Subject: [bitcoindev] RGB consensus layer released for production deployments

From: Maxim Orlovsky <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2025 07:25:45 -0700 (PDT)

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

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