# On the openness of Rootstock development **URL:** \ **Category:** Uncategorized\ **Created:** [September 12, 2026, 10:04am UTC](https://research.rsk.dev/t/on-the-openness-of-rootstock-development/546 "2026-09-12T10:04:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Nuh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nuh](https://research.rsk.dev/u/Nuh)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2026, 10:04am UTC](https://research.rsk.dev/t/on-the-openness-of-rootstock-development/546/1 "2026-09-12T10:04:26Z")
Since I have made my mind that Rootstock is our best effort to extend and scale Bitcoin (as Rootstock made strides in merge mining and bridge security that are very difficult or impossible to reinvent) I have been trying to engage with Rootstock developers and development roadmap as much as I can. Unfortunately, my impression so far, is that with the exception of @SergioDemianLerner, engagement has been very difficult to come by. This is not a problem because I am entitled to the developers time, rather it is a problem because people need to know they are investing their time and energy in a system that doesn’t get developed behind closed doors, because that adds a lot of anxiety about the future of the project and how fast things can change without any notice. But also this lack of engagement is severely limiting the public knowledge about the technical details that might contribute to the security and leanness of the system going on, things that might make running light clients cheaper and safer etc.. I explored Discord and found it mostly full of scammers. I explored this forum, and it was useful whenever SDL replied but it is otherwise totally abandoned for anything but advertising next network upgrades. I explored RSKIP repo issues and PRs, but the same pattern seems to emerge. Future upgrades are discussed somewhere that I can’t seem to find, then declared here and in the RSKIP PR. I don’t think this is a good look, even though I know the devs have their hearts in the right place. More over, it is not clear how the governance work, are miners mindlessly following any upgrade suggested by the Rootstock Labs? There is some evidence for that because I don’t see the discussions before any upgrade put forward to the miners. Conversely, there is evidence that miners are absent minded and not doing their job to govern and regulate things like gas price or block times. I am not sure what exactly can Rootstock labs do differently, but I wonder if the following might help to solve many if not all the problems above: 1. Create a DAO (possibly RIF or another new token) that is initially entirely owned by Rootstock labs. 2. Transfer the 20% rewards to that DAO instead of Rootstock Labs, this way any complaints in the future about this rewards to a company is mitigated by it being a DAO instead. 3. Gate the conversations and discussions about the future upgrades to the owners of that token as a Sybil resistance mechanism. 4. Issue some rewards in that token to the miners, so they can either sell it to users who might want to engage in the governance, or govern themselves. This could help reward miners in case fees are not sufficient, by giving them a claim on future rewards that they can sell immediately or hold on for the future. I also think this token might be very useful in the future for things like Data Availability services or something like the FASTER protocol, with the ability to block list bad operators without changing the PoW algorithm and fire all miners at once. This idea might be infeasible or unacceptable, but please take it as a desire that might be shared by others, to have more investment in the future of Rootstock, that doesn’t necessarily require having to hope Rootstock Labs specifically does a good job forever. Because corporations have different lifetimes from distributed systems, especially when Rootstock Labs already seems to be bunkering down and working silently without much public engagement with technical enthusiasts, at least not in english and at least not as far as I can find. I want to finish by sharing a concrete example: BitVM bridge is a huge part of Rootstock future in the absence of any bitcoin softforks, and if it wasn’t for SDL on X, I wouldn’t have known anything about “Superchain” or Superblocks, and in fact any mention for these remain in placeholder RSKIPs, so not only I can’t discuss these solutions, there isn’t even any work in progress specification anywhere public that I can find. That all being said, I still think there is no better alternative than Rootstock, so I only wish it the best, and I want it to become as much of a public good as Bitcoin that we can all take for granted, while paying for its sustainability and maintain it collectively, even for non-profit. ---
**Author:** ![SergioDemianLerner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/779978/32.png) [@SergioDemianLerner](https://research.rsk.dev/u/SergioDemianLerner)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2026, 6:20am UTC](https://research.rsk.dev/t/on-the-openness-of-rootstock-development/546/2 "2026-09-13T06:20:56Z")
I’ll take some time on Monday to write more about this, but I do share with you many issues you bring. This forum is not very popular. While I don’t work with the Rootstock core devs daily , I know them, and I know they are currently overwhelmed with work, improving Rootstock’s security in these times of AI-originated attacks. They have much less time to engage with the community now. Most of the time the core devs dedicate to the RSKj client is to fix bugs and copy Ethereum features to keep smart contracts compatible. Rootstock is a separate codebase, so we can’t just inherit Ethereum upgrades. Risky changes are generally deprioritized. For example, It took several years to activate parallel transaction processing into testnet. One problem is that there not many skilled developers thinking about Rootstock consensus out of Rootstock Labs. I encourage you to try to bring more of this kind of devs to this forum. I celebrate all your posts: sometimes I add them to my reading to-do list but never get the time to read them. I’m already working in 10 different research projects, and AI is only accelerating the amount of research one must be aware of. Don’t stop posting, publish the links on twitter to attract attention to them. Many people will surely cite and repost. Good ideas are viral. ---
**Author:** ![GoldenGatsby](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/research.rsk.dev/goldengatsby/32/196_2.png) [@GoldenGatsby](https://research.rsk.dev/u/GoldenGatsby)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2026, 11:47am UTC](https://research.rsk.dev/t/on-the-openness-of-rootstock-development/546/3 "2026-09-14T11:47:59Z")
> [@Nuh](#): > > I explored RSKIP repo issues and PRs, but the same pattern seems to emerge. > > Future upgrades are discussed somewhere that I can’t seem to find, then declared here and in the RSKIP PR. Thank you for joining and sharing this feedback. Sergio is right the devs are very much focused on shipping and often the comms they do make happen on Github not in the forum. that being said I agree with you I believe its important for them to be engaging more with the community and discussing these topics openly. I have passed on this feedback to some of the core contributors. ---
**Author:** ![henrik.jondell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6bbea6/32.png) [@henrik.jondell](https://research.rsk.dev/u/henrik.jondell)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2026, 12:51pm UTC](https://research.rsk.dev/t/on-the-openness-of-rootstock-development/546/4 "2026-09-14T12:51:08Z")
Thanks Nuh. I’ll not repeat what Sergio and Sam says above, but just want to praise the fact you took your time to help improve Rootstock! Some of your ideas are discussed here at Rootstocklabs and it’s super valuable to get this kind of feedback! Keep it coming. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![GoldenGatsby](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/research.rsk.dev/goldengatsby/32/196_2.png) [@GoldenGatsby](https://research.rsk.dev/u/GoldenGatsby)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2026, 8:08am UTC](https://research.rsk.dev/t/on-the-openness-of-rootstock-development/546/5 "2026-09-24T08:08:36Z")
Hey Nuh! I was inspired by your feedback to create a new way to navigate RSKIPs and enable more people to engage with and contribute to development. Take a look: [RSKIP Explorer](https://gatsbygolden.github.io/RSKIP-Explorer/) (repo [here](https://gatsbygolden.github.io/RSKIP-Explorer/)) obviously there’s a lot more to unpack from your comments but thought you might find this interesting. I woudl love any thoughts ---
**Author:** ![Nuh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nuh](https://research.rsk.dev/u/Nuh)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2026, 9:04am UTC](https://research.rsk.dev/t/on-the-openness-of-rootstock-development/546/6 "2026-09-24T09:04:11Z")
This is very beautiful. I already noticed that apparently RBTC was called SBTC, by reading some of the rejected RSKIPs’ abstracts. UI clearly matters because I browsed the RSKIP repo many times, but this easy access to abstracts allowed me to find something new. I hope this and similar initiatives bring more attention from developers willing to engage with the low level of the protocol design.