System Requirements and Installation Guide

Installation

To install Raiden you can either:

Below we will give details on how to use the self-contained application bundles on different platforms, as well as the other installation methods.

Installation from GitHub

Linux

Download the latest raiden-<version>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz, and extract it:

tar -xvzf raiden-<version>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz

The Raiden binary should work on most 64bit GNU/Linux distributions without any specific system dependencies, other than an Ethereum client installed in your system (see below). The Raiden binary takes the same command line arguments as the raiden script.

macOS

Download the latest raiden-<version>-macOS-x86_64.zip, and extract it:

unzip raiden-<version>-macOS-x86_64.zip

The resulting binary will work on any version of macOS from 10.12 onwards without any other dependencies.

Or you can use Homebrew to install the most up to date binary:

brew tap raiden-network/raiden
brew install raiden

An Ethereum client is required in both cases. The Raiden binary takes the same command line arguments as the raiden script.

Raiden is also available as a PyPi package and can be installed with :ref:pip <installation_pip>.

Raspberry Pi

Currently we don’t provide any pre-built executables for the Raspberry Pi. You can still install Raiden from a PyPi package with :ref:pip <installation_pip>.

This process will work on any Raspberry Pi from Model 2B onwards without any other dependencies. Please be patient for the installation process, since there might not be pre-built wheels available for most dependencies.

An Ethereum client is required to run Raiden.

Installation using pip

To get the latest available stable version via pip:

pip install raiden

If you’d like to give the pre-releases a spin, use pip’s --pre flag:

pip install --pre raiden

Installation via Docker

There are two options to run a raiden docker image:

Create the Image yourself and use our Dockerfile as template or use the already built image from Dockerhub:

docker run -it raidennetwork/raiden:latest

The required keystore can easily be mounted in the docker container:

docker run -it --mount src=/PATH/TO/LOCAL/KEYSTORE,target=/keystore,type=bind raidennetwork/raiden:latest --keystore-path /keystore

Other flags such as the JSON-RPC endpoint to an Ethereum node can easily be chained to the command.

Dependencies

You will need a local or remote Ethereum node to connect Raiden to.

  • Check this link to install the Geth client.

  • Download and install OpenEthereum from here.

  • Or sign up at a service like Infura to set up a remote node.

Now you are ready to get started.

For developers

If you plan to develop on the Raiden source code, or the binary distributions do not work for your system, you can follow these steps to install a development version.

Linux

Additional dependencies for development installations
Installation from source

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/raiden-network/raiden.git

Navigate to the directory:

cd raiden

It’s strongly advised to create a virtualenv for Raiden (requires python3.8) and install all python dependencies there.

After you have done that you can proceed to install the dependencies:

make install-dev

You will also need to connect your Ethereum client to the Ropsten testnet. See below for guidelines on how to connect with both OpenEthereum and Geth.

macOS

Please refer to the detailed step-by-step guide for setting up a macOS development environment.

nix

Please refer to the nix setup guide for setting up a development environment using the nix package manager.

Run it

To fire up Raiden you need at least

  1. a synced Ethereum Node - using Geth, OpenEthereum or Infura

  2. an Ethereum keystore file - whereas the address holds ETH, RDN, and the ERC20 token you want to transfer

  3. If you want to use Raiden services that charge a fee, a deposit of RDN tokens to pay the services with.

More about the Raiden services (pathfinding and monitoring service) will be explained below. On the testnets there are also free services available, and on any network it is possible (though not recommended) to use Raiden without Raiden services.

We will provide you with the necessary cli arguments step by step. Full example is at the end of each section.

1. and 2. The synced Ethereum Node & Keystore

Using Geth

Run the Ethereum client and let it sync:

geth --syncmode fast --rpc --rpcapi eth,net,web3

Note

When you want to use a testnet add one of the --testnet, --rinkeby or --goerli flags or set the network id with --network-id directly.

Unless you already have an account you can also create one in the console by invoking personal.newAccount().

If problems arise for above method, please see the Ropsten README for further instructions.

Then launch Raiden with the default testnet keystore path:

raiden --keystore-path  ~/.ethereum/testnet/keystore

Using OpenEthereum

Run the client and let it sync:

openethereum --no-warp --jsonrpc-apis=web3,eth,net,parity

Note

When you want to use a testnet add the --chain ropsten or --chain kovan flags or set the network id with --network-id directly.

Attention

OpenEthereum sometimes loses its historical DB (potentially after updates). Due to this some events might be lost which will result in Raiden not being able to fetch all events. Therefore it is recommended to make sure to have OpenEthereum fully synced with the --no-warp option.

After syncing the chain, an existing Ethereum account can be used or a new one can be generated using ethkey. After account creation, launch Raiden with the path of your keystore supplied:

raiden --keystore-path ~/.local/share/openethereum/keys/ethereum

Using Infura

Sign up with Infura to get an API token. After that you can start using Raiden directly:

raiden --keystore-path  ~/.ethereum/keystore --eth-rpc-endpoint "https://<network>.infura.io/v3/<yourToken>"

Where <network> can be mainnet, ropsten, etc.

Select the desired Ethereum account when prompted, and type in the account’s password.

3. Depositing tokens to pay the services

To pay the services, you have to lock some of your Raiden tokens in the UserDeposit contract. To deposit, you can use the Raiden API, the Raiden Web Interface or manually call the smart contracts:

Optional CLI arguments

There are further CLI arguments with which you can control, among other things

  1. The choice of a pathfinding service

  2. The choice of a monitoring service

  3. Logging

In doubt, you can use the following to see all possible CLI arguments:

raiden --help

1. Pathfinding service

A pathfinding service is a third party service helping your node with efficient transfer routing. It is usually paid in RDN tokens.

Direct channels to other nodes can be used without asking the PFS for a route. If you want to stop broadcasting information about your channel states to PFSes, use --routing-mode private. As a result, PFSes won’t create routes that include your node as a mediator.

If you want to use a particular pathfinding service, you can do so with --pathfinding-service-address <url>. Otherwise Raiden will automatically pick one of the pathfinding services from the registry.

The default setting for the pathfinding options is to use a pathfinding service and choose it automatically (--routing-mode pfs --pathfinding-service-address auto).

2. Monitoring service

A monitoring service watches a client’s open channels while it is offline, and represents the client in case of settlement. Like the pathfinding service, it is paid in RDN tokens. If you want to use a monitoring service, use the option --enable-monitoring and Raiden will automatically pick one from its service registry. By default the monitoring services are disabled. Enabling monitoring of channels will require a default reward value of 5 RDN for successfully monitoring your channel.

3. Logging configuration

By default raiden keeps a “debug” log file so that people who have not configured logging but are facing problems can still provide us with some logs to debug their problems.

For expert users of raiden who want to configure proper logging we recommend disabling the debug log file and configuring normal logging appropriately.

To disable the log file the --disable-debug-logfile argument should be passed.

To specify the logging level add: --log-config ":debug" if you want all debug statements to be logged. The logging level can actually be configured down to the module level through this argument.

To provide the filename for the logs use --log-file XXX where XXX is the full path and filename to the log you want to create or append to. Note that Raiden uses a python WatchedFileHandler for this log. That means that if you or your system moves the logfile (for example due to log rotation) then Raiden will detect that and close and reopen the log file handler with the same name.

Finally by default the output of the logs are in plain readable text format. In order to make them machine readable and parsable json add the --log-json argument.

Summing up these are the arguments you need to append if you want to disable the debug log and want to configure normal logging for up to debug statement in json inside a file called raiden.log

--disable-debug-logfile --log-config ":debug" --log-file raiden.log --log-json