1.1 Background

We chose to develop on the Rootstock Sidechain due to its pioneering implementation of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) on Bitcoin since 2018, without any reported security breaches. That's 6 years+ of no exploitation! Rootstock is backed up by more than 50% bitcoin miners using blind merge mining and proof of work! It also boasts the largest Bitcoin DeFi project in the world, Sovryn.

Rootstock was one of the first Bitcoin sidechains to enable smart contracts. While still under development, it continues to improve. We anticipate that Drivechain and/or BitVMX could significantly enhance Rootstock's capabilities. Both projects aim to address Bitcoin's L1 limitations in scalability, privacy, and two-way pegs. Notably, Drivechain requires a Bitcoin soft fork for implementation, while BitVMX does not. With the growing demand for developers building on Rootstock, we want to take this opportunity to be pioneers in shaping the Rootstock ecosystem. This allows us to leverage the security of Bitcoin while utilizing Ethereum-style smart contracts written in Solidity. Furthermore, given the widespread adoption of the EVM by various chains, we can technically bridge to other Bitcoin EVM Layer 2 chains as needed or create a multi-chain smart contract that communicates with each other under the same contract. This method can build a larger audience and foster interoperability between different blockchain ecosystems, thereby enhancing the utility and reach of HNDL.