Bitcoin

the most well-tested, battle-hardened blockchain

The Bitcoin network

has been functional for

99.99088825359 %

of the time since January 3rd, 2009.

(Bitcoin's genesis block: Jan 3 2009 02:54:25 GMT)

includes 6⅓ hours of downtime on 2013-03-12.

Building a blockchain?

Use Bitcoin's codebase.

(seriously. don't re-invent the wheel!)

Elements

are composable components that extend the Bitcoin codebase.

They transform Bitcoin's featuresinto domain-specific solutions.

Sidechains

are bundles of Elementsdeployed as a blockchainon the Bitcoin network.

Sidechain Ecosystems

Reasons to use Sidechains

• Network Upgrades, without service disruption
• Experiments, with reversible outcomes
• Beta releases, for optional improvements
• ...what else can you imagine?

Sidechain Assets

Issued Assets

are arbitrarily created in a transaction

Bonded Assets

are created & destroyed by a 2-way peg

Both have very different security models!

The Periodic Table of Elements

elementsproject.org/elements

Rootstock

is a

Public Sidechain

pegged to Bitcoin's testnet blockchain

Launched on June 1st, 2015

🎆🎂🎆

Segregated Witness

• 2015, Q2: first prototype built in Elements
• 2015, June: deployed to the Alpha sidechain
• 2015, December: proposed to the Bitcoin community at the Scaling Bitcoin conference in Hong Kong (BIP 141)
• 2016, June 6th: accepted into Bitcoin Core (PR #8149)

OP_CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY

• 2015, Q2: first prototype built in Elements
• 2015, June: deployed to the Alpha sidechain
• 2015, Aug.: proposed to Bitcoin community (BIP(s) 68, 112, 113)
• 2016, Feb. 12th: accepted into Bitcoin Core (PR #7524)
• Block 419328: activated on mainnet! 💥

Confidential Transactions

• Conceals transaction amounts, but not sender or receiver
• Can be combined with other Elements for better privacy (CoinJoin-like.)
• Based on Confidential Values, from Adam Back, Greg Maxwell, Pieter Wuille