Recently, scalable and decentralized Bitcoin sidechain Rootstock (RSK) introduced the unique concept of meta-transactions enabling third parties to pay for a user’s transaction fees.
Enter RIF Enveloping
According to the official announcement, RIF Enveloping allows wallet providers to seamlessly pay for their users’ transactions. In essence, RIF Enveloping is geared toward making it easier to onboard DeFi beginners at Bitcoin smart contract platform RSK.
For the uninitiated, one of the major pain points hindering the widespread adoption of smart contract platforms today is the astonishingly high gas fees. Anyone wishing to swap one token for another must have some amount of a specific token, for instance, Ether (ETH) for Ethereum and Smart Bitcoin (RBTC) for RSK.
This, unsurprisingly, creates a major barrier to entry hindering new users from making their first transaction and familiarizing themselves with the tools and services integral to the rapidly budding DeFi landscape. RIF Enveloping solves this problem as part of the entire ecosystem that RSK has built around DeFi on Bitcoin.
By introducing meta-transactions, RIF Enveloping essentially makes room for greater flexibility for decentralized application builders. Any smart contract platform using the innovative technology can choose to either subsidize the user’s gas fee in its entirety or request payment with tokens.
Notably, meta-transactions are currently being integrated with one of the first RSK wallet providers called Beexo Wallet. The Smart Wallet will allow any smart contract to make meta-transactions by paying the fee on behalf of the end-user and optionally charge the user for this service in tokens.Commenting on the development, Diego Gutierrez Zaldivar, CEO, IOVlabs & RSK Co-founder, noted:
“Bitcoin and RSK are about enabling a new financial system open to everyone. Making our technology easy to use for non-technical users is key to drive positive change with real impact. RIF Enveloping is a key tool to provide a user experience on decentralized blockchain networks on par with that offered by neobanks while also creating a path to sustainability for wallets and token issuers.”
Better than Competition
While there exist a number of similar solutions in the industry, they are just not as efficient as RIF Envelope reduces the cost of sponsored payments by a whopping 50 percent. This giant fee slash allows dApp creators and DeFi platforms to subsidize network fees for more users and simultaneously overcoming one of the major obstacles prohibiting wider smart contracts adoption.
Sergio Lerner, IOVlabs Chief Scientist, and RSK Co-founder noted:
“RIF Enveloping is the first of a series of technological enhancements that highly improves the usability of RSK. Together with the upcoming fast peg-in system and zk-rollups, developers can build wallets that provide users a much better user experience that is fundamental for financial inclusion.”
In related news, BTCManager reported in December last year Sovryn, a margin trading and lending dApp tied to the Bitcoin network via the RSK smart contract platform.