https://www.wykop.pl/cdn/c3201142/comment_eNJViFy2Am87fvRbmODztvo1GVRhKPXm,w400.jpg

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<h1>What's happening to Ethereum network right now</h1>

You have probably noticed that for the last few days Ethereum network was processing much slower, but since 24 hours it's unusable!

http://www.blocktivity.info shows most popular blockchains and status of their network:

![Screen Shot 2017-12-05 at 14.09.31.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmdqhZfcGdApKXC8CWJgNLAJDPyqDBTtyUoyJ8FAPZmy9e/Screen%20Shot%202017-12-05%20at%2014.09.31.png)
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**Over 25% of all Ethereum transactions are not CryptoKitties...**

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![Screen Shot 2017-12-05 at 14.24.25.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmc6SpZYTiomPYbSjYac6Z9jAsbcQSRfSiRk1z448gFRbL/Screen%20Shot%202017-12-05%20at%2014.24.25.png)
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More than EtherDelta:

![2017-12-05 14.27.32.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmSPyPQ4j31KYHhB13xGVttcbG5xgqnoYocdyRMCQ2pkzA/2017-12-05%2014.27.32.jpg)
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As you can see even new ICOs are suffering and have to rely they token sales or distribution (WaBi...):

![Screen Shot 2017-12-05 at 14.13.34.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmdDXM2PYdY248nALyB9SmpHM87NKx9WLwQKSmCt4c2ser/Screen%20Shot%202017-12-05%20at%2014.13.34.png)
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<h1>So what's the reason of this madness? Well the madness itself.</h1>

It's even out there on Bloomberg:

**CryptoKitties Mania Overwhelms Ethereum Network's Processing**

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-04/cryptokitties-quickly-becomes-most-widely-used-ethereum-app

CryptoKitties is basically like a collectible card game on Ethereum blockchain, and each activity like buying, selling, or breeding (yes you can do it) is done by sending a transaction. And a transaction needs to pay for it's fees so you use gas and up the price of gas in Gwen to make your transaction faster. Thousands of people are playing and doing many transaction so Ethereum network  it's now clogged. 100%. I'm waiting over 15 hours for ETH sent from Bitstamp.

Over 5m USD worth of Kitties got sold already, over 100k of them with average price of 50 USD.

**Check my kittens collection: https://www.cryptokitties.co/profie/0x574aa0ae654dca16ed3eb921da38eb6afe2eb778**

<h1>But what is the Role of Raiden here?</h1>

**Raiden Network** is bascially an off-chain calling solution for Ethereum, something like a Lightning Network. They take transactions off-chain where they can be processed instantly and with 0 or close to 0 fees. CryptoKitties could use Raiden Network to process all their transactions off the main Ethereum chain and therefore network would be fine and people would save a lot of money on fees.

**Raiden released µRaiden** (Micro Raider) 5 days ago and it's currently available for developers to test it. Provide develop API to use uRaiden payment channel and will be easy to have more adoption. Partnering with Infra.io to build API interface


**µRaiden** - is a MVP of Raiden Network which enables unidirectional payments - many to one. Like many customers can pay to one electricity provider.

RDN seems to be on sale today... In case you would like to grab some of it at discounted prices: **https://www.binance.com/?ref=10081821**

<h1>Raiden Network development and partnerships</h1>

**Smartmesh Partnership**

Chinese tech company SmartMesh to use uRaiden (microRaiden) as their default payment channel. The first of its kind, it will use Raiden as their default payment channel for IoT devices offline.

SmartMesh founded by Dr. Henry Wang, a Chinese physicist and internet protocol scientist. Formerly FPGA and ASIC architect at Erlang Technology Inc (engineering solutions for communications and computer industries.)

SmartMesh protocol allows IoT devices connect to each other using Near Field Communication. Whitepaper @ https://smartmesh.io/white-paper/

Dr. Wang specifically said that “99% percent of IoT transactions will be processed by Raiden Network”


**Poloniex might list soon**

Poloniex has their company account bought Raiden, which means it has high chance to be listed.
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@dawidrams/poloniex-listing-raiden-network-imminent-you-might-be-missing-the-biggest-opportunity-of-your-life-in-crypto
The link shows the polo account link.


Currently working through securities requirements for listing on Poloniex (actually bought RDN ICO using official account), Kraken, Bittrex, Coinegg.


**German Energy Partnership: share&charge**

Over the last few months, the Raiden team has been in close collaboration with one of the largest energy companies in German called Share&Charge. 

The Raiden team built the PoC (Proof of Concept) for them, and they got good feedback. This will be a huge step for Raiden if the German company adopts Raiden as their payment channel. (No other energy company in the world is charging on demand like this.)

Share&Charge currently has a functioning product on public ethereum chain. Developed by Slockit, they use the chain to enable their decentralized platform for electric vehicle charging stations.


**German Bank Partnership**

There is also a small German bank involved using Raiden, “to sorta tokenize euros”.


Raiden Network  Demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6-rf68taTs

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<h1>BrainBot: 6 amazing projects</h1>

Brainbot - is a Germany based company with a branch in China, which is developing the Raiden Network and µRaiden.

http://www.brainbot.com/projects.html

**uRaiden** - https://raiden.network/micro.html

**Raiden Network** - https://raiden.network

**Trustline Network** - http://trustlines.network

**Decentralized exchange**

**Hydrachain** - a permissioned distributed ledger based on Ethereum
HydraChain was the first extension to enable permissioned private chains based on the Ethereum protocol. The proof of concept implementation supports the creation of blockchain based applications that comply with organizational and regulatory requirements such as KYC and AML compliance and support an alternative consensus protocol, which is not based on proof-of-work.

**Ethereum Core Development** - Implementation of the Ethereum Protocol
Brainbot technologies has significantly contributed to the core development of the Ethereum project from the very beginning. These efforts are ongoing and we are helping initiatives such as the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance to add custom features to the reference implementation of the Ethereum protocol.

**Decentralized Exchange** - Raiden team put together a PoC of a decentralized exchange using uRaiden, including atomic swap and payment channel, etc.

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**New Team Hires**

Brainbot is planning to expand their headcount (Raiden + uRaiden) to approx. 24

BrainBot current team makeup is about 30 FTE employees:
10 Raiden + 2 to 4 FTE uRaiden
3 to 4 FTE Trustline
3 to 4 FTE Projects including research on centralized exchanges and state channels
4 to 5 FTE Business team
1 to 3 FTE Multi-function floating staff

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**Follow my Twitter: https://twitter.com/dawid_rams**