RaiBlocks, a cryptocurrency to enjoy free and almost instant transactions, is probably one of the big winners of this Saturday. At the end of the day, the asset was up 19% over the last 24 hours - and was certainly benefiting from the imminent arrival of the RaiExchange platform.

+ 19% over 24 hours for the XRB

The digital currency ecosystem is replete with examples of assets that have been very quiet for weeks or months - before taking off.

This is the case of RaiBlocks. The XRB, trading at less than $ 0.20 at the end of November, broke a record high of more than $ 36 at the beginning of January:

The price of cryptocurrency then fell sharply, falling below the threshold of $ 12 on January 17.

This Saturday, at the end of the day, it was up 19% over the last 24 hours:

Its price, however, was still half that of its historical record.

RaiBlocks traded mostly on Kucoin, through the XRB / BTC and XRB / ETH pairs. It was also possible to find the asset on Mercatox.

We can think that beyond the quality of the project, the imminent arrival of RaiExchange - a service that will allow easy exchange, and cheaply, cryptocurrency against XRB - has probably passed on the RaiBlocks course.

So close we can taste it.. All of our account management features are now live. Two-factor auth, password management, security logs, session management, password reset, etc.

If you never got a confirmation email, there is finally a button to resend the email when you log in! 😎

— RaiExchange (@RaiExchange) 26 janvier 2018

The main characteristics of RaiBlocks

Raiblocks logoRaiBlocks is different from most crypto-currencies, since it relies on a "lattice" of blocks - not a chain. The network is very energy-efficient, and theoretically can offer "infinite scalability".

Many observers believe that Raiblocks is one of IOTA's main competitors. Indeed, in addition to not sitting on the blockchain technology, the two assets share three characteristics: the speed, the lack of fees and the absence of minors.

Here is a table that offers a comparison between RaiBlocks, IOTA and Bitcoin:

Note, however, that you should take a step back from this table, which was designed by RaiBlocks developers. We can also imagine that IOTA teams would find much to complain about this comparison, and would be able to offer us another table that would show the superiority of their technology.

But what is RaiBlocks?

Let's look first at the distribution of XRB's offer.

The XRBs were distributed through a faucet, which could be triggered by Google captchas. We can talk about "human mining" - it was possible to obtain XRBs through the resolution of small puzzles. Thus, all Internet users have been offered the opportunity to receive XRB, without spending a penny - and without having to afford expensive "masternodes" or rigs of mining.

Note also that developers would own about 4.8% of the XRB offer.

Then, the RaiBlocks network is free: it does not assume any transaction fees. It is thus possible to send 1 Rai (0.000001 XRB, that is 0.002 cents of dollars) without having to pay expenses.

All while enjoying extremely fast transfers:

Entered another long on $XRB this morning - from KuCoin to my wallet in 45 seconds. Fastest crypto confirms I have ever seen. https://t.co/pm8zS6xu8F

— Garry Tan (@garrytan) 26 janvier 2018

In addition, the energy consumption of the network is negligible. While a Bitcoin transaction requires, according to some estimates, more than 330 kWh, 1 XRB transaction would consume less than 0.001 kWh.

To work, the network relies on nodes. When a user opens his XRB wallet, he "becomes" a node - and he will have to give the network a small part of the computing power of his computer (1 to 2%).

When writing this article, there were already more than 1700 RaiBlocks nodes on the XRB.Network site.

Finally, remember that RaiBlocks, unlike other projects, has only one goal: to offer a powerful decentralized currency. You will not find dApps, smart contracts, decentralized exchange platforms ...

Conclusion

For now, it's extremely difficult to know how far RaiBlocks can go. Even if the project is already valued at more than 2.5 billion dollars, remember that the "market cap" of IOTA currently flirts with the threshold of 7 billion dollars.

However, after the sharp rise in the XRB initiated at the end of 2017, an even more severe drop can not be ruled out.