According to initial plans, Bitcoin should have been a decentralized, peer-to-peer cryptocurrency. While It’s currently struggling to achieve that goal, simple protocols with similar goals have a chance to gain momentum.

RaiBlocks is one of those- a very exciting cryptocurrency which has been recently getting attention from our speculative crypto space. I’m so glad that more people will learn about this project- as there are many things to be excited about.

So, In a few words, Raiblocks (XRB) is a cryptocurrency with zero fees, instant transactions and infinite scalability. Let’s keep in mind that major blockchain-based protocols are having issues with scalability, transaction speeds and high fees.

First implementation of RaiBlocks was published in 2014, so it’s one of the first Directed acyclic graph–based cryptocurrencies; Beta version was functional before Iota and Byteball. But the concept of Raiblocks is different from other DAG cryptocurrencies, as it’s using a block-lattice structure. What this means is that each account has its own blockchain and each block contains a single transaction.

Raiblocks uses a so called balance-weighted vote for reaching consensus, which is used only in conflicting transactions. The whitepaper is a good source for technical details: how transactions work, how consensus is achieved and how different attacks are prevented.

A great thing about XRB is the way it was distributed. For quite a long time, there was a faucet that gave away XRB for solving captchas, anyone with internet connection could use it to make a bit of money. This was a great deal for people with no access to financial systems. XRB was being collected by many Venezuelans, which is perfect for transacting small amounts of value as there are no fees.

Because no one had a big advantage over others in distribution process, it’s much more decentralized and fairly distributed than almost all other coins.

There are no mining pools or masternodes, so it becomes harder for individuals and groups to concentrate significant power in their hands. This approach might have disadvantages, but they are inevitable if you want to make the network as decentralized as possible.

One of them is the lack of direct incentive to run a Raiblocks Node, as there are no fees and no additional XRB is created. Anyway, if you are actively using it for payments, then it’s in your interest to run a node and add security to the network. Besides, a lot of other cryptocurrencies give no direct reward for running a full node, but people still do it.

Faucet was closed in October and in the last 2 months, Raiblocks team and community have been more and more active. New people joined the team, including developers. They are working on a mobile wallet as well as some upgrades to the system. XRB is also likely to be listed on one new exchange this month, although it’s not clear which exactly.

Recent News from IOTA and its huge increase in market capitalization already helped to rise the awareness of Raiblocks, as people are searching for DAG –based projects. With all the scaling issues on current value-transferring blockchains, very exciting times may be ahead for Raiblocks.

Of course, it has to prove that the network is capable of dealing with any attacks and remaining secure. But if it does, then we have a perfect tool for transferring value. Raiblocks is simple: it does one thing- but does it well.