What is Monero? Monero (XMR) is the top privacy-centric cryptocurrency based on the CryptoNote protocol, a secure, private and untraceable currency system. Monero uses a special kind of cryptography to ensure that all of its transactions are remain 100% unlinkable and untraceable. In an increasingly transparent world, you can see why something like Monero can become so desirable. Origins of Monero In July of 2012, Bytecoin, the first real life implementation of CryptoNote, was launched. While Bytecoin had promise, people noticed that 80% of the coins were already published. So, it was decided that the bytecoin blockchain will be forked and the new coins in the new chain will be called Bitmonero, which is was then renamed Monero, meaning “coin” in Esperanto language. In this new blockchain, a block will be mined and added every two minutes. Why Monero? #1: Unlinkability - Your identity is completely private You have complete control over your transactions. You are responsible for your money. Because your identity is private no one will be able to see what you are spending your money on. When you send funds to someone’s public address, what happens is that you actually send the funds to a randomly created brand new one-time destination address. This means that the public record does not contain any mention that funds were received to the recipient’s public address. In Monero, your public address will never appear in the public record of transactions. Instead, a 'stealth address' is recorded in a way that only you, the recipient, can recognize the incoming funds. #2: Fungibility Fungibility is interchangeability between one asset and another asset of the same type. Suppose you borrowed $50 from your friend, you can even return the money in the form of 1 $50 bill or 5 $10 bill, It is still fine. This shows that the dollar has fungible properties. However, if you were to borrow someone’s car for the weekend and come back and give them some other car in return, then that person will probably punch on the face. Cars, in this example, are a nonfungible asset. What is CryptoNote? CryptoNote is the application layer protocol that fuels various decentralized currencies. While it is similar to the application layer which runs bitcoin in many aspects, there a lot of areas where the two differ from each other. CryptoNote features an entirely new code base and is not a fork of Bitcoin. More info about CryptoNote can be found at their website. CryptoNote uses Ring Signatures to conceal sender identities via mixing and it also has unlinkable transactions that is achieved using 1-time keys for each individual payments. Ring signatures enable ‘transaction mixing’ to occur. Transaction mixing means that when funds are sent, the sender randomly chooses several other users’ funds to also appear in the transaction as a possible source of the funds being sent. The cryptographical nature of the ring signature means that no one can tell which of the funds were really the source of the transaction – not even the person that gave the funds to the sender in the first place. A system of ‘key images’ associated with each ring signature ensures that although no one can tell the true source of the funds, it can be easily detected if the sender attempts to anonymously send their funds twice.
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.'