- Raiden Network is now live on Ethereum
- Management outlined, in a medium post, the various precautions and vulnerabilities related to Red Eyes
It was announced on the 21st of December 2018 that the Raiden Network Red Eyes release is now live on the Ethereum mainnet.
The Raiden Network management stressed that this version is a test only and that the final version isn’t production-ready. Instead, users are encouraged to test it while participating in their big bounty.
About Red Eyes
Red Eyes is, according to the post, the first version of the Raiden Network to exist on the Ethereum platform and aims to have “smart contracts and the core protocol battle tested on the mainnet.”
As a result, a bug bounty is currently taking place.
Some of the new features announced on the version are:
• Opening, topping up, closing and settling of payment channels
• Single and multi-hop transfers
• Automatically joining a token network and opening channels with peers
• REST API with endpoints for all functionalities
• Redesigned WebUI
• Raiden Explorer, visualizing the live status of the Network
• Rewritten and more gas efficient smart contracts (e.g. only one contract per token network)
• Improved protocol for dealing with edge cases
• Recoverability in case of an irregular shutdown of the Raiden node
• Integration of the Matrix transport protocol for messaging
Precautions
The team behind Raiden has explained that because this is the first version available on Ethreum, there might be some bugs and they are trying to prevent any damage due to either the bugs or misuse of the software.
As part of their precautionary measures, a deposit limit of 0.15 ETH per channel/ 250 ETH total maximum network value has been imposed as well as a depreciation switch. Raiden is also currently limited to one ETH as its only token network.
Limitations
As its first version, the Raiden Red Eye release has a number of limitations.
For one, to doesn’t support third-party services to monitor channels on behalf of nodes or to pathfinding services.
There is also no support for atomic Token swaps. As for upgrades, there are none available for smart contacts. The only upgrade method is to redeploy new contracts and release a new client version pointing to the new contracts. All channels will then have to be reopened on the new network.
Security notes
Users were also given some instructions on how to make use of Red Eye in order to ensure the security of their funds.
First, users are instructed to always make sure their nodes are synched and are working properly, otherwise, Red Eye will not work.
Also, the user’s Ethereum client must always be online as they cannot be changed. The Raiden node also must always be online for a transaction to take place, otherwise, it must be restarted.
Raiden requires a unique Ethereum account dedicated only to its activities. Using an otherwise engaged Ethereum account could lead to errors. The account must also have a sufficient ETH balance.
The data stored in the ~/.raiden. Database needs to be backed up and mustn’t be tampered with, otherwise, funds might be lost.
Users have been instructed to never reveal the Raiden REST API to the public as the client needs to be able to sign transactions at any point in time.
The last instruction was for users to be patient and not smash “buttons in the webUI and do not shut down the client while on-chain transactions are on the fly and have not yet been confirmed.”
Known issues
Some already detected issues with the Raiden were also outlined such as Compromised user system, a full disk, Blockchain Congestion, and chain reorganizations.
