RGB consensus layer released for production deployments

[Maxim Orlovsky]

Hello all,

I am glad to inform that after years of development (6 years since I had joined to lead the project, and about 8-9 years in total) RGB finally got stable: yesterday its consensus was released as RGB-I-0 (provided by `rgb-core` rust crate of v0.12; more on version numbering can be found in https://github.com/RGB-WG/RFC/blob/master/RGB-6.md).

In client-side validation world we face more complex change rules than in bitcoin blockchain: if something was valid before and becomes invalid (soft-fork in blockchain), in the client-side validation this is becomes a backward-incompatible change (functionally similar to a hard-fork). Thus, release of consensus layer for RGB had required us to build its complete functionality, which is kind of ossified from the day of the release, with a very small surface for possible future changes or upgrades.

Anyway, here we are: finally the protocol is complete, with all required functionality (including support for zk-STARK compression) being present there. Adding zk-STARK support was quite a challenge, which took most of the last year, and required to re-think and re-do the virtual machine and the full computing environment which was used by RGB. You can read the full information about what’s coming with the released consensus layer in the official release announcement: https://rgb.tech/blog/release-v0-12-consensus/

Those who are interested about more details what RGB is, may also watch my presentation at the past BTC Pragure RGB side-event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q34QcP2GMMU

NB: This is a consensus layer release, with standard library and application-level library releases to follow during the next weeks. However, this release is the most important among all of them, since it is only consensus changes which can break contracts backward compatibility, while the changes to any layers on top may require software or wallet updates – but would never break contracts and assets which were already issued. Thus, with this release, contracts become forward-compatible.

Developers and issuers can now deploy contracts on testnet and Bitcoin mainnet using this stable release. But for security and consistency, please re-issue any contracts created with pre-release versions.

Kind regards,

Maxim Orlovsky

Lead engineer at

LNP/BP Standards Association

& Pandora Prime SA