Raiden Pulse #6: News from May and June

Welcome back to another episode of Raiden Pulse, this time summarizing the overall development progress, developer experience improvements, conferences, hackathons, new joiners and more from May and June!

Development Updates towards Ithaca

• Master and Develop branch: The team has split the Raiden client into Master and Develop branches: While the Master branch always contains the latest (stable) release candidate, the Develop branch includes all new features that are being tested. On Develop, you can already now experiment with the new features listed below as well as with the Raiden services.
• Mediation fees: The dynamic mediation fee model has been specified and mostly implemented. It includes the option to incentivize channel rebalancing via mediation fees.
• Source routing: Source routing has been implemented. Different from hop-based routing, the source of a payment can now include a predefined route in the metadata. Source routing is connected to the implementation of the pathfinding service, which offers predefined routes to the source. Source routing is the first step in preparation for onion routing, which, once implemented, will enhance the privacy of transactions.
• Withdraw function: The withdraw function has been implemented. Withdraw enables withdrawing funds from open channels without the need of closing them.
• Routing feedback: Routing feedback has been implemented. It enables continuous improvement of routing through a mechanism, which sends feedback to the respective pathfinding service if a payment has been routed successfully.
• Prune blocks problem: The error messages for failed transactions and the handling of pruned blocks have been improved, making Raiden more resilient to transaction races and pruned blocks.
• Testing: An intensive testing phase of the new features in the Develop branch is planned on the Goerli testnet for July and August.

Impressions from Raiden workshops

General Updates

• Raiden Client: The latest stable Raiden mainnet release is v0.100.3 “Rosemary”. Rosemary includes a considerable amount of bug fixes, hence updating from v0.100.2 “Pluto” is recommended. It also contains improvements preparing for the integration with (3rd party) Raiden services.
• Raiden Light Client: We were happy to announce that we have started working on a Raiden Light Client and a first reference implementation for the Raiden Light Client SDK, the Raiden dApp. Please find more information about it in the dedicated section below.
• DAppNode collaboration: Raiden packages for mainnet and testnet are now available on DAppNode, allowing users to comfortably run a Raiden node with minimal effort. Running a Raiden node within DAppNode is very convenient, providing you with a quick installation process and VPN setup. Furthermore, an easy onboarding to run Raiden on the Goerli testnet is available. The onboarding script automatically generates a keystore file and tops up your account with Gö-ETH and DAppNode test tokens. To make use of it, simply install the Raiden testnet package on DAppNode.
• Developer portal: The team has been working on continuously improving the Raiden developer portal. The latest iteration is up and includes BUILD, USE and LEARN sections covering the Raiden WebUI, workshop tools, example projects using Raiden, hacks on Raiden, API examples and API walkthrough links, download section and knowledge base links.
• Raiden Trust: Applications are now open for the first wave of Raiden Trust grants. You can find all relevant resources like the submission guidelines, the application form and information about the application process in the operational launch blog post or on the official Raiden Trust website. The Raiden Trust will support projects and individuals working on the following categories: Research, development tools or extensions, applications on top of Raiden, user adoption and UX improvements.
• Raiden workshop setup: If you’d like to host a Raiden workshop or meetup and want to hack on the Raiden Network with your participants, we can now provide you with a hosted node setup. Simply fill in this workshop configurator form and we’ll supply you with a number of nodes, pre-filled with testnet ETH and tokens to run your workshop hosted on our servers.
• Weekly development updates: As always, if you are interested in more in depth development updates, make sure to follow the weekly updates on development progress and other activities posted on Reddit by u/BOR4 or u/Mat7ias with the [GIT] label.

Try Raiden on DAppNode now!

Raiden Light Client SDK and Raiden dApp

• In May, we announced our work on the Raiden Light Client SDK and Raiden dApp.
• The Raiden Light Client SDK is going to be a Raiden Network compatible client written in JavaScript/Typescript. It aims to make a dApp developer’s life easier by enabling easy interaction with the Raiden Network through a dApp, allowing for token transfers using consumer wallets (like Status, imToken or MetaMask) and low end devices.
• The Raiden dApp is the first UI reference implementation of the Raiden Light Client SDK, which can be used with web3 enabled browsers and mobile wallets. You can follow the development progress of the Raiden dApp here. Please note that it’s WIP and can only be tried on testnets.
• The Light Client SDK and dApp are both work in progress. Feel free to have a look at the code, give feedback and contribute!

Gitcoin Hackathon

• Raiden is sponsoring the “Beyond Blockchain” hackathon by Gitcoin. The 3-week virtual hackathon started this Monday and aims to foster collaboration between developers and entrepreneurs.
• Raiden hosts bounties in the following categories: Raiden x IoT/hardware use cases, Raiden x digital use cases, best Raiden enhancement hack

People

We were happy to add three new faces to the team in the course of the last two months:

• Talel is doing an internship in the Raiden team, mainly supporting with improving the onboarding process for new Raiden users and updating the Raiden developer documentation.
• Rafael joined the Raiden core development team, focusing on Raiden client development.
• Manuel is a JavaScript developer supporting the Raiden WebUI and Raiden frontend development.

A very warm welcome to Talel, Rafael and Manuel!

Events

• May 22: We participated in the Smart Contract meetup focusing on “Layer 2 applications in Payments” in Frankfurt alongside great speakers from Perun and Lightning, organized by Accelerator Frankfurt.
• June 5: Dominik visited a student group at the Technical University Berlin as part of their “blockchain and smart contracts module” and introduced them to Raiden with a workshop and presentation.
• June 10: Jacob took part in the “State-of-the-Art in Scaling Solutions” panel on the Web3 stage at CogX in London. Later, he hosted a technical hands-on deep dive on payment channels in the form of a “Understand & Use Raiden” workshop at King’s College London, which was co-organized by WorkonBlockchain.
• June 23-July 10: Check out the Raiden bounties during the Gitcoin virtual hackathon and meet us in the hackathon’s discord channel for support!

Jacob presenting Raiden at CogX in London

What’s up next?

• August 21–23: Lefteris will be sharing an update on Raiden at dAppcon, the Developer Conference for Ethereum Dapps & Infrastructure, in Berlin.
• August 23–25: Raiden will be part of ETHBerlinZwei, the second edition of the Ethereum hackathon in Berlin!
• October 8–11: Hopefully you’ll meet some of us for a talk or a workshop at Devcon5 (applications pending).
• Please make sure to follow our Twitter feed for more announcements on upcoming events.

Join our team!

We have added a few exciting new openings, so why not apply to join our team? If you want to be part of an open ecosystem right at the technological frontier and happen to be as excited about payment channel networks as we are, please have a look at the open positions and apply or refer somebody.

Latest Reading

Public project launch: Raiden Light Client SDK and dApp

Run Raiden on DAppNode

Apply now for the first wave of Raiden Trust grants

Your continued support and feedback means a lot to us!

The Raiden Team

Make sure to stay up to date by following us on Twitter and Medium and joining the conversations on Reddit and Gitter!

The Raiden project is led by brainbot labs Est.

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.