There are certain types of financial institution that may want to set up and operate a Rayls Private Network so that other institutions can exchange tokenised value within a compliant virtual trading venue. Such institutions include Financial Market Infrastructure (FMI) providers, such as central banks, clearing houses, payment processors and stock exchanges.

Alternatively, a different kind of institution, a commercial bank for instance, may want to run its own private network of Rayls Sovereign nodes in order to maintain privacy and regulatory separation between its subsidiary legal entities, business lines or branches.

Whatever the reason, if you are looking to create and manage a completely permissioned network for the private exchange of tokenised value with customisable governance and auditing, then you have come to the right place 👍.

But what exactly is a Rayls Private Network?

Each Rayls Private Network is a permissioned EVM-compatible network comprised of one Private Network Hub (the hub) and many Rayls Sovereign nodes (the spokes), all connected by the Rayls Protocol.

Note that each Rayls Sovereign node runs its own EVM blockchain, and the Private Network Hub runs its own EVM blockchain too, so a Rayls Private Network is in fact a permissioned network of multiple EVM-compatible blockchains connected by private cross-chain interoperability bridges.

Private bridges, you say? What makes them private is that the Rayls private bridges deliver end-to-end transaction privacy and anonymity using a combination of Groth16 zero-knowledge proofs and Pedersen commitments over the Baby JubJub curve. See the Rayls Cryptographic Concepts page for more detail.

To govern and oversee the Private Network, an Operator and Auditor are assigned when the Private Network is created. Rayls is working to technically segregate these two roles, so that they can be managed by different departments of the same organisation, or by two or more independent organisations.

Okay, and what can I do with it?

As the Operator of a Rayls Private Network, you can:

Establish your Private Network by installing an EVM-compatible blockchain (Rayls recommends Hyperledger Besu) as the Private Network Hub, and deploying the Rayls Private Network Operator smart contracts.

Manage member registration requests from Rayls Sovereign nodes, approving or denying their applications to join the Private Network.

Assign roles to Rayls Sovereign nodes within the Private Network, such as Issuer, Participant or Auditor. By default, only 'Issuer' roles are able to register tokens for transfer to other Rayls Sovereign nodes, 'Participants' can only receive and send tokens registered by other nodes, and 'Auditors' are not permitted to transact tokens at all. Custom role types can also be developed.

Manage token registration requests from Rayls Sovereign nodes, deciding which tokens you will allow to be transacted within the Private Network. Rayls currently supports the ERC-20, ERC-721 and ERC-1155 token standards.

Enable private message and token transfers by connecting independent Rayls Sovereign nodes through the shared Private Network Hub.

Manage and customise governance rules that are enforced across the Private Network, determining which members and tokens can be registered and transacted. For a summary of the available Rayls governance features, see the Private Network roles page.

Audit and oversee the Private Network, a role that can be managed by your own organisation or delegated to a third party. The Auditor has the power to "peek" into encrypted transactions and ensures the validity, legitimacy and consistency of the Private Network. For a summary of the available Rayls auditing features, see the Private Network roles page.

Create custom automated workflows with member Rayls Sovereign nodes, such as conditional transfer requests, or governance actions that are enforced automatically when a transaction is flagged by the Auditor.

Optimise network operations based on your use case, covering transaction volumes, state validation frequency and the fees model.

That's nice, but what are the benefits?

Rayls blends the must-have requirements of traditional financial institutions with the benefits of decentralised finance, a combination Rayls calls UniFi, with the aim of accelerating the adoption of tokenised systems by regulated institutions.

Specifically, Rayls enables:

Private Networks that can securely connect to the Rayls Public Chain, bringing together the benefits of private issuance and real-time wholesale settlement with public distribution and liquidity.

Independently governed, permissioned networks in which the Private Network Operator has full control over the activity within their network and can enforce rules or restrictions as required to comply with regulation.

Transaction privacy and anonymity, where each individual transaction is privately encrypted rather than merely the Private Network as a whole, so that only the transacting parties have visibility, while a designated Auditor can still validate compliance.

Enterprise-grade scalability and security, where Rayls Sovereign nodes can achieve 15,000+ internal transactions per second, and cross-Private-Network transactions between nodes can be batched to go beyond the throughput limits of the Private Network Hub blockchain (Hyperledger Besu, for instance, has a throughput limit of ~300 TPS).

Rich, insightful data. Because transactions are all recorded in real time against common standards, Private Network Operators and Auditors can build dynamic data dashboards showing transaction values, volumes, token balances, revenue metrics and network monitoring.

Interoperability and connectivity with other blockchains and existing systems. The Rayls Protocol provides interoperability by design, and Rayls components expose API endpoints for connecting to external systems.

How do I interact with a Rayls Private Network?

Once installed, different users will interact with the Rayls Private Network in different ways.

As a Private Network Operator...

Install the Rayls Private Network package, including your preferred EVM-compatible Private Network Hub (Hyperledger Besu, for instance). You then have three options for interacting with Rayls:

Rayls Operator API, to enforce governance rules directly into the Operator smart contracts
Rayls Custody, to update governance contracts via the Rayls Custody API
Rayls Auditor Application (on the roadmap, coming soon)

As an institution running Rayls Sovereign...

Once installed, there are three ways for each financial institution to operate its Rayls Sovereign node:

Rayls SDK, a developer-friendly CLI with standardised endpoints
Rayls Custody, interfacing via the Rayls Custody API
Rayls Sovereign Application (on the roadmap, coming soon)