Raiden Pulse #8: News from September and October
As every other month, here comes your summary of all things Raiden: overall development progress, product updates, event participation and all the other stuff that we’ve been up to in September and October!
Development Updates towards Alderaan mainnet
The last two months mostly followed the “test, find bugs, fix bugs, repeat!” rhythm. In other words, intensive testing and bug fixing towards the next release candidate and milestone Alderaan progressed. Alderaan will be the first integrated mainnet release coming with a service layer (monitoring and pathfinding service) and recently added new features (channel withdraw, source routing, mediation fees).
General Updates
- Raiden Client: Since we are currently in an intensive bug fixing and testing phase we do not recommend to download the latest testnet pre-release v0.200.0-rc1 “Aloof Alpaca”, but instead suggest waiting for the next testnet release which we expect to release soon. All releases can be found on the Raiden client release page. For any technical inquiry please do not hesitate to contact the development team via our Gitter chat room.
- Raiden Explorer: The Raiden Network explorer got a small facelift! You can see the new summary page by visiting one of the testnet explorers, e.g. the Görli Raiden Explorer.
- Raiden Light Client: During their team offsite, the Raiden Solutions team reached a great milestone: The Light Client successfully conducted the first mediated transfer using the Pathfinding Service (PFS) with Alderaan smart contracts.
- Raiden Trust: The Raiden Trust is currently reviewing the first batch of applications and will shortly share an update announcing first grants as well as administrative news. However, you can, at any time, apply for a Raiden Trust grant! Find all details about grant applications and guidelines here.
- Raiden WebUI: The latest release of the WebUI includes an expandable notification panel which shows pending transactions as well as success messages.
- Raiden docs 2.0: We’ve been working on a new, easy-to-understand documentation in Gitbook, which we are expanding with new content step-by-step. Visit docs.raiden.network for a tutorial guide of the current WebUI and a Raiden API walkthrough. In case you can’t find what you’re looking for, there’s always still the more in-depth Raiden documentation 1.0.
- Weekly development updates: As always, if you are interested in more detailed 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.
People
We are super happy to announce that our former intern, Talel (first mentioned in Raiden Pulse #6), joined the team permanently. Specifically, he joined the Raiden Solutions team which focuses on applications built on and with the Raiden API, the light client as well as several UX improvement initiatives and developer adoption measures.
Events
- September 12: Boris, a Raiden community helper, presented Raiden at the second BUIDL meetup in Zagreb.
- October 6: Raiden co-organized the “Demo time at the mystery box event” in Osaka alongside with Gnosis Safe and Trustlines. Jacob presented the current state of Raiden and the audience tried the reference implementation of the light client.
- October 7: At the first day of Devcon, Augusto and Franzi joined the State Channels summit with presentations from L4, Funfair, Perun, Magmo, Connext and Celer. Raiden’s talk discussed UX and system design challenges in payment channel networks. Franzi’s part focused on the challenges on the user experience side and solution approaches while Augusto outlined Raiden’s core design principles, several architectural design dilemmas and how Raiden tackles those.
- October 8: Lefteris joined a panel at the Layer 2 Osaka edition meetup hosted by GEO Protocol. The meetup was packed with contributors to layer 2 projects jointly discussing shared pains and gains in the development of second layer solutions.
What’s up next?
- November 14: Meet the Raiden team at the Frankfurt Ethereum meetup! This meetup features talks for a high level introduction into the world of Ethereum and blockchain, so newcomers to the space and non-developers are also more than welcome! We will share a high level overview of Raiden mechanics and why we need Layer 2 scalability, alongside lightning talks from Gnosis, Perun, Santiment and Trustlines.
- Please make sure to follow our Twitter feed for more announcements on upcoming events.
Join our team!
Looking for a new challenge? 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 feel free to refer somebody.
All the best,
The Raiden Team
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.
