Radix Wiki
Radix (Abbreviation: $XRD; sign: √ ) is a decentralized finance (DeFi) layer-1 (L1) protocol and cryptocurrency invented in 2013 by Dan Hughes. It was launched on November 17th, 2020 with a price-vested ERC20 token ($EXRD) on the Ethereum network, and superceded by native $XRD on the 28th July, 2021 with the launch of the Olympia Mainnet.
Radix has been designed to address the requirements of Decentralized Finance (DeFi), including decentralized applications, fast consensus & Atomic Composability. 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.
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
ㅤ | DEVELOPMENT |
Founded | 2017 |
Founder(s) | |
Whitepaper | |
Code Repository | |
Current Version | |
Previous Version | |
Predecessor | |
ㅤ | LEDGER |
Sybil Protection | Proof of Stake |
Current State Model | Unsharded |
Future State Model | Sharded (2^256) |
Consensus Mechanism | |
Smart Contract Language | |
Execution Environment | Radix Engine v2 |
Native Asset | $XRD |
Supply Limit | √ 24,000,000,000 |
Total Transactions | ~1.17m (2022/10/25) |
Max. tps | 1.4m (2019/08, Tempo) |
Total Staked | √ 2.69bn (2022/10/25) |
Total Wallets | 104,634 (2022/10/25) |
ㅤ | ADMINISTRATION |
Official Website |
Development History
Since the Radix Production Network 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.
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.
Olympia (superseded)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.
Babylon (scheduled for 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 (scheduled for 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.
Investors
Saul Klein, co-founder of LocalGlobe invested $1 million in Radix DLT in 2018.