The Easiest Way to Try out a Full Raiden Node

You’ve come to the right place, if you want to try out a full Raiden node with minimum effort! https://try.raiden.network gives you the opportunity to play around with Raiden, open channels, send tokens and get familiar with other functionalities. Please note that this is only meant as a convenient way to try out Raiden for the first time. Everything is run on the Goerli testnet and is hosted remotely. This is not how the current onboarding experience of Raiden is and this is merely meant as a convenient developer tool.

Please also note, if you’re rather looking for the envisioned end-user Raiden experience, we recommend taking a look at the Raiden light client.

To start, you only need to fill in the form at https://try.raiden.network and wait for the confirmation email that your Raiden node is live. We value your privacy so you can use trash mail accounts.

The setup procedure as well as the funding of your node will take a couple of minutes. Consider to fill in the form now and and continue reading afterwards. Please read the email carefully as it contains helpful information regarding your first steps.

Note that your Raiden node will run on the Görlie testnet!

Your confirmation email will contain a URL to your Raiden node UI. If you like to dig a bit deeper you can also use the provided API e.g.:

curl https://NAME.event-workshops.raiden.network/api/v1/channels

The full documentation of the API can be found here: https://docs.raiden.network/raiden-api-1/introduction.

When you open the link provided in the email you’ll see the Raiden UI. For documentation on the Raiden Webui check: https://docs.raiden.network/the-raiden-web-interface/screens.

Since the Raiden node is hosted remotely, you only need a web browser on any OS to access the Raiden UI and the API is available in the same way as you usually interact with APIs.

6 Steps to Open Your First Payment Channel

1. Click on “Channels” on the left
2. Click on “New Channel”
3. Select the “Test Token (TTT)” as “Token” (you should have 20 Tokens already)
4. Use the address “0x1F916ab5cf1B30B22f24Ebf435f53Ee665344Acf” as “partner address”. The address belongs to the “Raiden Hub” which can be reached at hub.raiden.network
5. Leave the channel timeout as it is or lower it to 100 for less waiting time when closing channels
6. Click on “Open”

Opening the channel will take ~1 minute as it involves on-chain transactions that have to be mined.

Once the transactions are mined the state of the channel will change from “AWAITING BALANCE” to “10 TTT”.

If you’re interested in seeing your open channels and the topology of the token network you can open the Raiden Explorer and scroll all the way down to “Network Visualization”. Here, you’ll need to copy your node’s address and paste the copied address into the “Filter” field.

The drop down should now show you exactly one channel between you and the Raiden hub.

Congratulations! You’ve successfully opened your first payment channel. That wasn’t that hard after all, was it?

It’s Time to Send Some Payments

First Payment

1. Navigate to the “transfers” tab on the left side of the menu
2. Click on “Transfer”
3. Select the Test Token and paste the “Raiden Hub” (hub.raiden.network) address “0x1F916ab5cf1B30B22f24Ebf435f53Ee665344Acf”
4. Send 1 TTT token to start with

Do not ignore the push notifications as they give you an idea of how fast token transfers can be! The node will only be running for around four hours, so if you’re interested in working more with Raiden after this period of time, please refer to the documentation on how to set up your own node.

Try workshops.raiden.network

If you’re looking to host a Raiden workshop or meetup, we can help with this too! If you go to workshops.raiden.network, you can set up a workshop with up to 20 nodes that will be available for you on a desired date. The nodes will work in the same way as the node described above.

All the best,

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.