2 technologies combine to achieve a faster and cheaper Ethereum

Raiden, a payment channel system that works on the Ethereum main network, has decided to expand its platform towards the rollup Arbitrum, in search of economizing the use of this second layer solution.

The launch of this new improvement was announced by the Raiden Network web portal, 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 network, as it uses a built-in peer-to-peer (or P2P) payment channels, which makes it possible to streamline 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 on the main network.

According to the release statement, Raiden is looking to Arbitrum to solve that problem. In comparison, currently on the Ethereum main network the commissions are around USD 5, while in Arbritum, they are USD 0.6, according to the L2 Fees portal.

The development team has communicated that the Raiden function in Arbitrum is available for the platform’s thin client, Raiden Light Client, which can be downloaded from the web. For the case of the full Raiden nodes (Raiden Wizard) the function in Arbitrum is not yet active.

About the goal of this integration, in the press release published by Raiden, announce the intention is to facilitate the integration of new ecosystems as what is IoT (internet of things) and communications M2M (machine to machine) which are very intertwined with what will be the web 3.0.

Second layer solutions enhance each other

The launch of the Raiden network on Arbitrum represents a milestone in the innovation and use that second layer solutions can offer, allowing to integrate 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 with this, Arbitrum, was launched only in August 2021. According to some sources, Raiden currently processes 1000 TPS, as opposed to the 15 TPS of the Ethereum mainnet.

Arbitrum, is a rollup that is considered full-EVM (compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine), which means that it supports, in its entirety, Ethereum’s capacity for the execution of smart contracts. Thanks to this, networks and platforms that run on top of 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.