Introducing the Raiden Trust
TL;DR: The Raiden Trust was established on the 25th of April 2019 with the goal of independently managing 16 million Raiden Network Tokens (RDN) in order to fund and support projects and parties that help build and grow the Raiden Network ecosystem.
Background
During the Raiden Network token launch, 16M of the 100M created RDN were reserved by brainbot labs Est. as per the terms and conditions of the token launch for an external grant program. This program is now being brought to live to support the wider Raiden Network ecosystem. More specifically, the goal of the program is to fund and support projects and parties that help build and grow the Raiden Network ecosystem, e.g. developers of alternative client implementations, helper service providers or other external projects that provide complementary or foundational components or applications that help bootstrap the Raiden Network ecosystem.
Legal and organisational setup
During the past months, we’ve been working on finding an appropriate organisational and legal structure for the program, which was expected to meet the following requirements:
- The chosen legal and organisational structure should not be dependent on brainbot labs Est.
- The tokens should not be subject to the entrepreneurial risk of brainbot labs Est. and should therefore not form part of its asset base
- The awarding of grants shall be neutral in judgement, yet
- highly committed to Raiden, payment/state channels and open source technology, while being
- efficient in terms of organisational overhead, legal costs and tax and independent from single entities or individuals
After evaluating several options, a trust-structure with a contracted administrative body and an independent advisory board was considered, taking the facts and circumstances into account, to strike an appropriate balance between the aforementioned requirements.
For those uninterested in the legal mumbo jumbo feel free to skip the following paragraph. Especially those interested in applying for grants, the Raiden Trust will give an update with more detailed information on eligibility and the application process, shortly. Nevertheless, please rest assured, that we put in the required work and diligence to find a setup that is efficient, cost effective and has workable internal control systems.
What is a trust and how is the Raiden Trust organised?
A trust can be defined as an obligation arising out of a confidence reposed in the trustee or representative, who has the legal title to property conveyed to him, that he will faithfully apply the property according to the confidence reposed, or, in other words, according to the wishes of the grantor of the trust.
The Raiden Trust is a contract set up between brainbot labs Est. (BBLE) as grantor, two trustees and a protector. The trustees are legally obligated as per Liechtenstein law to act in accordance with the trust deed, which lays down the wishes of the grantor. The Protector is charged with reviewing the actions of the trustees and cannot be removed from office by the trustees. In case the trustees do not act appropriately or not in accordance with the trust deed, the protectors can report this wrongdoing. This report will trigger an Independent Review Committee (IRC) to be formed, which can then instruct the replacement of the trustees. This separation and distribution of rights and powers aims to ensure that no single party in the setup has the full power to alter the trust in a way not conforming to the original trust deed.
Lastly, an external technical advisory board, appointed by the trustees, which is staffed with experts on payment channel, state channel, Raiden protocol and blockchain technology is tasked to actively and passively review grant applications and prepare a properly founded and documented advice for the Trustees to be able to decide on the awarding of a grant to an applicant.
The trust structure can be depicted as below. Please note that this is a highly simplified overview and there are a number of additional provisions and rules to cover edge cases.
The structure is based on fairly standard trust law principles. If you’re interested in knowing more about the Raiden Trust, please have a look at the Trust’s deed.
What comes next?
The trustees and the administrator are currently refining the grant application guidelines, the grant review process and the implementation of the transparency requirements.
If you want to join this mission and consider yourself fit and proper to join the advisory board, please reach out to us via e-mail at contact@raidentrust.li.
The Raiden Trust will announce the application guidelines soon. Please stay tuned for further updates!
