Radix Wiki
Radix [ /rædɪks/ ] (Abbreviation: $XRD; sign: √ ) is a full-stack, decentralized finance (DeFi) layer-1 (L1) protocol founded by Dan Hughes.
An associated cryptocurrency was launched in November 2020 as a price-vested ERC-20 token ($eXRD) on the Ethereum network. $eXRD was superceded by native $XRD in July 2021 with the launch of Radix’s Olympia Mainnet. A two-way, 1-1 exchange between $eXRD and $XRD exists on Bitfinex.
Radix has been designed to address the requirements of DeFi, including decentralized applications, fast consensus & atomic composability.
Software StackDevelopment HistoryOlympia (superseded)Alexandria (live)Babylon (Q2, 2023)Xi’an (2024)Token EconomicsPartnershipsInvestorsExternal Links
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ㅤ | DEVELOPMENT |
Founded | 2017 |
Founder(s) | |
Whitepaper(s) | |
Code Repository | |
Current Version | |
Antecedent | |
Postcedent | |
ㅤ | STACK |
State Model (current) | Unsharded |
Consensus Mechanism | |
Execution Environment | Radix Engine v2 |
Programming Language | |
Sybil Protection | Delegated Proof of Stake |
Networking | |
ㅤ | LEDGER |
Explorer | |
Native Asset | $XRD |
Supply Limit | √ 24,000,000,000 |
Total Transactions | ~1.4m (2022/12/07) |
Max. tps | 1.4m (2019/08, Tempo) |
Total Staked | √ 2.8bn (2022/12/06) |
Total Wallets | 120,262 (2022/12/06) |
ㅤ | ADMINISTRATION |
Official Website |
Software Stack
- Radix Engine - Protocol
- Cerberus - Consensus
- Scrypto - Programming Language
- radixnode - Networking
Development History
Since the Radix Production Network (RPN) naming convention was dropped, all releases are named after wonders of the ancient world, expanded beyond the traditional Seven Wonders to include Xi’an, a city in China where the Terracotta Army was found.
A test on a 2019 implementation called Tempo achieved over 1.4m tps on 1187 nodes.
From the Xi’an release, scheduled for 2024, Radix will use a fixed shard space of 2^256 shards, with responsibility over the shard space orchestrated by ‘shard groups’ of validators, allowing transaction throughput to scale linearly with the number of nodes.
Tests using Radix’s Cassandra cross-shard, atomically composable testnet and the Cerberus consensus mechanism have shown promise in being able to host and serve website data as well as ledger state:
“There’s a possibility that in some circumstances the actual content retrieval could maybe even outperform traditional centralized web servers because it’s automatically distributed; it’s load balanced.” - Dan Hughes, YouTube
Olympia (superseded)
Main article: Radix Mainnet (Olympia)
Olympia was the first Radix Mainnet. It was released on the 28th of July, 2021 and was the first implementation of the Radix Engine execution environment, the Cerberus consensus mechanism (unsharded), and the native $XRD token.
Alexandria (live)
Main article: Radix Developer Environment (Alexandria)
This was a major upgrade that occurred during December 2021 that provided preliminary tools for building blueprints and components using the Scrypto language.
Babylon (Q2, 2023)
Main article: Radix Mainnet (Babylon)
This will be the upgrade where the blueprints and components go live. They provide ‘smart contract’ style capabilities allowing true decentralized apps (’dApps’) on Radix. Q2 2023
Xi’an (2024)
Main article: Radix Mainnet (Xi’an)
2024 This upgrade will add the fully sharded Cerberus consensus mechanism allowing linear scaling over time.
Token Economics
Radix's token issuance was in two distinct stages:
- e-Radix, an ERC20 token (ticker: $EXRD) on the Ethereum network. This commenced on the 17th November 2020 and is now closed.
- Radix Public Network 1 (RPN1), where the unlocked $EXRD erc20 tokens are burned in exchange for native $XRD tokens on the Radix network.
Stage 2 added 5.19bn $XRD followed by a 300m yearly emission up to a maximum of 12bn emitted over a 40 year period. There will be an additional 2.4bn fixed allocation to a Stable Coin Reserve.

Partnerships
2022 | Partner(s) | Announcement |
2022/03/25 | ||
2021 | ㅤ | ㅤ |
2021/02/11 | ||
2020 | ㅤ | ㅤ |
2020/10/19 | ||
2020/08/26 | ||
2020/08/24 | Object Computing, Noether | |
2020/08/18 | ||
2020/08/05 | ||
2020/07/15 | ||
ㅤ | ㅤ | ㅤ |
Investors
Saul Klein, co-founder of LocalGlobe invested $1 million in Radix DLT in 2018.