Raiden Community Governance
Raiden is feature complete and fully functional. Now we’re introducing a path to robust community governance. Learn more about the road ahead.
Raiden’s goal is to provide a scalable payment solution. We have successfully built it — and more. In late 2021, we announced the Coruscant & Krittika Releases, marking the complete implementation of the original Raiden Network project scope. And in May 2022, we announced Raiden on Arbitrum, lowering setup costs and making Raiden the fastest and most inexpensive decentralized ERC20 transfer solution.
As Raiden continues to seek use cases for implementation and product-market fit, we want to empower the Raiden community to join and lead this journey, and to make decisions on important topics — from Raiden Trust Grants, to code governance, to deployments on additional blockchains. In order to create a solid foundation for decentralized Raiden community governance, we will propose and make available new processes and tools for community proposals, discussion, voting, and execution.
The future of Raiden is in the hands of its community. Learn how you can shape its future.
Community Governance
We have and will be working with the Raiden community to brainstorm and create ways for the community to govern the protocol and its implementations, and to make decisions on important topics. We endeavor to take into consideration the interests and obligations of all Raiden stakeholders, and we have outlined an initial approach:
1. Everyone may create informal proposals and discuss.
2. RDN token holders may create formal proposals and vote.
3. Raiden Trust will execute votes regarding the external development fund to the extent possible according to its trust deed and applicable regulations. Other stakeholders will use votes as guidance, but will not be bound by them.
Discussion
Everyone may create informal proposals and discuss.
Communities thrive on lively conversation — the constant interplay of ideas, proposals, discussions and debates, compromises and revisions.
The Raiden Discord server is growing in members and activity. It’s a wonderful platform to share announcements, meet other community members, engage in light conversation, and ask questions. But community governance requires a dedicated forum for detailed proposals, structured discussions, and shows of community sentiment.
Discourse is the most commonly used forum platform. It is an open-source, purpose-built platform for long-form chat and discussions. Discourse encourages positive and constructive discussion through an automated trust system. This keeps the community engaged, allows super users to assist in governance, and protects the community from spammers, trolls and other bad actors.
Voting
RDN token holders may create formal proposals and vote.
“In order to ensure that Raiden community governance votes reflect the will of the community, the Raiden Trust and brainbot labs will not participate in voting.”
RDN token holders are the stakeholders with the clearest commitment to the Raiden Network’s future. We therefore believe that RDN token holders deserve the exclusive right to create and vote on formal proposals. This recognizes their support and financial stake, and it increases the probability of aligned interests.
In order to ensure that Raiden community governance votes reflect the will of the community, the Raiden Trust and brainbot labs will not participate in voting.
Snapshot is the most commonly used token-gated voting platform. It allows token holders to create proposals and vote off-chain (no gas needed). Snapshot offers configurable thresholds, a choice of voting systems (single choice, approval, quadratic, ranked choice, and weighted) along with shielded voting. It uses ERC20 tokens to calculate voting power and has a vote delegation service.
Execution
Raiden Trust will execute votes regarding the external development fund to the extent possible according to its trust deed and applicable regulations. Other stakeholders will use votes as guidance, but will not be bound by them.
Raiden Network is a community project supported by a wide range of stakeholders — including the Raiden Trust, brainbot labs, brainbot tech, and many other organizations and individuals.
The Raiden Trust is an independent non-profit organization dedicated to fostering and strengthening the Raiden ecosystem. It provides Raiden Trust Grants, guidance and network connections to projects and individuals working on Raiden applications or infrastructure. It has a particular focus on supporting projects that demonstrate use cases for the Raiden protocol and help grow the Raiden Network. The Raiden Trust will execute vote instructions which are within the scope of its trust deed and permitted by applicable regulations. As a result, Raiden community governance votes will have real power to determine the direction of the project.
Raiden community governance will be instrumental in guiding the decisions of other Raiden stakeholders. We cannot make commitments on their behalf and we are aware that these stakeholders have their own stakeholders, internal rules, and legal and regulatory obligations. We hope these stakeholders will use Raiden community governance votes as guidance and, in most cases, execute the vote instructions. If a stakeholder is unable to execute vote instructions due to applicable regulations, then the stakeholder should implement the vote outcome as far as possible and provide the community with an explanation.
Examples
The Raiden community can discuss, propose and vote on any topic. A couple examples to serve as inspiration:
Raiden Trust Grants
The Raiden Trust currently holds RDN 16 million, which may be spent in the form of Raiden Trust Grants. The Raiden community can discuss and vote on grant proposals. If a grant proposal is approved by the community and meets the Raiden Trust governing documents, it will be funded by the Raiden Trust.
Deployments
Raiden is currently deployed on both Ethereum L1 and Arbitrum, and there are many questions about whether and how Raiden should expand. For example:
- Should Raiden remain on Ethereum L1, or encourage all projects to move to Arbitrum?
- Should Raiden be deployed on other L1s — Avalanche, Celo, etc.?
- Should Raiden be deployed on other rollups — Optimism, Boba, etc.?
The Raiden community can discuss and RDN holders can decide on these and similar issues.
Co-Creation
“The outline in this article is a starting point — not a finalized plan. We encourage you to share your ideas, questions, suggestions, and critiques.”
The outline in this article is a starting point — not a finalized plan. We encourage you to share your ideas, questions, suggestions, and critiques. Together, we will create a shared vision and a roadmap for Raiden community governance. We are excited to see the community empowered to shape the future of the Raiden Network project.
To be a part of the process:
Disclaimer
Please note that even though we do our best to ensure the quality and accuracy of the information provided, this publication may contain views and opinions, errors and omissions for which the content creator(s) and any represented organization cannot be held liable.
The wording and concepts regarding financial terminology (e.g. “payments”, “checks”, “currency”, “transfer” [of value]) are exclusively used in an exemplary way to describe technological principles and do not necessarily conform to the real world or legal equivalents of these terms and concepts.
