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New project added to the spreadsheet
Radix DLT
Website - https://www.radixdlt.com/
Telegram chat - https://t.me/radixDLT
Headquarters – UK
Tokens in Q1 2019
Long-term score: A-
Short-term score: N/A
Fund index – N/A
Description: Radix – asynchronous, highly concurrent and high-throughput protocol for building decentralized applications, tokens and coins that uses its proprietary architecture and consensus algorithm called Tempo. Tempo relies on the “logical clock” counter and gossip protocol to spread information across the network. Logical clock creates a simple order of events that anyone could check to prevent malicious actors while double spend attacks are prevented by binding each public address to a particular shard therefore all the transactions from one address are always initiated from the same shard. Radix is designed to scale linearly and to be segmented into a very large shard space currently set at 18.4 quintillion shards.
Key usage areas: IoT, microtransactions and payments
Key value propositions: scales linearly (more nodes = higher tps), short confirmation (0.2 second) and finality time (5 seconds), $0.01 transaction fee, Turing complete smart contract platform, low volatility token
Key investors: N/A
Key competitors: IoTA, Nano, Hedera HashGraph
Why we are bullish on Radix:
1) Novel token economics model. Radix will issue low volatility token which is aimed at smoothing the peaks when price goes up or down by issuing or burning native tokens. When the demand surpasses supply and price for a token spikes Radix monetary supply creates and distributes via DEX new Radix tokens between nodes operators (50%) and Radix token holders (50%) and burns tokens when the demand plummets. Therefore, if the demand increases all Radix holders will receive an interest. This mechanism has some similarities with Dfinity BNS system. The exact numbers behind Radix monetary system are not available yet as economics paper is not finalized;
2) Radix is a direct competitor to IoTA and Nano however it claims to be more decentralized as it has no maximum cap for the number of nodes in the system and requirements to start confirming transactions are as low as 16MB of memory and a 100 Mhz processor. Even IoT device may become a full node and confirm transactions on a particular shard.
3) Testnet is up and running at 2500+ tps and 5 seconds finality with 20 nodes. You can start building on Radix now. Check out Radix explorer (https://www.radixdlt.com/#explorer) and GitHub (https://github.com/radixdlt).
4) DEX will be available at launch. The team behind Radix also developing decentralized debit card which will allow to turn any Visa or Mastercard debit card into cryptocurrency wallet. No hardware or software upgrade is needed, standard POS terminal will be able to process Radix decentralized debit card and finalize transaction in 5 seconds. The proof of concept is already here, check out this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMw7hQ6x2f0).
5) Radix has a vibrant community in Telegram and discord. Radix attracted more than 17 000 people to their telegram chat and more than 2 350 people to Discord without any sort of bounty/airdrop program and explicitly stating that there won’t be an ICO. Chat is focused on Radix tech and team members are actively engaged in the communication with the community.
6) Radix will offer developers proprietary Turing complete JavaScript based programming language Scrypt which will be essentially JavaScript tailored to the distributed network and smart contracts development.
Token Metrics,
7) Comparing to competitors such as Hedera Radix team is relatively small – only 13 employees. Radix team possess some relevant experience in building distributed systems and other technologies relevant to Radix. For example, Dan (CTO and Founder at Radix) previously ran a company that was one of the first to implement NFC in smartphones which is relevant to decentralized debit card that is being developed by Radix. CEO – Piers founded previously several companies including Surematics (blockchain-enabled communication platform for insurance companies) that was initially backed by YCombinator and later acquired by Radix. Dan started to works on Radix in 2011 (back in 2011 the name of the project was eMunie). One of the engineers (Zalan) previously worked at Apple;
Incentivization mechanism implies equal distribution of nodes across the shards in order to maintain standardized security and operational level in every shardWhat we don’t like:
1) Radix several times postponed key roadmap milestones. Initially main net launch was planned for Q2/Q3 2018 however at the moment (23.08.2018) the mainnet release is scheduled for Q1 2019;
2) Economics paper hasn’t been published yet, currently its not clear what will be the metrics at Go launch date: what will be the total supply, who and how will be selling the tokens on DEX, what percentage of total supply will be sold. The team plans to publish economics paper in Q3
3) It’s not clear whether Radix economics model designed to smooth token price spikes will have any impact on the token price;
4) Seed stage investors bonuses are not revealed, strange answers are given in telegram by admins, don’t want to speculate (as we will know for sure only after economics paper is revealed) but even though team claims there are NO bonuses at all for early investors it seems they will implement some kind of “interest” mechanism which will reward investors with additional tokens (the earlier invested the higher the bonus);
5) The competition between high-throughput DAGs and blockchains is fierce. Its not enough to say that your system is more decentralized, and token is more stable. Hedera has already on-boarded several dapps, Thunder token launched meetups with developers, Dfinity has multi-million ecosystem fund to fund developers building dapps on its platfrom and that’s just few examples of new projects not taking into account Nano (mainnet launched) and IoTA (testnet 2.0 launched). Radix will have to convey its value prepositions to dapp developers and educate why Radix is better than anything else. This work hasn’t been launched yet while its really critical to understand whether dapps developers perceive Radix value or not;
6) Initially Radix token will be available only on Radix DEX therefore don’t expect Binance or Huobi level of liquidity. Not sure whether the team plans to list Radix token on any of the centralized exchanges in the future;
7) Radix headquartered in UK and doesn’t have a legal advisor or team member which might be a troubling issue considering the conservative approach of UK towards regulating cryptocurrencies.
Token Metrics,
Conclusion. Long-term score: A-
Radix brings in promising innovations and competes directly with high-valuation crypto projects such as IoTA, Nano and Hedera HashGraph while there is no info on exact token sale metrics Radix valuation at Go live event will be much less than, for example Hedera. Nevertheless, several delays occurred Radix team is extremely hardworking and being relatively small builds innovative tech that could become one of the most widely used DLT project. Lots of work has been already done, lots of work to be done to stand out in the fierce competition among other A-class high-throughput DAGs and blockchains. We will look into the token economics paper for token sale metrics (and especially seed round bonuses or “interest”) to update this report and come up with a final decision. Anyway, Radix deserves attention and worth following.
How to participate in token sale: no ICO/bounty/airdrop planned. Register your interest at https://radixdlt.typeform.com/to/nyKvMV to be able to purchase Radix tokens at a fixed price - $1 per token during the launch event on the Radix DEX.
Check the complete data at TokenMetrics spreadsheet – https://goo.gl/Bk2J5i
Join us on twitter - https://twitter.com/Token_Metrics
https://t.me/token_metrics/56
