Key facts:
Raiden, on Ethereum, works similarly to the Lightning Network on Bitcoin.
Raiden’s throw over Arbitrum is the use of an L2 (layer 2) over another L2.
Raiden, a payment channel system that works on top of the Ethereum mainnet, has decided to expand its platform towards the Arbitrum rollup, in search of economizing the use of this second layer solution.
The release of this new enhancement was announced by the web portal of Raiden Network, organization in charge of the development and maintenance of the homonymous network.
Raiden, it is a scalability solution that is similar to the Bitcoin Lightning networkas it uses a Peer-to-Peer (or P2P) payment channel feature, which enables faster payments off chain (off the chain).
Due to the nature of the protocol, opening payment channels on Raiden requires paying an opening cost in ether (ETH), Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency. This limits the possibilities of use due to the high commissions that are paid in the main network.
According to the release statement, Raiden is looking to Arbitrum to solve that problem. In comparison, currently on the Ethereum mainnet commissions are around USD 5while in Arbritum, they are USD 0.6, according to the L2 Fees portal.
The development team has announced that the Raiden feature in Arbitrum is available for the platform’s light client, Raiden Light Client, which can be downloaded from the web. In the case of full Raiden nodes (Raiden Wizard) the function in Arbitrum is not yet active.
Regarding the objective of this integration, in the press release published by Raiden, they announce that the intention is to facilitate the integration of new ecosystems such as the IoT (internet of things) and M2M (machine-to-machine) communications, which are very intertwined with what will be web 3.0.
Second layer solutions enhance each other
The launch of the Raiden network on Arbitrum represents a milestone regarding the innovation and use that second layer solutions can offer, allowing the integration of networks within other networks.
Raiden is a solution that has been in the ecosystem since 2017. In its first beta version, it promised up to more than one million transactions per second (TPS). In comparison to that, Arbitrum was only released in August 2021. According to some sources, Raiden currently processes 1000 TPS, as opposed to 15 TPS on the Ethereum mainnet.
Arbitrum is a rollup that is considered full-EVM (compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine), which means that it fully supports Ethereum’s ability to execute smart contracts. Thanks to this, networks and platforms that run on the main network can be migrated to these second layer solutions.
The use of rollups is becoming more and more popular. Vitalik Buterin himself, co-creator of Ethereum, has been one of the biggest promoters of this solution. These have even been integrated into the roadmap of what will be Ethereum 2.0, the new update of this network.