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

By the end of the year, an initial coin offering, or ICO, will be launched on bitcoin.
You heard that right – on bitcoin. 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. In fact, 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. And sometime in late November, Temco, a South Korea-based blockchain startup targeting supply chain management, will take advantage of both the seminal idea and RSK's technology, launching a public token sale with the goal of raising $19 million. Stepping back, RSK has been working on its Turing-complete smart contract sidechain for bitcoin since early 2016. The smart contracts are written in the same dominant language as ethereum – that being Solidity. And 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.