The Raiden Network is an off-chain scaling solution, enabling near-instant, low-fee and scalable payments. It’s complementary to the Ethereum blockchain and works with any ERC20 compatible token. The Raiden project is work in progress. Its goal is to research state channel technology, define protocols and develop reference implementations. The introduction of payment channels, specifically the type first described by the Lightning Whitepaper (which introduced the Lightning Network), seeks to fix the scalability and congestion issues that currently plague blockchain technology. While the Lightning Network operates on the Bitcoin blockchain, Raiden introduces a comparable solution for the Ethereum network. There are several key features of the Raiden Network Token. Expedited transfer confirmations (<1 second ). Current transfers on the Ethereum blockchain can take a few seconds to minutes. Private transfers that are not viewable on the global ledger. Solve scalability issues so that Ethereum can create mass adoption, allowing Ethereum to become the peer-to-peer, global payments infrastructure with electronic cash that it was initially designed for. Low fee transactions. Micropayment capability that works in union with any ERC-20 token. The Raiden Network project is being developed by Germany’s Brainbot Technologies AG, a software company devoted to blockchain protocol development. Founded in the year 2000 by Heiko Hees, it currently has between 11 to 50 employees in offices among Berlin, Mainz, and Copenhagen. Also the founder of PediaPress, Hees has been a core developer of Ethereum since March 2014. Being a core developer for Ethereum, it is evident on how the founder sees the flaws in the current its present protocol with ways to improve it. Interestingly enough, the website does not include RDN as one of their main blockchain developments, which could be attributed to the difficulty of highlighting a wide variety of projects they are currently undertaking on one page. However, there are no updates on the status of the Raiden Network Project on either Twitter nor Medium since December 1st, 2017. Raiden can be used for a wide variety of applications and purposes such as Micropayments For Content Distribution, Decentralized M2M Markets, API Access and Fast Decentralized Exchanges.'
Qtum is a decentralized and open-source smart contracts platform and value transfer protocol. Qtum uses proof-of-stake consensus, meaning node operators are rewarded for validating transactions. It is a DGP governed blockchain where community participants can vote to change certain network parameters. Qtum is built on a bitcoin core fork, but the foundation has created its own hybrid blockchain with the help of several key tools. The coin uses bitcoin’s chain because of its simple and stable nature, allowing the foundation to build upon it more easily. As the QTUM project is a hybrid of Bitcoin and Ethereum, its team comprises of members from both Bitcoin and Ethereum community. They also have team members who formerly worked with Tencent, Alibaba, Nasdaq etc. Apart from that, they are backed by some notable VCs and prominent people from the Blockchain community such as Patrick Dai (Project Co-Founder), Neil Mahi (Chief Blockchain Architect/Co-Founder) and Jordan Earls (Lead Developer/Co-Founder). Qtum provides a Turing-complete blockchain stack and is able to execute smart contracts and decentralised applications like the Ethereum blockchain. Qtum builds on Bitcoin's UTXO transaction model and uses the Proof-of-Stake algorithm. It is backed by some highly prominent members of the blockchain community such as Anthony Di Iorio, Xu Star, Bo Shen, David Lee, Jehan Chu and Roger Ver. Qtum sold over 10 million dollars’ worth of its tokens after only 90 minutes, eventually raising a total value of $15.7 million before stopping the campaign early after only 5 days. They raised a total amount of 11,156.766 bitcoins (BTC) and 77,081.031 ether (ETH) in exchange for the 51 million Qtum tokens being distributed to the public. In Qtum’s whitepaper, 51% of the coins were distributed to the public via the crowdfunding campaign. Of the remaining 49%, 29% of the coins would be allocated as community incentives, and the remaining 20% would be distributed to the early backers and development team.