RootstockLabs Q2 2026: Building the Access Layer for Bitcoin-Secured Finance

RIF ·

Q2 2026 advanced RootstockLabs’ institutional Bitcoin strategy across infrastructure, research, and market engagement. Atlas launched in beta, making it easier for users, builders, and institutions to access Bitcoin-secured finance through one guided interface. Union Bridge went live on Rootstock Testnet, marking a major step toward trust-minimized Bitcoin interoperability using BitVMX. Miner momentum grew through the DMND partnership and continued merged mining adoption, with more than 84% of Bitcoin’s hashrate securing Rootstock in Q1 2026. The RootstockLabs team published research on quantum risk, mining centralisation, regulation, Bitcoin-backed liquidity, and the infrastructure requirements for institutional adoption. The team was active across Paris, Las Vegas, Prague, and Latin America, helping bring Bitcoin-secured finance into institutional conversations around treasury, collateral, payments, and capital efficiency. Ecosystem momentum continued through real-world asset settlement, stablecoin infrastructure, merge-mining innovation, and builder growth. Q2 2026 marked a major step forward for Bitcoin-secured finance infrastructure. Between April and June, RootstockLabs launched new access tools, advanced trust-minimized bridging, published institutional research, and expanded the ecosystem around Bitcoin-backed financial applications. The direction was clear across the quarter: make Bitcoin easier to access, make the infrastructure underneath it more verifiable, and help institutions, builders, and Bitcoin-native businesses understand what Bitcoin-secured finance can become. The quarter’s first major product milestone was Atlas . For years, entering Bitcoin-secured finance meant navigating a fragmented set of bridges, routes, wallets, costs, timing assumptions, and trust models. That experience was never built for mainstream users. It was built for people already deep enough in the ecosystem to know where the trade-offs were hidden. Atlas was built to change that. Atlas is a key part of the Bitcoin-secured finance infrastructure needed to make onboarding simpler for users, builders, and institutions. Launched in beta in Q2, Atlas gives users a single interface for moving assets into Rootstock. Instead of forcing people to manually compare routes, Atlas brings routing options into one guided flow, helping users evaluate speed, cost, and provider options before they move funds. For RootstockLabs, Atlas is more than an interface. It is part of a broader access strategy. Bitcoin-secured finance cannot scale if the first step is too difficult. Builders need easier onboarding paths. Institutions need clearer operational flows. Users need fewer decisions that feel like infrastructure work. Atlas helps turn access into a product experience, not a research project. It also creates the front door for what comes next. The second major infrastructure milestone of the quarter was Union Bridge on Rootstock Testnet. Union Bridge introduces a new model for Bitcoin interoperability based on verification rather than assumption. Historically, bridges have asked users to trust a set of signers, validators, custodians, or operational processes. Union moves toward a different security model by using BitVMX to make bridge behavior provable on-chain. This matters because bridging remains one of the most important and most attacked parts of crypto infrastructure. If Bitcoin is going to support a larger financial system, moving BTC into programmable environments must become safer, more transparent, and less dependent on majority trust assumptions. Union Bridge is still early by design. The Q2 release was not about declaring the work finished. It was about putting the model in front of users, testing the flows, validating assumptions, and learning what needs to improve before production-scale deployment. Atlas and Union Bridge tell the same story from two different layers. Atlas makes access easier at the surface. Union strengthens the trust model underneath. Together, they point toward a future where Bitcoin-secured finance is both easier to enter and more accountable by design. Q2 was also one of RootstockLabs’ most active quarters for public research and thought leadership. The work published during the quarter focused on the long-term integrity of Bitcoin infrastructure: quantum risk, sidechain security, mining dynamics, regulation, institutional capital, and the practical use of Bitcoin beyond holding. Nicolás Vescovo , Senior Researcher and Mathematician at RootstockLabs, addressed the quantum computing conversation following Google’s latest research. The piece clarified where the real risks sit for Bitcoin and Rootstock, separating the threat to signatures from misconceptions around mining. The conclusion was measured: quantum risk is not an emergency today, but it is a roadmap issue that serious infrastructure teams need to treat seriously. Here’s Nico on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MHAKbtG9A2k Sergio Demian Lerner , Co-founder and Scientific Advisor at RootstockLabs, published a technical and ethical analysis of the eCash fork . The piece took a clear position on why forks that compete for SHA-256 hashpower, introduce replay risks, and attempt to claim Bitcoin-adjacent legitimacy without strengthening Bitcoin itself should be scrutinized by the ecosystem. Gabriela Castillo Areco , Head of Intelligence at RootstockLabs, explored the structural forces shaping institutional Bitcoin adoption. Her work covered mining pool concentration, regulation across major markets, and the operational barriers that remain even as regulatory clarity improves. One of the strongest themes from this research was that clarity is not the finish line for institutions. It is the starting point. Tony Dicarlo , Director of GTM Liquidity at RootstockLabs, focused on a question more Bitcoin-native companies are now asking: how can businesses access liquidity without selling BTC? His work translated the mechanics of Bitcoin-backed financing into practical frameworks for treasuries, miners, and Bitcoin-native operators evaluating capital efficiency. The same theme carried into Bitcoin Forward , where Tony Dicarlo and Richard Green discussed why Bitcoin-backed lending is becoming part of the new treasury playbook. The episode connected several of the quarter’s strongest themes: miners exploring active BTC strategies, businesses looking for liquidity without selling Bitcoin, and institutions beginning to treat Bitcoin as productive collateral rather than a passive balance sheet asset. Q2 was also a quarter of presence. RootstockLabs was active across the major Bitcoin, crypto, and institutional finance events where the future of Bitcoin-based capital markets is being discussed. In April, the team hosted a private BTC breakfast alongside Tyr Capital during EthCC , bringing together allocators, funds, and institutional decision-makers to discuss yield generation, capital efficiency, and institutional-scale deployment on Bitcoin-secured infrastructure. At Paris Blockchain Week , RootstockLabs was on the ground as the conversation between traditional finance and digital assets continued to move from theory to implementation. The timing mattered. Atlas launched in the same window, giving the team a clear infrastructure story to take into those conversations. Later in April, RootstockLabs attended Bitcoin 2026 in Las Vegas. Co-founders Adrian Eidelman and Gabriel Kurman were present, with Gabriel joining the main stage for a discussion on the role of Bitcoin education in shaping the next generation of adoption. Gabriel Kurman taking main stage at bitcoin2026 Las Vegas. The quarter also brought the RootstockLabs team together internally. In May, 120 Rooties from 33 countries gathered in Punta Cana for the largest internal gathering in the company’s history. With the board present and Q3 planning taking place across the organisation, the week created alignment around what comes next. Then came Prague. In June, RootstockLabs joined Bitcoin Corporate Day and BTC Prague , two events that captured the shift happening across the market. Bitcoin is no longer only being discussed as a reserve asset. It is being discussed as collateral, payment infrastructure, treasury infrastructure, and the foundation for a new class of financial applications. At BTC Prague, RootstockLabs was represented across the conference and hosted its own side-event programming. Bitcoin & Brews brought the community together off the main agenda. The Bitcoin & Business Breakfast, hosted with Xapo Bank at the Still Early Cafe, created a dedicated space for builders, institutions, and operators thinking seriously about Bitcoin’s role in the financial system. The shift from “how can me or my business buy bitcoin” to “what can me or my business do with bitcoin?” is real and it’s happening faster than many expected. The team at RootstockLabs and the wider Rootstock community were here for the last decade and will be here for the next. We’re still early and I can’t wait to do it all again next year. Read RootstockLabs Director of Brand and Comms, Sam Golden’s, takeaways from the conference here . Richard Green, VP Institutional at RootstockLabs, also joined the panel “What’s New in the Bitcoin Ecosystem? An Infrastructure Overview,” bringing the RootstockLabs perspective into one of the key infrastructure conversations of the conference. Beyond the main events circuit, Adrian Eidelman joined ONG Bitcoin Argentina’s streaming programme as a special guest, continuing RootstockLabs’ long-standing connection with Bitcoin education in Latin America. Richard Green also appeared on CNBC-TV18 to discuss institutional Bitcoin adoption, regulatory tailwinds, stablecoins, tokenisation, and why operational readiness is becoming the next real barrier for institutions. RootstockLabs does not build in isolation. Q2 also showed how the broader ecosystem around Bitcoin-secured finance is maturing. Mercado Bitcoin crossed $40 million in real-world assets settled on Rootstock during the quarter, reinforcing the role Bitcoin-secured infrastructure can play in institutional-grade settlement. Paystand launched USDb on Rootstock at Bitcoin 2026 in Las Vegas. Paystand’s B2B payments network processes billions in payment volume across North and Latin America, and USDb brings a USD-backed stablecoin into workflows that matter for businesses: invoices, payroll, treasury, settlement, and enterprise finance. DMND, a Stratum V2-first mining pool focused on miner sovereignty, partnered with RootstockLabs to give Bitcoin miners direct control over their own Rootstock merge-mining commitments and rBTC rewards. That matters for more than mining rewards. Rootstock is secured through merged mining, which means the decentralisation and participation dynamics of Bitcoin mining matter directly to the security foundation of the network. By helping miners participate more directly in merge mining, the DMND partnership strengthens the base layer of the Rootstock thesis. The partnership followed another strong quarter for miner participation. Rootstock’s Q1 2026 Merged Mining Insights Report found that 84.01% of Bitcoin’s total hashrate was securing Rootstock, while 93.1% of the observed mining pool hashrate was actively participating in merged mining. The network recorded an average hashrate of 833.92 EH/s during the quarter, with Foundry USA, AntPool, and F2Pool among the largest contributors. The Rootstock Collective also continued to grow during the quarter, with more RIF staked, more builders engaged, and new grant processes introduced to support ecosystem development. Builder Rootcamp moved through structured development, helping teams go from smart contract development to security, auditing, and real product thinking. RootstockLabs spent the quarter building infrastructure, enabling partners, publishing serious research, and carrying the Bitcoin-secured finance conversation into the rooms where adoption decisions are made. Together, these developments strengthen the Bitcoin-secured finance infrastructure required for broader institutional adoption. Q3 begins with the access layer open, trust-minimized bridging moving forward, institutional conversations accelerating, and the RootstockLabs team aligned around what comes next. The infrastructure is being built. The ecosystem is moving.Bitcoin-secured finance is becoming a market.

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RootstockLabs significantly strengthened its Bitcoin-based financial infrastructure in Q2 2026. Key achievements include the launch of the Atlas beta for enhanced user accessibility and the unveiling of the BitVMX-based Union Bridge testnet. Ecosystem trust has improved substantially, with over 84% of the Bitcoin hash rate contributing to Rootstock security.

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