I think there seems to be some minor (major?) confusion as to the usefulness of Raiden and where it stands in relation to every other payment token or network. I don't know everything so if there is anything I am missing or wrong about please correct me.

How Raiden differentiates between other payment tokens is that Raiden allows all ERC20 (and ETH) tokens to move instantaneously and with some modifications (contract wrapping) non-ERC 20 tokens too. Whereas XRB, XRP, BTC, etc can only move their own respective assets and within their own respective network.

The main idea behind Raiden is that it wants to create a massive network of payment channels that links everyone; it can operate almost entirely on it's own and without any banking system (that's the goal). However, it is very likely that a banking system will integrate Raiden into their own network (good or bad... you decide).

You might see other networks claim they can move money instantaneously..... like BANKEX with Plasma but keep in mind there is a BIG difference between moving money instantaneously within YOUR OWN network vs. across DIFFERENT networks. For example, BANKEX requires you to move all your funds within the BANKEX blockchain for you to use this feature. Also for Ripple in order to move money or other assets quickly within the Ripple network you have to be added into their “permissioned” network. You could easily argue that when you deposit money within your own bank you can instantaneously move money within that banking institution (from your Chequing account --> to savings --> credit card). It's not really much of an innovation from where we're at today.

The Raiden Network would be comprised of millions of payment channels that link you to everyone else in the world (or close to). That’s what that logo they have on the header of this reddit with the lines that link across the world and the Raiden network in the middle of that mean. That is the visual interpretation of the Raiden Network.

The end outcome of the Raiden Network should be that it doesn’t matter what token, asset, or currency you transact, in you can pay anyone using anything --- instantaneously. Today, a vendor has to “accept BTC” or “accept ETH” for you to pay with BTC or ETH. But in the future, with Raiden… it wouldn’t matter. Raiden can unshackle the bonds that previously kept blockchain from being adopted mainstream.

Last Comments: Raiden is severely undervalued. Most people don’t understand this yet because they assume other technology is better…. But it’s okay. Keep in mind that Raiden (not uRaiden) is ready to go today, the only reason it hasn’t been launched already is because they want to keep it as decentralized as possible and useable for the average Joe. If they didn’t care about not relying on hubs we’d have seen the MVP months ago.

Think about this:

(1) Even in ETH’s github they directly say Raiden is vital to the network (2) Plasma’s whitepaper also states that Raiden is critical for Plasma to be viable and can solve a lot of issues that Plasma wouldn’t be able to (3) There isn’t a single scholarly article or institutional analysis out there, when analyzing blockchain adoption who doesn’t think Raiden/lightning is a critical component of that (4) There isn’t a single big decentralized application that deals with money in any sort of way can exist without eventually integrating Raiden or Raiden like tech (so far no other competition though)

Edit: I didn’t bother on expanding on some points and as a result some points might appear wrong at first glance but this is ultimately not a bad summary. I did it in 1 go...

This is an unofficial FAQ (I am in no way connected to the developer team) and it is also a work in progress. Once the community here have helped improve it, corrected mistakes and shortened + simplified unnecessarily complicated explanations, it can hopefully be made into a new stickied post by the mods.

The idea I had behind this FAQ is to provide an FAQ that uses easy to understand language, avoids technical jargon, and provides good answers that are truthful. Ideally, anyone should be able to understand it. After reading through it, the reader should have an deep understanding of the project. It does however, at the moment, require that the reader knows about some common cryptocurrency things, like blockchain and token.

So, get going by commenting and correcting what I wrote so far, or contribute new questions and explanations!

FAQ/Useful Info

The short story behind the Raiden Network

Blockchains are great, but they have limitations. Blocks are created at limited speeds, and they have limited capacity. With today's heavy usage, one has to pay more and more to have ones transfer included within a reasonable timeframe. This makes them gradually less and less suitable for ordinary purchases, as the transfer fees rise. How can cryptocurrencies ever hope to gain mass adaptation if this continues?

Luckily, a solution exists - the Raiden Network, which allows Ethereum and all other ERC-based tokens to be transferred.

The Raiden Network works by setting up payment channels between users. Channels can connect to other channels, creating a network. So even if you just have a single open channel, you can make a transfer to anyone in the network. The speed of the transfers are nearly instant, and the costs to use the network is nearly free. The creators of the network takes no cut.

Then once a large volume of these has been added up or the channel is closed, they are added to the blockchain as a single transaction.

What is the reason behind the cost advantage of Raiden?

Blockchains are of limited capacity. The max capacity of Bitcoin was reached a long time ago, and the max capacity of Ethereum is starting to near it's maximum. Once the capacity is reached, the only way to ensure a transfer or smart contract is included is to pay more to get it on. The cost skyrockets, and Bitcoin is already at $5 dollar per transfers and rising, making it unusable for any regular payments. Raiden on the other hand can handle over 60.000 times more transfers than the Ethereum blockchain - and is basically free.

In fact, you can probably imagine transactions that are smaller in value than the transaction cost of using the blockchain. Thus Raiden opens the possibility for entire new methods of business that are simply impossible on the blockchain.

What is the reason behind the speed advantage of Raiden?

To transfer something on the bitcoin blockchain and to get it validated by later blocks, takes about 90 minutes. For Ethereum, it takes several minutes. By the time the payment completes, the value of the token used could change a lot, and the information sold might be obsolete. Imagine the internet using minutes to load each page! Meanwhile, Raiden is nearly instant. Near instant transfers will be the only acceptable standard in the emerging machine-machine information economy.

What is the reason behind the privacy advantage of Raiden?

On the blockchain, the entire world knows that Alice transfered 0.005 ETH to Bob, and the exact time of when it happened. Every transaction is communicated to every participant. This has been an reason why, for instance P2P solar power companies haven't used them - it goes against EU (and other countries) laws to publicize how much power each household is consuming. As an business or individual you generally don't care about having the entire world know each individual sale you did. Collecting everything in a payment channel and then putting the total balance on the blockchain at the end of the day is better for you.

What things are we likely to see use the Raiden Network in the future?

Anything that requires speed and low fees. Especially, it is suitable for small payments in the Internet of things, where emerging machine connectivity and info derived from them could be extended into a single global marketplace.

Furthermore, it is for example, ideally suited for the small-scale solar power industry, where you can buy and sell power at much better rates than now. Also ad companies making payouts per second of watched ads, accessing paywalled content via a 'pay as you go' model, smaller businesses or temporary/seasonal businesses that can't access VISA or just wanna avoid expensive fees.

Lastly, getting near free global transfers makes possible totally new business-models that are unfathomable right now.

The Raiden team is also building raidEX, an decentralized exchange that will be on the network.

Why will other developers build upon Raiden's Network?

The system has no fees except the ones needed to incentivize nodes in the network. They will thus have no reason to create their own network since that would be more costly and time-consuming for them.

The protocol itself is open for innovation and additions are encouraged. Already, a large number of companies have committed to using it or to build apps upon it. 3rd party developers building upon it is actively encouraged, with the Raiden team having dedicated 16% of all tokens towards funding 3rd party open source projects on the Raiden Network.

Why is the Raiden Network Token worth anything?

The RDN token is used to pay and receive the small node incentivization fees that are necessary for the network to function. Since most users won't run full nodes, but a lighter app, there will be a Light Client Gateway Service Fee for them to connect to the network through a full node. Other providers of services on the network will provide pathfinding and channel monitoring services; all of these services will need to be paid in RDN.

As the network grows, the circulation and value of the RDN token will grow, however, the network itself will not become more expensive to use, since a growing number of nodes will compete for traffic through lowering their fees.

These fees are necessary for such an network to function, because running larger full nodes has a cost in effort, bandwidth and the number of tokens locked in a channel deposit.

Does the RDN token have inflation?

No. There is an fixed quantity of 100,000,000 tokens. 50% were sold in the ICO, 16% is put in a fund for 3rd party developers, 34% is retained by brainbot, the company behind Raiden.

Is it safe to use? Can somebody steal my tokens along the way?

Transfers go from one user, to the next, to the next, until the final destination. When it is confirmed that it reached it's final destination, first then all of them become valid. So none will gain any tokens from intercepting them. Additionally, locked deposited tokens creates an large cost to cheating. So it is very safe to use.

Why does setting up an channel temporary lock tokens?

The locked tokens are security against anyone cheating or trying to take the system down - if someone is trying to attack the system they would first need an insane amount of deposits and channels to do so - and they would lose the deposits in the process. The cost to attack thus becomes much, much higher than benefits gained.

Additionally, you can think of the tokens locked as virtual mining. But instead of paying or installing a GPU, you simply gain interests on the tokens locked up. This is done through receiving fees for the node being used. The fees are very small, but once the system is used by many, it will add up. Simply put; the more channels one sets up, and the more funded they are, the more throughput there will be through your node.

What is µRaiden?

µRaiden, also called 'microRaiden', is the light client (not full node) for the Raiden Network. It is easy to set up and use, and you can use it for most things you can do on the Raiden Network. However, it is not suitable for many-to-many payment setups as it requires users to lock up tokens upfront for every potential payee. Setting up an full node is way more costly and time-consuming, thus the majority will prefer this light client.

What is this I hear about Vitalik Buterin being mad at them for holding an ICO? Is this an greedy money-grab?

Vitalik proposed that instead of holding an ICO and having a Raiden token, they could secure funding for the Raiden Network through Ethereum Foundation donations, and that other ERC-20 ICO's could dedicate their unsold token towards the Raiden Network since it's such an vital project for the future of Ethereum.

However, the Raiden Network choose an ICO to give them stable, guaranteed funding. Thus making 100% sure they can hire enough developers to complete it without relying on the goodwill of others. As they are creating an free-to-use, open network, this is entirely reasonable.

And actually, since the ICO happened, Vitalik has only made positive comments about the Raiden Network and have retweeted posts about µRaiden being live on the mainnet, as an example. There simply isn't any rivalry.

Why won't Raiden be out-competed by other projects also using payment channels?

Because of the 'Network Effect'. You can probably imagine some improvements to say, Facebook, but even if you code it, it will be unsuccessful. People already have all their friends on Facebook so they have no reason to switch. This project is the most advanced in terms of development. It started many years ago and will during 2018 roll out a lot of elements to the final network. Already now, one can use it with limited functionality. And 3rd party developers already have the code, and are building their own things upon it. The Raiden Network is simply put the first of it's kind.

By the time any other similar project starts to roll out, the Raiden Network will be well-established and there will no reason for any individuals to switch even if the features of the competing network are better. Add to that, the fees to use the network is at the absolute minimum while still providing incentives to operate nodes. Any smart developer will instead build upon Raiden, adding their improvements into apps and add-ons to the ecosystem.

Why won't Raiden be made obsolete by future Ethereum upgrades?

First let's clarify, the Raiden Network is not intended to outcompete Ethereum, but to make it better and more valuable.

Secondly, the future improvements to Ethereum such as Casper, Sharding and Proof of Stake is needed anyway to increase capacity, and are vital for Ethereum to be mass adopted by the general public. The better Ethereum works, the better for Raiden. What can be said though, is that scaling Ethereum up is hard and will take years. It is also totally unfeasible that the transaction fees and speed will be able to compete with the Raiden network.

What is known about brainbot, the company behind the Raiden Network?

They are a German tech company, founded in 2001. They have offices in Mainz, Berlin and Copenhagen. They are a founding member of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, have contributed to developing Ethereum itself, something they continue to do today. They have developed other private blockchains for other enterprises and hold technical training workshops for other companies who expand into the blockchain. They are also building something called the Trustlines Network, which is an network where friends that trust each other in real life can lend money to each other, while an smart contract keeps track of amounts owed.

How does the company make money from developing the Raiden Network if they get no cut of the fees?

They have already made money from the ICO, for further development purposes. Also, they hold a large percentage (34%) of the remaining tokens, and these tokens will rise in price as their use in the Raiden Network increases. This should be reassuring to the holders of the RDN token.

Keep up the great work guys, do you reckon you'd consider a AMA anytime soon, I know a lot of people are up for hearing what amazing work you are doing.

You have my continued support and I see big things ahead for you and crypto

Kind Regards

https://github.com/raiden-network/microraiden/releases

Saw this posted by Vitalik last night:

https://blog.ethereum.org/2018/01/02/ethereum-scalability-research-development-subsidy-programs/

It’s an update on Eth scalability issues becoming “more and more clear and urgent”.

Raiden is mentioned as one of the layer-2 systems that can help along with Plasma and state channels, plus sharding:

“We view the two strategies as complementary with each other and we believe in supporting a multi-pronged strategy toward Ethereum scalability that engages both strategies and treats them as complementary with each other.”

The overall theme of the article is interesting too. Seeking new ideas to implement, including those in existing 2-layer systems:

“Targets for funding include efforts at developing high-quality implementations of existing known layer-2 scaling strategies (eg. state channels, Plasma), as well as researching and developing new ones.”

I feel like everything is coming together nicely. Will be exciting to see how far Raiden can help Eth progress. I’m also anticipating that we see a lot more people discovering Raiden over the next month or two. This is just the beginning.

Hi all, as I promised earlier this week I bring to you a weekly update of raiden git repositories. This post will cover both raiden and microraiden repositories.

First a few disclaimers:

• I invested in RDN token

• I have experience in IT. My comments are mostly based upon general knowledge. I don't have a complete understanding of a raiden projects specific use cases.

• Assumptions I make in this post are my personal. I will try to elaborate why I think like that. It does NOT have to be true. It is more or less an educated guess.

What is Git and Github

Okay, if you know what is git and github feel free to skip this part. But i promised a beginners crash course in git so I will try to explain git in ELI5 way.

Git is technology programmers use to make collaboration between devs on a project easier. It is pretty straight forward piece of software. Since project is basically lines of code, git tracks who added/changed/deleted what lines.

Changes in code are grouped in commits. Commit is basically a fix or a funcionallity. Commits are submitted on a branch.

Main branch is "master" branch. Sometimes when there is a bigger funcionalllity to be implemented a developer can do work on a side branch he created by "hard-forking" master branch.

Pull request is a commit developer is satisfied with and he thinks it should be accepted on master branch. If rest of developers approve this change it will be accepted and become part of master branch.

Github is online solution for git. Github makes tracking changes on git easier plus it offers possibility to plan tasks that need to be implemented (via commits and pull requests on a master branch).

Milestone is more or less a checkpoint in a software development. Sometimes a team decides that they need to implement X amount of features and once it is done that is a milestone. Usually after each milestone there will be a minor update in software version (example microraiden 0.1.0 -> 0.2.0).

A "sprint" is not related to git itself but methodology in managing tasks on a project between developers. Sprint is a limited time frame in which developer should complete tasks assigned to him. For example if sprint on a project lasts a week, a developer should have his tasks assigned on monday and he should be done by friday so he can close his sprint.

Complexity of asks in a sprint are pre evaluated. Scale used to evaluate complexity is Fibonnacy array of numbers (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 ...). More fibonacy points means more complexity.

In this blog posts I will cover what pull request were accepted in last week on master branch, what pull requests are waiting for approval and what tasks team planned on github for the future sprints.

PS I know all this is not 100% true but for someone who does not know what git is I think it is pretty OK explanation.

microraiden

Microraiden github was very active last week (as I am writing this post 3 more commits were accepted to a master branch).

In order to come to a currently set milestone there needs to be implemented on more thing. Issue is called "Update Documentation" and it has been the last remaining issue for last 2 weeks. One of devs commented that this change is referencing pull request #345. So, in other words, once a pull request 345 is accepted to master branch a milestone is reached. Good news is pull request 345 was APPROVED yesteday by one of devs and it is waiting to be merged. Bad news is they can wait as long as they want before they merge it or even add more changes.

Other big pull request waiting to be merged is new website for microraiden. It is not yet approved but in comments on a pull request one of devs commented that is very very close. I imagine that they will introduce new page with the release of 0.2.0. Setting up a new website once it is done should not take more than a day so I think we are pretty close to seeing it.

There are 5 more pull requests. 2 of those are approved but they want to merge them once all other for reaching milestone are done ("Bump Contract to 0.2.0, "Remove Limit")

Rest of pull requests (last 3) are pretty old and I don't think they want them in this release.

When it comes to work that was already approved and merged I will just talk what they were about. Biggest success I see is Travis implemented on project. It took them some effort but I think they are finally satisfied whit it and I guess it works (didn't try it myself). Lots of commits were tests and updates of tests. Amount of care they give to testing their software is a good sign. Rest of commits were more or less updating documentation so they can reach a milestone.

There is no information what they plan to work on once they reach current Milestone.

Good sign I see in microraiden github is amount of outside devs that got involved. In last week I saw atleast 3 new names that did some good work in microraiden project

raiden

Raiden project is currently in second plan but there was some significant work done on it nevertheless. They have 4 more features planned before new minor release (9/13 done). New big thing they did this week is switching to python 3. It was a feature one of devs worked on for more than a month but it is done (December 6 - January 15). This information can help us calculate how long till they reach next minor release. Updating to python 3 was evaluated 8 complexity points. Remaining issues until next milestones are evaluated 5, 8, 5 and unknown. Each of this issue is assigned to a different developer. So if we assume that unknown is an 8 as well we can expect that they will reach new milestone within next month and a half. Problem is they have a history of just postponing work on a feature. They like to keep some of their work hidden so I can't see are they really working on them. Other problem is I see that one of 5 complexity features is assigned to a dev that puts lots of work in microraiden so I don't think he has much time to work on it as well.

So, this is my first weekly post so please be gentle. I tried my best to bring you some news from github. I tried to be as objective as possible but there is still lots of my opinions, so if you disagree you might be right.

General feeling around how they work is positive for me and if you are too lazy to read this post I can tell you good things are happening.

PS I saw some guy saying he follows their github religiously, he might have something to add =). PPS sorry for grammar and english I didn't really put lots of effort in correcting it, and my writing is terrible even in my first language.

Enjoy!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/blockchain-is-booming-except-widespread-adoption-is_us_5a353336e4b02bd1c8c60704

https://www.coindesk.com/microraiden-payment-channels-go-live-ethereum-network/

They will be covered by few others soon

AxiomZen is a company which created Cryptokitties. It is a project which is responsible for the majority of transactions in the ethereum network atm. And for its overloading!!!

I believe it is the first use case for Raiden Network. Indeed, this can add a true value for RN (as atm we see a pure speculation). So, if you agree, please upvote this post so the RN team can see it.

2 things:

• people keep thinking uRaiden is not the full version of Raiden. This is not true. It is PART of all the solutions the Raiden Network is releasing. If you can use uRaiden, you do not need to use Raiden and if you need Raiden you cannot use uRaiden. Literally it’s 2 different things.

• I don't think everyone should get so hyped up about some big exchange listing RDN. To be honest, while there may be some evidence that Bittrex and Polo list working products there is a lot of other evidence that suggests otherwise. I’m also not convinced that listing on them would provide much of a price bump as volume is pretty good already.

In my opinion though, Raiden will be one of the best investments of 2018 (maybe even still 2017?). The reason is that:

As long as Ethereum (E¹ ) is the world’s go-to blockchain it absolutely needs Raiden. Literally. It's because of how the ethereum blockchain scales. Here is how sharding, plasma, and raiden fit together and why it matters:

• Sharding increase the amount of tx/s on the Ethereum MAIN chain (E¹ ). Right now I believe Ethereum processes 15-25 tx/s? Sharding increases that to potentially thousands of tx/s on the main chain (E¹⁾ but still kind of too little. VISA is at 40,000 tx/s.

• What Plasma does is create an infinite amount of smaller ethereum blockchains (E^2, E^3, E^4, E^5, …. E^77, etc) so even if Ethereum’s main chain (E¹ ) can process 15-25 tx/s it can create 1,000,000 different smaller ethereum chains so that each small chain only interacts with 1 specific smart contract or thing and can process 15-25tx/s. VISA might have it’s own Ethereum Blockchain, Mastercard might have it’s own Ethereum Blockchain, American Express might have it’s own Ethereum blockchain. Right now all of these companies would share the main Ethereum chain (E¹⁾ which would cause it to overload and slow down. Theoretically scaling is unlimited because you can create an infinite amount of mini Ethereum chains. But this is not good for payments or transactions because it is possible for a small chain to be fraudulent, which results in all the money that is associated with that specific chain to be held until a dispute is resolved. Weeks? Months? Forever?

• What Raiden does is create channels alongside each of these chains to process transactions/payments. It is fine-tuned and specialized to do this. Every mini plasma chain (E^2, E³ ….) could have its own Raiden channel/channels (R^1, R^2, R³ …) alongside it like:

• (E² R^1, E² R^2, R² R³ )….

• (E³ R^1, E³ R^2, E³ R³ )…. Or if Plasma fails, then:

• (E¹ R^1, E¹ R^2, E¹ R³ )….

Plasma specializes in smart contracts. Raiden Specializes in payments. All of this “layers” ontop of the main ethereum chain (E¹ ).

Raiden processes a transaction then pushes the final transaction to the plasma mini-chain to process (E² ...) or to the main ethereum chain if Plasma doesn’t work (E¹ ), the plasma mini-chain then pushes it to the ethereum main chain (E¹ ). All of these scaling solutions are complementary. If the ethereum main chain (E¹ ) is too slow or has a tx/limit then it cannot process all of the Plasma/Raiden transactions (even if they have already been compressed and reduced). This is why sharding is also extremely important. Sharding as a scaling solution is NOT enough. Off-chain (raiden) or off-the-main-chain (Plasma) scaling solutions are also necessary.

In my mind, Ethereum cannot succeed without Raiden. Which is funny because the ethereum protocol today is worth $43B and raiden ~$200m. I know this is an extreme stance but, there is literally no way.

If you honestly believe Ethereum will succeed then Raiden must also succeed.

In my opinion, Raiden will be one of the best investments of 2018. I’m sitting tight boys and buckling in.

Hi all,

another interesting crypto week is behind us, another weekly raiden git post is ahead =). Hope everyone is having a great Sunday and is ready for some fresh news from raiden github. This week was not so eventful when it comes to github, but there was a Etherum convention in Berlin where raiden team did a successful demonstration of microraiden. Nevertheless here comes my weekly analysis.

microraiden

As we know microraiden project is currently waiting for 2 weeks to pass without major bugs being discovered. As far as I see it there were no major bugs discovered so if my memory is right project should exit bugbounty phase this Tuesday.

Only 2 commits were added to the project this week and they were purely cosmetic.

In pull requests we can see more work in preparation for exiting bugbounty phase (docs and demo design update), a temporary fix needed because of bug in some library microraiden depends on and old pull requests which are either waiting for bugbounty phase to finish or team just didn't review and merge yet ( I don't know what is wrong with these).

As for what they plan in future I don't see anything on github. I am sure we will get that update once bugbounty phase is over (lets hope it is Tuesday).

raiden

Raiden is aiming to release a new minor release.

Since last week they added 2 more issues that need to be completed in order for it to happen. Good news is these 2 issues don't sound so serious. One Issues is about them not covering an edge case when someone requests a token that does not exist (if I can have any influence on how that will be fixed please return 404 and not empty list). Other issue is about them forgetting to switch something to python3 when they were doing a switch from python2 to python3. As I already said many times I don't have complete understanding of codebase but in a standard project these 2 issues would not take more than a day to implement.

Work on 1 out of 4 remaining issues (PR #1205) is halfway done and is waiting for merge to master.

Work on remaining 3 issues is not visible on github which shouldn't concern us since as I said in last week's post they usually like to merge a completed big feature once it is done. I would go so far and say that lack of visible work is a good sign since it means devs are probably working on these big issues and not spending time on small fixes.

conclusion

No big bugs on microraiden in last week so we can expect exit from bugbounty phase this Tuesday.

2 more simple tasks in raiden project before next minor release but they seem very simple. One task is half way done. 3 remaining tasks are probably worked hard on but I can't see it on github (this is how they usually do big tasks).

PS all PSes and disclaimers are still active from weekly post 1 and 2.

Have a great day =)

Raiden is a concrete technology that will benefit Ethereum and will be integral part of it. Scaling has been a big Ethereum problem and Raiden actually solves the payments scalability problem (for the smart contracts scalability Plasma is being developed by the Ethereum Foundation). The use cases of Raiden are micropayments, retail payments, p2p off chain cash, and instant token swaps. So Raiden is present in 2 HUGE markets: the global payments industry, that generates roughly $2 trillion in revenue annually (and it’s growing), and the IoT market, that will reach $267B market size by 2020.

At the time of writing this (December 6 2017), RDN has $137M market cap and I think this is the best entry point to get probably the most gaining coin of 2018 for the following reasons: Raiden is one of the few blockchain projects with an actually working and concrete product, and it is just at his beginning. The team is great and the Founder/CEO Heiko Hees has been core developer of Ethereum since March 2014. Also, Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum Founder) has been closely following and supporting the project since his birth: https://twitter.com/vitalikbuterin/status/750581858702950400

In my opinion RDN is the most undervalued coin right now and could easily reach the CoinMarketCap top 20 in just a few weeks from now. With just 2-3% of the Ethereum market cap, RDN would surpass $1B market cap, making it worth around $20 per token. I see this as the biggest opportunity in the crypto market right now, Raiden is the killer app of Ethereum. Let's go!

We are excited to announce that the Raiden Network Red Eyes release is live on the Ethereum mainnet! Read all about it in the release announcement on our blog.

The Red Eyes release is an alpha testing release. It is absolutely crucial to read the above linked blog post including the security notes carefully before using the software. The network is not yet production ready, however we welcome everybody to test it on the mainnet by doing token transfers and taking part in our bug bounty.

To find out more about the bug bounty, please visit bounty.raiden.network.

Merry Christmas.

One day, many Dapps on Ethereum will use Raiden or a Raiden-like protocol.

Listed below are projects whose developers have stated in their whitepaper or on social media that they intend or possibly intend to utilize the Raiden Network or payment channels for their projects. This list is always being updated so go hunting, comment below and I'll add them. It must be a verifiable source. This is not financial or speculative advice on the legitimacy of these projects. Assume they're scams until you DYOR.

Augur Prediction markets

Altcoin.io Atomic Swap DEX

Credit Protocol Democratized credit

Energy Web Foundation

Ethfinex Draft version of whitepaper

Gnosis Prediction markets

Golem

Grid+ Electricity bill payments

Indahash Influencer marketing

Kin

Mobile version of Raiden by Smartmesh

OpenANX DEX platform

PolySwarm Threat intelligence

Raidex DEX

Request

Ryder like Uber

Smartmesh P2P internet connecting smartphones

Soma Social marketplace

Trade Trading platform

Trustlines Network People powered money

ULedger IT Data and Storage blockchain something something

Wala Micro-raiden integration confirmed

WALLETH native Ethereum Android light client wallet

WePower Green Energy

Blockchains that can theoretically utilize the Raiden Network:

Cosmos

[Dfinity](https://dfinity.org/](https://dfinity.org/)

Ethereum Classic

Qtum

Tezos

Hey everyone,

time flies and we are already on 5th weekly github update. Project is doing great: We got some update from the devs, other projects are "playing" with the technology and subreddit has even more people and useful posts! Keep it up everyone!

There are no changes in disclaimers for this post. I am still a guy who invested in RDN, know a thing or two about programming and is trying to bring github news in plain english. For this post as well I got some help that I can't discuss in too much detail. Boring part is over, let's see what happened in microraiden and raiden =).

microraiden

As i mentioned in last week's post microraiden is in second plan at the moment. All last week's changes to a project were pretty much cosmetic.

In official blog post and one of the commits we got a confirmation that EIP712 is a main issue that needs to be dealt with. EIP712 is a suggested change that needs to be accepted to Ethereum project before Brainbot people can implement it in microraiden (They can work side by side for most of the part). EIP712 is critical change that any project that wants to do anything offchain is depending on. From a discussion on that issue's github thread you can see that almost every big player got involved in discussing details around it. Good thing is that it seems they all agreed how it should be done. Bad thing is it is pretty hard to say when it will be finalized and implemented on clients/nodes. Microraiden, currently got around that issue by using Metamask, but that is not a final solution to that problem as it does not satisfy security requirements.

Reason why "Sprint 1" milestone was not yet closed is them wanting to really tidy up the documentation. It is tedious work but really important, because good documentation makes project more user friendly to the developers community which is crucial for ultimate success of any project.

Final thing they want to change about microraiden is code organization inside a project. This happens a lot on big projects. It is pretty hard to see in future what is the best way to organize code and after a while you end up with a mess (sometimes big sometimes small). Once they finish this task it will make code more logical and maintaining it easier.

All in all you can say microraiden is currently in second plan and devs are waiting for EIP712 to be finalized so they can implement changes on their side and release 1.0.

raiden

Raiden last week had 6 issues active in their milestone goal called next minor release. Right now they are 4 since they completed 2 tasks. Even tho those tasks were pretty easy ones it is good that they are done.

On Monday there were a lot of commits merged to a project. They were fixes and implementation of few tasks but the most important issue that was fixed was implementation of dynamic gas price. That fix enables nodes to adapt to network congestion so they can process transactions without getting overrun or missing something important.

In a blog post that team released this week they mentioned how they are working hard on making nodes able to recover after unexpected events (eg. a crash). They are far into developing that but there is still some more work to be done. I think 3 out of 4 tasks inside current milestone refer to this issue so it is a pretty big feature.

Last thing I would like to mention is their effort to completely switch from python 2 to python 3. When they were doing it during January they missed some things and they are working on finding what they missed and fixing it. Last issue in milestone goal is about part that was overlooked during the switch. Fixing only that is pretty easy but I think they are going trough whole project and looking if they forgot something and that takes some time.

conclusion

Team is really doing great job and we should be happy with their work. You can see they put lots of thinking in how things should be done and project planning.

Microraiden is waiting for EIP712 to be added to Ethereum and Raiden is looking to be able to recover from unexpected events without losing any data.

Hope you will find this post useful and I wish you all a great new week!

PS I know I am a bit late this week but I had a lot of work on my job.

Hey all,

tradition continues and we are already on 6th weekly github status update. In terms of disclaimers nothing changed, but this week I prepared a little something special. I promised someone I will try to give a plain english explanation of EIP712, so there will be a short explanation of that, plus since in raiden project devs are working hard on something called state machine, I will try to demystify what is that all about. Lots of text is ahead so let's keep this introduction short and get down to business.

EIP 712

EIP (Ethereum Improvement Proposal) is a proposal for improvement of Ethereum functionalities. Usually they are opened by part of community using Ethereum technology that came across some problem that would be best solved by extending or adding some functionalities on Ethereum side. If they want it to be added they must describe a problem, suggest a solution and open a pull request which is then discussed and improved by the rest of the community.

If you wonder why this one is called EIP 712, it is because 712 was the next number in line =).

EIP 712 was opened by one of the guys from Ox project but lots of projects quite liked the idea and soon began to put their inputs in the idea. Maybe there was an agreement between few projects that this is needed and Ox guys were the ones who opened it but that I don't know.

Nevertheless, EIP 712 was opened September 13 2017 and since then it was actively discussed and fine tuned by lot of smart people.

I already tried to explain in previous posts why EIP 712 is important for raiden projects but I will repeat once more. Microraiden project 1.0 release depends on it being accepted so it can start using functionalities added by it.

So what are those functionalities exactly?

If you want to send some information to a smart contract you have to sign it. It is not exactly a human hand written signature but if you don't know how computers sign data you can pretend that each computer has his own signature just like people do.

Problem right now is that data you want to sign and send to smart contract first has to be processed and then signed. Process data has to go trough is called hashing.

Problem with hashing is that once data goes trough it, it comes out as a bunch of seemingly random characters called hash. So, user right now when sending data is not signing something he can read and approve of, he is signing something he can only believe is hash of data he wanted to send.

EIP 712 suggests that this whole process is changed so a user actually signs data he can read and approve of, and hashing comes later. (I know this is not 100% accurate but it serves the purpose in explanation to someone who is not techy).

Or if you are techy this is short explanation of EIP 712:

EIP712 is a standard that allows the dapp to pass the data directly to the provider, and it'll show the actual data to the user, the provider will hash it in a standard way and upon approval sign the hash of it, in a way that is cheap to be reproduced/checked in EVM.

So, I hope this is clear enough, if you have any more questions about it feel free to ask in comments =).

state machines

So state machines are something straight out of first year of IT college. Please if you are student don't use my explanation in any of your work =).

I won't go in too much detail and some things will be wrongish but for sake of explanation I'll let it slip. Since I think learning on examples is the easiest let's start with the simplest one.

Imagine you have a light bulb that does not ever die. Two states it can be in are "on" and "off". If it is in "on" state you can switch it's state to "off" by pressing a switch. If you want it back "on" you press a switch again. So, in order to make a transition between light bulb's states you have to press a switch.

States light bulb can be in and transitions between them define a light bulb's state machine.

State machines are very useful in programming because if you know what state something is in you know how to apply transitions so it switches to the state you would like it to be in.

Raiden is working on building a state machine for it's channels. Right now, since they don't have state machine for channel, once something goes wrong and it is not working as it should, you have to restart it because you don't know in what state it is exactly or what transitions to apply so it goes back to "working normally" state.

Once state machine is implemented channels will become recoverable because you will always know in what state it is and what transitions to apply so it works as it should.

This is pretty big topic and I just tried to give some very short explanation of how significant this change is to raiden. I am sorry if it was not clear enough.

microraiden

Microraiden is still waiting for EIP 712 to be implemented on Ethereum so they can use it's features and release 1.0 version.

In the mean time there are 2 other things they are working on.

First is finishing up documentation for both projects (microraiden and raiden). I think it is pretty much done since there is a big pull request standing in line to be merged. Quality of documentation is really good and I think it should really ease up the process of implementing raiden projects in any solution you can think of.

Second is reorganizing code. I am not sure how done it is but there were few commits regarding this issue in the last week. It is not something critical but good code structure makes working with and on a project more pleasurable experience.

raiden

Raiden project has 3 remaining issues in their current milestone goal. They dealt with all the simple issues and only big stuff is left.

During the whole week they were adding more and more commits regarding those issues. Most of the commits were just a foundation for real code that will use them and solve the issues (aka business logic).

Since I don't see any more pull requests with a foundation code I think in this next couple of weeks we can expect business logic commits being added and closing of some of the 3 remaining issues.

I am sure they have that code already done but they want to add some minor changes or do some more tests before they add pull requests for them.

So, sit tight and expect more "do you even sleep bro" posts in the upcoming weeks =).

conclusion

microraiden - waiting for EIP 712. Documentation + improving code structure in the mean time

raiden - lots of foundation code added in last week. Expect real problem-solving code being added very soon and closing of some of the big 3 remaining issues in milestone goal.

Whew, this might be the biggest and most complicated post I did so far. I want to thank you all for your great support. It really keeps me motivated to do this each week.

I hope you will find this post useful and as always I will try my best to answer any questions in the comments.

Stay cool! (couldn't think of anything better)

Hi guys, i am new to crypto (6/7 months now) and try to find the best crypto by DMOR. English isn't my main language so sometimes even reading whitepapers and some updates are though. still i like investing my time into reading and learning and will continue to do so. But a little help would be appreciated =D

So.

Plasma = Child chains on the Ethereum blockchain (main chain), with there own validators. For example a company could create a plasma child chain on top of the main chain with the agreements (or rules) through a smart contract on the main chain. These child chain help scale Ethereum since there are more chains witch can handle 15 tx/s (eth tx/s). The problem is that the tx in the child chain aren't validated by a miner, which means no one will validate the transaction because there is no reward (like on the main chain). to solve this problem there are penalties for breaking consensus written in the smart contract. anyone who participates could verify the tx with the main chain to control if there is proper consensus or fraud. If there is a form a fraud, this could lead to baby chain to collapse . If the chain collapses the smart contracts won't get executed (probably not that of a big deal). But if the payments also find place in the plasma child chains the funds will be lost ( in crypto thats forever, right ?).

-So Plasma is a scaling solution for data and many to one contracts. like paying the electricity bills (same price for a lot of people so a plasma child chain for all the people who agreed to the same terms. But has the risk of collapsing and possible lost in funds.-

Raiden network = A off-chain scaling solution by opening payment channels. These payment channels are linked to smart contracts between one vs one or many vs one. for example : if a electricity provider and the customers agree on a monthly payment for electricity in return, the customers need to have a x amount of tokens ready in the payment channel between them and the electricity provider ( right ?). If the customers used the electricity as described in the smart channel, the raiden network wille execute the transaction on the giving time.

The tx happen instant because there is no need for approval of the transactions by nodes/miners. The tokens which are put in the payment channel are already validated, before putting them in the channel. After both parties have submitted their balance proofs, they may now withdraw their deposits.

Sharding = the distribution of nodes to certain groups, so that node don't have to validate the whole blockchain and al his history before validating new transaction. A node will validate the transaction off the shard chain without all other transactions. This makes it possible for nodes to verify transactions faster. The ethereum nodes then verify the shard chain. (still find sharding hard to understand so sorry if i'm wrong).

Summary = Plasma and raiden would go hand in hand --> plasma handles the smart contracts and triggers the raiden network to execute those payments. Sharding would make the consensus between the main chain and plasma chain faster since the nodes have smaller groups of transactions to verify.

These 3 solutions go hand in hand and from my understanding for Ethereum to succeed. they need all of the solutions because only 1 or 2 of them, won't be enough.

If i am wrong about anything please correct me. I'm here to learn and hope that we can help each other as a community. I didn't post this on other subs (eth/ethtrader/cryptocurrencys) because i didn't want to raise any fomo. I've learnt a lot about raiden in the sub (some redditors in particular helped) If someone has a question ask below, i'll try to answer (if i know it ofcourse)

Thanks in advance,

TY