTC is exchanged for RBTC, no currency is “transferred” between the two blockchains. There is no single transaction that does the job. This is because Bitcoin miners cannot verify the authenticity of balances on another blockchain. When a user intends to convert BTC to RBTC, some BTC are locked in the Bitcoin blockchain and the same amount of RBTC is unlocked in the RSK blockchain. When RBTC needs to be converted back into BTC, the RBTC gets locked again in the RSK blockchain and the same amount of BTC is unlocked in the Bitcoin blockchain. A security protocol ensures that the same Bitcoins cannot be unlocked on both blockchains at the same time. This requires transaction finality, and that’s the reason the peg required hundreds of block confirmations for transactions that unlock BTC or RBTC.

When a Bitcoin user wants to use the 2-Way Peg, he sends a transaction to a multisig wallet whose funds are secured by the PowPeg Federation. The same public key associated with the source bitcoins in this transaction is used on the RSK chain to control the Smart Bitcoins. This means that the private key that controlled the Bitcoins in the Bitcoin blockchain can be used to control an account on the RSK chain. Although both public and private keys are similar, each blockchain encodes the address in a different format. This means that the addresses on both blockchains are different.

Currently the funds in the peg are secured by a threshold signature managed by the HSMs protected by functionaries of the PowPeg Federation. At least 51% percent of the functionaries HSM PowPeg signatures are required to transfer bitcoins out of the peg wallet. The process to unlock bitcoins is controlled by a smart contract running in the RSK blockchain. All coordination actions are open for every user to see.

The original RSK roadmap proposed to add drive-chain support to enhance the security of the funds in the peg. This requires a Bitcoin soft-fork, which may or may not occur. RSK Labs created a BIP and working code to implement this drive-chain in Bitcoin. If Bitcoin soft-forks to support the drivechain BIP RSK proposed, unlocking funds from the peg will also require 51% percent acknowledgement by the merge-mining hashing power. With the hybrid PowPeg Federation/drivechain proposed by RSK Labs, both the majority of PowPeg federation members and the merge-miners must acknowledge a release transaction, increasing the overall security of the peg.

The RSK blockchain is secured by proof-of-work based on the SHA256D algorithm like Bitcoin. If all the RSK miners collude, they can censor one or all of RSK transactions but they cannot steal RBTC or Bitcoins.

The security of the RSK network will depend on the amount of merge-mining engagement and the number and quality (security compliance) of the PowPeg Federation members. More than 50% of the Bitcoin miners are currently merge-mining RSK (as of 2020) and another 30% are planning to merge-mine in the future. Furthermore, the RSK network could theoretically reach a higher hash rate than Bitcoin, by combining merge-mining hash rates from other bitcoin clones.

Are 6 confirmations on the RSK platform sufficient for a transaction to be considered confirmed?

A recent paper established that in the context of transaction reversal probability, 6 Bitcoin confirmations (average 1 hour) would be equivalent to approximately 12 RSK confirmations (average 6 minutes). While Bitcoin has the concept of 0-confirmations (the transaction has been broadcast without Replace-by-fee), there is no similar concept in RSK. The fastest real confirmation in RSK is “1.5” confirmations, or 1 confirmation plus 5 seconds without a block reversal, or an average of 35 seconds.

The RSK “gas system” prevents an attacker from creating, spreading and including resource-intensive transactions in blocks without paying the associated fees. Every resource, including CPU, bandwidth and storage is accounted for by consumption of an amount of gas. Every block has a gas limit, so the resources a block can consume are limited, making a resource exhaustion attack ineffective.