Decentralized Exchange SushiSwap Goes Live on Bitcoin Sidechain Rootstock

Rootstock is one of the most established projects aiming to introduce DeFi capabilities to the Bitcoin network.

The ecosystem uses the RBTC token, which is pegged 1:1 to BTC.

The integration comes about six months after Uniswap was deployed to the Bitcoin sidechain.

Decentralized exchange SushiSwap is now live on the Bitcoin {{BTC}} sidechain Rootstock, according to an announcement shared with CoinDesk on Thursday.

Launched in 2018, Rootstock is one of the most established projects aiming to introduce decentralized finance (DeFi) capabilities to the Bitcoin network that are most commonly associated with companies like Ethereum and BNB Chain.

It calls itself the first Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible with Bitcoin sidechain. An EVM is smart contract execution software that powers the Ethereum protocol, comparable to an operating system on a computer.

Rootstock's goal is to combine the security of the Bitcoin network with the smart contract capabilities of Ethereum to provide a platform for building and deploying decentralized applications (dApps).

The ecosystem uses the RBTC token, which is pegged 1:1 to BTC.

The integration comes about six months after Uniswap was deployed to the Bitcoin sidechain. SushiSwap started as a fork of Uniswap.

Rootstock's total value locked (TVL) is just over US$ 450 million, according to data from DeFi Llama.

Since the beginning of 2023, there has been an acceleration in the expansion of resources for the Bitcoin network which has historically been the domain of Ethereum and others.

The starting point was the Ordinals protocol, which allowed a version of NFTs to be minted and stored in Bitcoin, from which numerous initiatives emerged to progress the introduction of smart contracts on the world's largest blockchain.