Sidechains Are Bringing ICOs to Bitcoin And That Might Change Crypto Funding

While ethereum, the second largest blockchain by market cap, and other smart contract protocols, have been the choice for the majority of entrepreneurs interested in creating new crypto tokens, with a sidechain created by RSK, bitcoin will now have the ability to host the new fundraising mechanism as well.

The original concept of an ICO was first started on the bitcoin blockchain itself back in 2013 - though with comparatively limited blockchain infrastructure to that of ethereum today - by self-proclaimed inventor of the idea, J.R. Willett, who raised a total of half a million dollars for the token "Mastercoin," later renamed to omni.

The network is fueled by a bitcoin-pegged cryptocurrency dubbed "Smart bitcoin," or SBTC. Still in beta, only a handful of crypto projects are deploying smart contracts on the RSK sidechain currently.

Given time, Temco's CEO Scott Yoon and head of business development Joey Cho said they believe bitcoin will soon attract a greater number of blockchain projects and one day have "The same function like ethereum."

"RSK ... will be dominating ecosystem and [for] bitcoin that will open another era of bitcoin, like ethereum."

The difference, in the eyes of both Yoon and Cho, is that other blockchains, including ethereum, cannot sustain the creation of "Real products" for mass adoption like bitcoin can.

"Bitcoin network is really ideal because scalability is number one and you don't have to worry about hacking. So when smart contract tool is brought to the bitcoin network ... everybody's going to want to come to bitcoin."

For these reasons, Yoon and Cho anticipate that one day token projects will choose to launch on bitcoin from the get-go and even ethereum-based token issuers will migrate to bitcoin for RSK's features.

Having secured a reported 80 percent of all bitcoin miner support, RSK announced in May that it was looking to implement significant upgrades that would address the very same scalability issues being tackled by many of the world's biggest blockchains today.

Yoon, for one, is optimistic about the promise of smart contracts and blockchains, especially bitcoin to become much more than just what it's used for today.