Hey everyone!

Welcome to Weekly Update 77. For this update, we’ll include a short summary of the most recent Tech Deep Dive article focusing on mediation fees. Along with our usual cover of GitHub development. Let’s dig in!

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Dynamic Mediation Fees in Raiden Explained

As development progresses towards the Ithaca milestone, the Raiden team has been explaining some of the key Raiden Network features and concepts in a series of Medium articles. Several weeks ago Raiden Service Bundle was in focus, while the latest edition of the Tech Deep Dive series covers Dynamic Mediation Fees in the Raiden protocol.

If two nodes inside a Raiden token network have a direct channel between them, they can send direct payments to each other and in that case, they don’t need to pay mediation fees. In the case when nodes don’t have a direct channel, they can still execute mediated payments through a path of connected payment channels. Mediating nodes, which are the nodes between the sender and the receiver on the selected payment path, can earn mediation fees.

The article covers the purpose of the mediation fees in the Raiden protocol, key concepts of the current implementation, how users will be able to modify them for their channels, and the decision rationale behind the chosen mediation fee model.

Raiden’s approach to the mediation fees is unique in the L2 ecosystem and it will be interesting to see how current implementation will affect network topologies and usage. More information on the topic can be found in the respective ADR and if you have any questions or suggestions be free to leave a comment!

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Development progress

The development team continues to focus on internal testing, bug fixing and open issues related to the Ithaca milestone.

In the Raiden client repository, in addition to testing all the new features, open issues relating to the testing infrastructure are the highest priority. The developers working on Raiden Services focused on improving the infrastructure which will make running the services easier and more reliable for service providers.

For the WebUI, a new version has been released which supports the option for easy token minting on the testnets (among other additions). Shortly after, an updated release with some minor bug fixes also came out (v0.9.1).

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Conclusion

To finish up, this week has primarily been focused on development and helping to educate the wider community on how mediation fees are tackled in the Raiden Network. Less than a month to go until DAPPCON, if you’re in the area don’t forget to grab tickets (less than €30 if you’re a student). As always, thanks for reading. If you have any questions about this update or Raiden Network, in general, feel free to comment below. See you again next week.

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Cheers!