What Is Radix DLT? All You Need to Know About XRD

What Is Radix DLT?

With a focus on decentralized finance (DeFi) use cases, Radix DLT is a public, decentralized ledger designed to assist the development of apps. It makes use of a brand-new consensus method called Cerberus to strengthen network security while also enhancing its performance (i.e., scalability), which can be preferred by some applications. Additionally, Radix offers the Radix Engine, a smart contract execution environment (i.e., virtual machine) that enables developers to link corporate assets to pre-made Radix components. The project aims to serve as an alternate base layer for DeFi applications to blockchains like Ethereum. Holders of Radix’s native token, XRD, can utilize it to take part in the network’s Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus system and get inflation incentives.

History

In 2012, the founder of Radix, Dan Hughes, discovered Bitcoin. He could see the enormous influence that blockchain could have on global finance and other areas thanks to his involvement in the development of telecoms technology. He founded eMunie (later renamed Radix) on Bitcointalk in May 2013 after a year of research on Bitcoin. Dan worked on finding a solution to the most pressing issue of the time for the following five years: scalability. Numerous consensus designs, such as Blocktrees, Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs), Channeled Asynchronous State Trees (CAST), Tempo, and Cerberus were developed and tested by him.

With further funding from LocalGlobe, a renowned European VC, and Taavet, the co-founder of TransferWise, the project was renamed to Radix in 2017 and Piers Ridyard joined as CEO. Radix introduced Cerberus in 2020 with the goal of enhancing network security further without sacrificing scalability. Scrypto, the programming language for Radix’s smart contracts, was also made available in December 2021.

Radix debuted Olympia mainnet in July 2021, and by February 2022, there were stakes worth more over $500 million in XRD. Radix established Radix Tokens (Jersey) Limited in 2020. This Jersey (Channels Islands) company serves as the issuer of tokens and treasury for the Radix Foundation. Andrew Jarrett is the CEO of RTJL.

What Is the Difference Between DLT and Blockchain?

A blockchain is a type of DLT. This is an instance of the phenomena known as name recognition leading to ambiguity, which occurs when the popularity of a particular service, good, or program overwhelms the “umbrella” to which it belongs and ultimately consumes its namesake. Similar to how not all Post-it notes are sticky notes, not all DLTs are blockchain.

A DLT is just a decentralized database that is run by numerous members, to put it more technically. There isn’t a single entity acting as an arbiter or watchdog. As a distributed log of records, there is more openness, which makes manipulation and fraud more challenging, and it is harder to attack the system.

How Does Radix Work? Cerberus Consensus Layer

Radix is supported by a special consensus protocol called Cerberus. The Cerberus Whitepaper was the result of seven years of research, which began in 2013 and lasted until 2020. Radix Labs and Cassandra are interested in figuring out how Cerberus will be used once it has been fully sharded.

Cerberus, in its final form, represents a fundamentally new paradigm in the development of distributed ledger technology platforms. It is the only protocol that is built to allow for the atomic composition of all transactions across shards. If DeFi is ever to scale to billions of users, this capability will be essential.

Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) consensus is a well-proven “single-pipe” procedure that Cerberus parallelizes across a large number of instances or shards—pretty much an infinite number of shards. As required by the “dependencies” of each transaction, it accomplishes this parallelization by a novel new “braided” synchronization of consensus across shards. This necessitates the utilization of a unique application layer known as the Radix Engine.

Cerberus has almost limitless “linear” scalability as a result of everything. This indicates that throughput rises linearly with the number of nodes added to the Radix Public Network. Cerberus is the only consensus mechanism that can sustain the global financial system on a decentralized network as a result.

Radix DLT Features: From Staking to Smart Money Apps

Staking

A crucial feature for the Radix network is staking. The network is more secure the more value is staked. The protocol generates 300 million RADIX (XRD) per year, which is distributed among the stakeholders to assist maintain network security. At the current market rate, 300 million XRD is worth almost $16 million.

Delegated proof of stake is used to secure the Olympia version of the Radix Mainnet, which makes staking incredibly simple. Transfer your XRD to your Radix wallet, pick the validator nodes you want to stake to, and begin receiving benefits for your staking right away.

Source: Radix DLT

Purpose-Built Defi Programming Environment

The fundamentals of finance are integrated into Scrypto & Radix Engine. Ninety percent of a game’s construction used to involve starting from scratch on basic components like the physics and graphics presentation. As pre-built solutions to those needs emerged, game engines like Unity and Unreal liberated the developer to focus solely on creating the game. The Radix Engine covers the fundamentals of asset management securely and automatically, leaving developers to focus solely on creating fantastic DeFi applications. It is similar to a gaming engine for finance.

• Safer assets, better dApps: Over $1 billion was lost due to hacks and vulnerabilities of Solidity smart contracts in just one calendar year. Frequently, the issue stems from the fact that Ethereum assets are not actual platform features. By having a native grasp of tokens, NFTs, and other assets as well as how they should act, Scrypto (and the Radix Engine it runs on) eliminate these problems. This enables developers to create safe DeFi applications quickly and easily.
• Faster time to talent: DeFi dApps are more (and better) when there are more developers. Today, learning how to create suitable DeFi dApps in Solidity requires years of practice. Even then, findings are prone to inaccuracy, and the talent pool is small, which inhibits innovation. Based on the popular Rust programming language, Scrypto’s asset-oriented features make it simple to construct secure dApps. This translates to a vast skill pool, more and better dApps.
• Effortless dApp Composability: The ability to link dApps together like Lego bricks is the lifeblood of DeFi. Ethereum enabled “composability” between smart contracts, but it did it in a convoluted manner that necessitates the creation of unique smart contracts. Radix Engine eliminates the need for proprietary smart contract code, allowing each transaction to freely and immediately transfer assets between any number of dApps.

Supercharging DeFi Ecosystem Growth

A thriving DeFi dApps market where developers can quickly innovate, share, and profit. Future global financial systems that are decentralized should result in exponential growth, but only if developers have the resources to construct the things they are passionate about swiftly and are rewarded for their innovative ideas. To do this, the Radix Public Network and ecosystem services are created.

• Taking open-source to the next level: Developers will be able to upload their Scrypto code to a dynamic on-ledger “blueprint catalog” on Radix as customizable “blueprints.” From there, the Radix development community can immediately take use of fantastic feature and see how it’s being utilized on the network, not just copy code. By using tried-and-true designs, dApps may launch more quickly and with greater assurance for more sophisticated DeFi features.
• Recurring, on-ledger Royalties: Developers deserve compensation for expanding and enhancing the realm of the conceivable. Because of this, when a developer creates a blueprint, they will be able to specify the royalty price that the network levies each time their code is actually used in a transaction. This free-market strategy fosters modular construction by enabling developers to be paid for useful improvements they make to the Radix ecosystem.
• Essentials services developers need for success: Developers want to concentrate on their strengths. With the help of optional ecosystem services like Instapass and Instabridge, developers can simply add AML/KYC compliance or asset bridging to their dApp with a seamless integration - not a tedious development effort and a mountain of expensive legal expenses that slow them down.

Smart Money Apps

The complete spectrum of potent DeFi applications will be developed securely and reliably on the open, interconnected platform that Radix is developing. These are currently?

• Stablecoins
• Perpetual Futures
• Wallets & Dashboards
• Yield Farming
• NFTs
• DeFi Insurance
• Collateralized Lending
• Decentralized exchanges
• Money markets
• Options & Derivatives
• Gaming
• Portfolio Management

Radix NFTs

The Radix NFTs can be bought and sold on Radix NFT Marketplaces, such as RadixMarketPlace.com, Artistizen NFT, VikingLand, Foton.IS and Radish Ecosystem.

Source: RadixMarketplace

What Is XRD?

The RADIX token, with the ticker XRD, is the native token of the Radix Public Network. In July 2021, as part of the launch of the Radix Public Network, XRD was born. It has two main use cases: staking and transaction fees.

Staking

The Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) mechanism used by Radix relies heavily on XRD to protect the Radix Public Network from attacks known as Sybil attacks.

Staking is the process through which holders of the XRD token decide which validator nodes they want to participate in consensus on in the Radix DPoS system that was implemented as part of the Olympia release in July 2021. The possibility of receiving network emission rewards encourages these “stakers” to do so. The Radix Protocol selects the top 100 validator nodes with the largest delegated stake as its validator set.

As part of the Radix Xi’an release, this cap of 100 validators is anticipated to be lifted, allowing for an infinite number of validators.

Transaction Fees

On the Radix Public Network, transaction fees are likewise paid with XRD. The main goal of transaction fees is to stop spam transactions from occurring on the network.

The Radix Protocol burns all transaction fees to the fullest extent possible, which means that the tokens used to pay the fees are also destroyed.

Other

Any dApp inside the Radix DeFi ecosystem could employ XRD in addition to its core functions as the base currency of the Radix Public Network. For instance, they might be used as security in a lending protocol or as a middleman to enable the trade of other tokens.

What Is eXRD?

The E-RADIX token is the wrapped representation of XRD on Ethereum, with the ticker eXRD. The eXRD serves as a permanent link between the Radix and Ethereum networks, and it can be exchanged 1:1 with XRD, via Instabridge or at exchanges such as Bitfinex. It was instantiated in November 2020 on the Ethereum network, as an ERC20 token, under the contract: 0x6468e79A80C0eaB0F9A2B574c8d5bC374Af59414.

This token never expires, so there will never be a cutoff for swapping between eXRD and XRD. Given that eXRD and XRD are exchangeable 1:1, arbitrageurs might be expected to keep the price of the two tokens at parity.

Token Use Cases

With the ticker eXRD, the E-RADIX token is XRD’s wrapped representation on Ethereum. The Radix and Ethereum networks are permanently connected through eXRD, which may be swapped 1:1 with XRD via Instabridge or on exchanges like Bitfinex.

eXRD was instantiated in November 2020 on the Ethereum network, as an ERC20 token, under contract: 0x6468e79A80C0eaB0F9A2B574c8d5bC374Af59414. There is no time limit for switching between eXRD and XRD because eXRD never expires. Arbitrageurs would be expected to keep the price of the two tokens at parity because eXRD and XRD are exchangeable 1:1.

Similar to how wBTC permits the use of a representation of Bitcoin in the Ethereum DeFi environment, eXRD permits the use of a representation of Radix’s XRD currency in the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem.

Prior to the release of XRD, eXRD was created as a way to distribute tokens as broadly as possible before Radix’s Delegated Proof of Stake system’s staking phase began. This helped the Radix Public Network become even more decentralized.

Supply & Allocation

As part of the Instabridge service, each eXRD is backed 1:1 by an XRD kept at a secure third-party custodian. Since there is a limit on how many XRD can ever be wrapped into an eXRD form, the maximum supply of eXRD is the same as that of XRD. As users unwrap eXRD tokens to eXRD and wrap eXRD to eXRD, the overall supply of eXRD fluctuates.

Is Radix (XRD) a Good Investment?

The actual activity across the various blockchain protocols has remained relatively low, despite the fact that blockchain has just recently gained widespread interest. However, they are already showing signs of strain, with networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum frequently experiencing lengthy transaction times and exorbitant fees. While various groups have put forth a range of suggestions for how to scale the networks, there is one fundamental flaw that needs to be addressed: blockchain cannot scale to the levels necessary to serve as the financial system’s backbone, let alone the numerous other use cases it is currently attempting to address. The hidden truth is that if it cannot scale to meet this predicted demand, it is not suitable for its intended use.

The primary accomplishment of blockchain is its ability to resolve the problem of how to ensure confidence between two unconnected parties without the necessity for a centralized third party.

The issue with blockchain is that, as previously said, increasing the number of nodes would result in a slower network. Vertical scaling is also not an option because it will result in a reduction in the number of nodes processing and centralization.

This problem has not yet been resolved by a blockchain project. All of the current workarounds are functional, but they are unable to provide the levels of scale required, free of centralized, for blockchain to serve as the foundation of the next economy. They are bandages to repair a soldier who hasn’t yet left for war, temporary patches to patch up a system that is creaking under the weight even before anyone uses it. Blockchain is still a very remarkable technological advancement. But eliminating the blockchain ledger system is the straightforward solution to the scale problem, whatever how difficult that may be to hear. And this is what Radix aims to.

How Can You Own XRD?

One way to own XRD is to go through a centralized crypto exchange, so the first step is to create a Gate.io account and complete the KYC process. Once you have added funds to your account, check out the steps to buy XRD on the spot or derivatives market.

News on Radix

The Babylon Alphanet test network went live today, marking another significant step forward for the self-described “asset-oriented DeFi” platform Radix.

Radix’s Babylon Alphanet, the first significant update to the current Radix Public Network that went live in December last year, introduces the project’s application development environment Radix Engine, which is reportedly the first programmable DeFi engine in the world. Scrypto, the first asset-oriented programming language for smart contacts, is another innovation. There are also many additional new features, including as a new asset-oriented transaction architecture and modifications to how wallets communicate with the Radix network.

According to a press statement from Radix, the introduction of Babylon Alphanet represents stage two of the company’s release timetable and is intended to help developers get acquainted with its distinctive DeFi architecture. Ahead of the mainnet’s launch, they can utilize the network to develop complex DeFi dApps and test various protocols, interfaces, and related technologies. It’s a well-planned strategy that should provide everyone developing on Radix plenty of time to polish and complete their dApps before the mainnet launch.

Useful References

For the latest updates about Radix, you can visit:

• The official website
• Twitter
• Telegram
• Reddit

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