Request Network (REQ) building a powerful v2 of their protocol but still struggles to regain community trust

December 2, 2018

Often referred to as “PayPal 2.0,” Request Network is a new type of payment system platform that allows anyone to request a payment (a Request Invoice) for which the recipient can pay in a secure way.

It is built on top of the Ethereum network, making it an ERC20 token. All of the information is stored in a decentralized authentic ledger. This results in cheaper, easier, and more secure payments. It also allows for a wide range of automation possibilities.

Request Network is a decentralized platform that enables anyone to request P2P payments, and makes business to business or business to client invoicing easier and cheaper as well. Request Network will definitely impact existing online payment systems such as PayPal, Stripe and powerhouse credit cards institutions (like Visa, MasterCard, etc.) by providing a cheaper and faster alternative.

Another thing to note here is that the Request Network is designed to work with any currency, fiat and crypto, and the receiver can decide to receive it in a specific currency.

What you'll learn 👉

v2 of the protocol

In v2 of the protocol, Request Network will support invoices in any currency. This means that the Request Network can be used to create and share a USD invoice. This is the base layer, the universal database for invoice. To add more value to this database for invoices, the network should also be capable to link payments with invoices automatically.

v2.0 of the protocl will be publicly released once completed and successfully integrated with an app. We estimate the release to happen during Q1 2019.

In v2, all data is stored on a decentralized storage solution (IPFS) and the consensus is reached on an Ethereum smart contract through a hash of the IPFS data. Storing only hashes on Ethereum lowers costs while keeping a secure proof. Having no request data on Ethereum enables total encryption of the requests.

The protocol v1 natively handles multi-payee and multi-payer.This feature is used too infrequently to justify having it in the core of the logic. In v2, it will be an extension, which will make the core logic lighter and easier to understand for the users of the protocol.

The protocol is designed as modular blocks, that will enable easy upgradability.

The architecture is designed in layers. A layered architecture has several advantages, the biggest in our case is changeability: swapping the implementation of a layer with another one without touching the others enable iterative development.

Cross-currency will be implemented in the Smart Request block of the v2. Work currently in progress on v1 will be reused for the Smart requests.

Role of the REQ token

REQ token is both a utility and governance token. The token answers the same need than the one of Kyber or Maker DAO for example. You need REQ tokens to use the network (tokens are burnt and serve to prevent network spam) and we will slowly roll out a governance system outside of the foundation so that the network becomes entirely independent.

Community trust lost

As couple of observers from their subreddit noticed, REQ has had serious issues in keeping community engaged and up to date with what’s team up to.

“While there’s plenty that can be said I haven’t seen too many people mention this yet on the forums: get a new community manager. The updates started going downhill around the time Robin was hired. Looking back on some of the updates in the earlier months of REQ, it’s interesting to see how much more articulate and informative they were back then compared to now. The old updates did a great job of informing and gave the reader a feeling of being apart of something great. This isn’t the case with Robin’s updates, they’ve been incredibly vapid and demonstrate a complete lack of community awareness. The team really ought to fire Robin and get a new community manager or have Laura resume being the update writer. Making informative substance filled updates again won’t fix the myriad of screw ups, but it is a step in the right direction to regaining investor trust.”

This is 4 months old post and sadly not much has changed in this regards. It is a shame that the team does a good job in the technology arena but fails to see the importance of good community hygiene. The REQ circles appear rusty and neglected and team hasn’t come out with any kind of promise or update in relation to this.

Sources:

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