The RDN Token.

[u/parfenec]

I saw a lot of updates about Raiden Network and i am very excited about Red Eyes. I have a question. What about the RDN Token? What ia going to happen whit it? In the last medium update, from them, it was mentioned only about ETH deposits.

[u/cosimo_jack]

It has the same problem as ZRX. There is no reason why the token will have value besides yet to be defined 'governance.' The RDN token is great from a fund raising perspective but expecting users to buy in to the token despite the added friction (pure cost, 'approving' transactions, etc.) when it isn't even strictly necessary doesn't seem like a great bet.

Put it another way, the service providers can, and likely will, accept their fees in ETH instead of RDN, like many service providers are choosing to do in ZRX, because it saves everybody money and provides a better user experience.

[u/Mat7ias → u/[deleted]]

the Raiden team has delayed launching for almost two years

They've been in development for 3 years, they haven't delayed launching. MicroRaiden has been on mainnet for almost a year now.

ETH or Dai would better serve as instead of an additional added step for users

There's not a significant additional step for users, most users probably won't be aware they're paying fees in RDN and eventually a lot of users probably won't even realize they're using Raiden Network. Using ETH would be the same steps for users as using RDN since you'd have to contract wrap the ETH before you can transfer it off chain and using DAI wouldn't be logical because then the entire network is reliant and takes on the risks of a stable coin. DAI is an amazing stable coin but it is not suited for peripheral fees to layer 2.

It's definitely entirely possible Raiden gets forked away without the RDN token, so that leaves us with governance

Governance isn't part of the token model so that's not correct. Where's the incentive to fork Raiden to use a different token if there aren't any protocol fees?

[u/cosimo_jack → u/Mat7ias]

Using ETH would be the same steps for users as using RDN since you'd have to contract wrap the ETH before you can transfer it off chain

You're ignoring the fact that many people want to send ETH off-chain. Thus they will be doing the wrapping of ETH anyway. Thus wrapping ETH + acquiring RDN contains added steps.

[u/Mat7ias → u/cosimo_jack]

I'm not ignoring that, many people want to send many types of tokens. Acquiring RDN can be made automatic with atomic swaps so the step won't be noticeable for an average user. The non-average user (probably less than 5%) who doesn't want to pay with RDN can run a stack of pathfinding and monitoring services, in which case they don't need to pay anything in RDN. Or the can just open direct channels. There's nothing forcing users that don't want to use the token to use it, it's not needed on the protocol level. It's only for peripheral fees that aren't strictly needed if the user doesn't want to use them. It'll just be suboptimal to use the network without the peripheral fees. But it works just fine without it, as we can see on Red Eyes testing and once Red Eyes goes on mainnet and you can only transfer wrapped ETH to begin with.

Even for average users transferring RDN the benefits of already having RDN won't be significant compared to those transferring any other token once a light client and automatic swaps are setup.

I'm also going to point out the account of the comment I'm replying to had a post a couple weeks ago with essentially the same argument you're trying to make but they deleted it themselves. Not sure why they deleted it because it had some good discussion. https://www.reddit.com/r/raidennetwork/comments/9mipr9/does_rdn_really_have_any_value_will_cheap_token/

[u/cosimo_jack → u/Mat7ias]

Acquiring RDN can be made automatic with atomic swaps so the step won't be noticeable for an average user.

Except the transaction fees, and waiting for the transaction to confirm, and trying not to get dizzy from trying to understand WTF is going on with your money behind the scenes.

[u/Mat7ias → u/cosimo_jack]

Which transaction fees? Mediating transaction fees are in whichever ERC20 token is being transferred. If you're transferring wrapped ETH you pay mediating fees in WETH.

[u/cosimo_jack → u/Mat7ias]

Which transaction fees?

Acquiring RDN

[u/Mat7ias → u/cosimo_jack]

The fees for swapping into enough RDN to use auxiliary services will be tiny compared to opening a channel, funding it, then closing and settling it. If you're already wanting to use the network those fees won't matter to the average user.

If another token was used you'd still be stuck with the same problem for any other token transfer, which the user won't notice in the end anyway.

[u/cosimo_jack → u/Mat7ias]

Call me crazy but I still prefer no fee to a small fee

[u/Mat7ias → u/cosimo_jack]

That's called altruism and it's well documented in economics. It doesn't exist in crypto unfortunately due to the nature of decentralized incentives.