With all the recent interest in Raiblocks - thought it might be helpful for a few FAQs that could be linked to. Firstly apologies if these are obvious or you already know the answers! While I'm a relative newbie on BCT i've been around for a while and am active in other channels of the community.
Disclaimer - I run a number of XRB related services including YapRai Wallet, @XRB_giveaway on twitter and the raiblockstradebot on telegram. I have also contributed code to the raiblocks wallet
Quick Info
1) RaiBlocks also known as XRB. XRB is the main denomination - it had previously been planned to use 'rai' to make Krai and Mrai but this caused more confusion so instead was changed to XRB.
2) ALWAYS BACKUP YOUR SEED SO THAT YOU CAN RECOVER YOUR ACCOUNT
How do I mine RaiBlocks?All the RaiBlocks have already been generated, you cannot mine RaiBlocks, instead RaiBlocks are being distributed - 17,000 xrb every hour (more info can be found here
https://github.com/clemahieu/raiblocks/wiki/Distribution-and-Mining). To claim a part of the distribution you have to prove you are human with google captchas. A number of different systems were trialled and the current one works best to balance the server loads with ensuring the distribution works. Currently the top 150 claiming addresses get a share or the distribution, you accumulate your claims until you reach that top 150 and then you start again.
The RaiBlocks team promote solo claiming but can't stop people claiming in a team off a single xrb address. There was a trial with pools which off loaded the work from the faucet server but some people abused this system, there were some pools that scammed people and didn't pay them fairly and so pools were stopped - pools are not allowed and it is not recommended to join anything claiming to be a pool.
Why hasn't my transaction pocketed/has my wallet synced?If your transaction appears on raiblockscommunity.net as not pocketed then it means that the receiving wallet (node) isn't fully synced. If you are using a desktop wallet (particularly windows) there have been a number of reported problems with the initial sync (i.e. when you first install the wallet). First thing to say is that actually once you've synced up the wallets remain in sync pretty well, just need to get there.
There are 2 options:
1) Leave your wallet open - it should eventually get to fully synced, the quickest the dev team have synced a node is in 40 minutes, if you are stretching into a period of days then perhaps you should try option 2.
2) Boot strap with a downloaded data.ldb (the blockchain/lattice of raiblocks) - this is clearly documented here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1381323.msg19562825#msg19562825 . This allows you to skip the early sync and get right up to speed, remember you need to identify if you have a 32bit CPU or 64bit CPU. Please get your download from a reputable source.
This sync issue is being carefully looked into by the RaiBlocks Dev Team
I've sent my XRB to 'Some Exchange' and it has taken x hours to arrive, I thought RaiBlocks was instantaneous!RaiBlocks is really quick - for example sending between @RaiWalletBot and YapRai Web Wallet takes about 20seconds. These transactions are between fully synced nodes. When a transaction occurs the tx (sender) wallet and the rx (receiver) wallet both perform a complex calculation that can take a CPU a few seconds to complete. This is known as a PoW and is in place as an anti-spam mechanism (makes it difficult to send thousands of transactions and flood the network). The challenge is that when you are running an exchange that goes from having a few transactions an hour to hundreds an hour (as has occurred recently) the have to perform a PoW for each transactions (both external and internal), this results in everything getting backed up, queued and it takes time to clear the backlog. This issue is something that new exchanges and services need to take into consideration.
How do you get around this? - upgrade the server (mooooore power), streamline your transactions (could you do few tx and therefore less work), the PoW can be done on a GPU using openCL which would be more capable then a CPU. There is also the functionality to have remote PoW, someone could run a PoW server which could do the PoW for other services and perhaps could charge a fee (business idea there).
Why isn't RaiBlocks on Bittrex/Poloniex?Because they aren't yet, there has been some discussions in the past with Bittrex but as documented before implementing RaiBlocks is a bit harder then a clonecoin. The nodes are a bit different so don't just slot in with their API, there aren't confirmations, there is the PoW issue. Yes an altcoin isn't an altcoin unless its on these exchanges and yes RaiBlocks will go to the moon when they are. My own opinion (not necessarily of the RaiBlocks Dev Team) I suspect (and i have no evidence for this) that they are watching to see how this recent surge in popularity goes.
I've heard rumours about the RaiBlocks community...The RaiBlocks community is a very varied group of people, I suspect its quite unique to crypto and the system has introduced lots of people to the world of cryptocurrencies. Due to the nature of the distribution it is possible for people living in less developed places to actually make a living from doing captchas, collecting claims and then getting XRB (which they then sell). There is therefore a small group of people who rely on the system to live and if things don't get smoothly can get upset, this unfortunately resulted in online altercations. This behaviour is not acceptable in the RaiBlocks community and there has been work to make the community friendly and accepting. RaiBlocks has the possibility to actually be something good throughout the world - the first steps for this is to create an inclusive community.
How can I store XRB?1) Download a desktop wallet (current version is 7.8.4) and sync it fully (before you make a transaction)
2) Use an online wallet - on telegram you can use @RaiWalletBot (
https://t.me/RaiWalletBot), for a web wallet you can use YapRai (
https://yapraiwallet.space)
Where can I discuss about RaiBlocks?1) Here
2) On Telegram
https://t.me/raiblocks3) On Slack (mainly dev discussions)
http://slack.raiblocks.net/4) On Twitter - use $XRB and #raiblocks
Is RaiBlocks a clone of IOTAWhile there are a few functional similarities between the two cryptocurrencies (zero fees, slightly similar ideas of multiple block chains) the two aren't actually related and its not necessarily helpful to compare them further.
Hope that helps...
