RADIX Ama recap with Crypto Society on 11 March 2021 featuring CEO Piers Ridyard
Piers from Radix
Hello!
Ready when you guys are.
Bilo 2000
Hi Piers; It’s our pleasure to have you with us today. I would like to welcome you here on behalf of our entire community.
Piers from Radix
Thank you for having me!
Bilo 2000
Could we begin with a brief history of yourself and your team, and your roles at RADIX and what you were doing before RADIX?
Piers from Radix
Sure!
Prior to being CEO of Radix I founded a YCombinator company called Surematics that used blockchain to structure complex insurance deals. Before that I had briefly worked in banking and law, including getting my Charter Financial Analysts exam done, and my bachelors of law. Before that I learnt Mandarin Chinese and did a little aerospace engineering. Sort of a strange mix of things that makes crypto very fun and appealing to me.
The rest of the Radix team includes people from Consensys, T-Mobile, Microsoft, UBS, Visa, Nvidia and a bunch of other cool places. The founder of Radix, Dan, previously built the technology that you find in NFC payment terminals as well as helping t-mobile launch their first ever mobile internet product.
Bilo 2000
So I see that you’re an underachiever 😂
Piers from Radix
Hahaha
Bilo 2000
Very impressive!
Piers from Radix
I just say yes a lot
Bilo 2000
How and where did you first encounter crypto?
Piers from Radix
Ethereum. I started mining on the genesis block of Ethereum when it launched as a testnet and then on the mainnet. Hash rate was so low back then you could mine sequential blocks, which was pretty cool.
I then got super into the Ethereum community in London. Went to first Ethereum meetups there, which is where I met Dan and my whole Radix journey started.
Bilo 2000
So you’re a 137 years old in crypto years
Piers from Radix
Pretty much
So old that people coming out with “new stuff” I’m like, well, back in my day (aka 2017)
Bilo 2000
hahaha
An interesting moment in a recent interview you had with Charlie Shrem was when he asked you about how each blockchain basically eventually turns into a plutocracy. What is Radix planning on doing to help prevent that happening to itself?
Piers from Radix
Yea, I cannot give a huge amount of specifics on this yet because we haven’t published it, but here are the outline ideas I think are important
First of all, governance is really tricky. I think the trick is to try and identify who the real groups of stakeholders are in a network (rather than just token holders) and work out ways of measuring their contribution to the ecosystem and then give them a voice accordingly. Examples might include node runners, developers and users of the network. This is all tricky, cutting edge stuff though and even governments struggle to get it right.
Bilo 2000
CS is where exclusive breaking news is always shared during AMA’s — Hop on the train
Piers from Radix
Haha, not on this bit I’m afraid
Bilo 2000
Ok — I’ll try again in a few minutes 🙃
Piers from Radix
Main reason for that is that, right now Radix is not spending a huge amount of time working on governance as we are a layer 1 protocol rather than a decentralised application. Governance decisions in a layer 1 protocol can have much larger implications, including affecting the security or viability of the platform for everyone who is building on top of it. We are approaching this subject with a great amount of caution and will only really attack it in earnest once the protocol design is finished and deployed.
We think it is very important; but we also think it is ok to approach it carefully and slowly if you want it to last and build the right community culture
Bilo 2000
I get it — I understand — But I will try again :)
Piers from Radix
😬😬😬
Bilo 2000
So many people are talking about scalability these days, mostly fuelled by gas costs. One issue I see is that there is a hyper-focus on transactions per second. Other bottlenecks would include finality, and composability, while there is still a need to retain strong decentralisation and security. Which of those would you consider the most important for good “scalability”?
Piers from Radix
It’s funny — composability is one of those things that people are starting to realise really matters, but is only really recently starting to become a watchword for layer 1 protocols. Composability for DeFi basically means that you can take several dApps and do cross-application calls between them in a single block. Flash loans are great examples of this in motion, and it is a big reason that liquidity moves so well and freely inside the DeFi ecosystem.
Bilo 2000
Very true
Piers from Radix
However, the solution to scaling that almost everyone is implementing (Eth 2.0, Polkadot, Avalanche, Near etc.) all break that super important component.
So, while Ethereum is composable it is not scalable, and when it becomes scalable it will loose its composability. Without that DeFi becomes much less interesting
So that is why we made our consensus algorithm specifically work as a cross-shard, atomically composable consensus. This allowed us to retain scalability without breaking composability.
Bilo 2000
Yes — DEFI has propelled ETH quite a ways
Love it
Piers from Radix
It is the only real place that product market fit has been found in public ledgers
I can dive into more detail there if you have any follow ups
Don’t know how technical you want me to go!
Bilo 2000
Feel free to express as you see fit
Piers from Radix
Sure. When building financial infrastructure for the world you are not trying to just beat visa or mastercard or paypal or whatever in terms of throughput. You have to be able to host every single financial application working simultaneously on the same fundamental infrastructure.
If you add to that the fact that every transaction in DeFi also creates multiple sub transactions (a trade on uniswap causes a arb elsewhere) then every transaction is not one, it is many
Bilo 2000
That’s a lot to keep in mind. Very challenging
Piers from Radix
This means that the end state of all of this is millions and millions of transactions per second. Eventually.
So we had to build an infrastructure that could scale to that, but could also store all that data, and still retain cross shard atomicity for financial applications. That is the breakthrough of Radix and what we spent 7 years on R&D for. I’ll leave it there but happy to answer more technical questions at the end.
Feel free to move onto your next question @Bilo_2000
Bilo 2000
Ok thx; Can you tell us about why you thought RADIX needed to be built and what problem it solves?
Piers from Radix
Ah; sure.
Radix is the only decentralized network where developers can build quickly without the constant threat of exploits and hacks, where every improvement gets rewarded, and where scale is never a bottleneck.
Bilo 2000
Excellent concept
Piers from Radix
To break that out into the three value pillars:
1. Build fast and don’t break things
2. Reward everyone who makes it better
3. Allow scale without friction
So, for (1), we all see the hacks on ethereum every day. Millions of dollars are stolen as a result of this huge issue.
It comes down to two things — the EVM and Solidity.
We have created a new way of building DeFi applications, based on programmable finite state machines, the same kind of secure logic you find in nuclear power station control systems. These finite state machines are call components, and they allow developers to build faster with much higher security guarantees.
It means less hacks, and less money spent on things like security audits (although they are still recommended, they are hugely easier)
Bilo 2000
So is it like being able to use prewritten chunks of code written by independent devs for specific purposes and putting them together to achieve a new purpose?
Piers from Radix
Exactly
Like Lego building blocks, where each Lego building block has a very defined, very secure set of functions.
Bilo 2000
That’s really brilliant. so anyone with dev/programing skills can participate and benefit then
Piers from Radix
Yes! This is where the “Reward everyone who makes it better” comes in. We recognize that the only way in which these ecosystems develop is through the incredible efforts of the individual developer and the open source code they create. Right now, if you are an amazing developer but you don’t want to build and launch your own DeFi application, you have no way of getting rewarded for your contributions to the open source code.
On Radix, if you create a great component the community loves and uses, you also get a royalty every time that component is used.
Bilo 2000
Love it! Congrats on thinking of doing this!!! Very briefly, how did RADIX start?
Piers from Radix
Dan Hughes in 2013 thought Bitcoin had some issues so decided to start seeing if he could solve them.
Bilo 2000
is that all? 😂
Piers from Radix
Yeaaa. It was a bigger task than he thought it was going to be!
Bilo 2000
Radix recently announced the GoodFi alliance with some heavy hitters of the blockchain world. AAVE, Chainlink, Messari, etc.…. That’s a pretty exclusive group. Have you been talking with other groups, and are you looking to expand this alliance?
Piers from Radix
Yep, we’re working hard on expanding it. GoodFi’s mission is to get 100m to put at least $1 into DeFi by 2025. This is a fundamentally important thing for everyone in the industry to work on — think of it like getting homes connected to the internet back in 1980. I don’t care what you own, just that you have taken your first step. This is how we get the mainstream into DeFi quicker.
Bilo 2000
❤️
Piers from Radix
If anyone knows any DeFi projects that should join, please do send them to goodfi.com and get them to sign up! Membership is free, the mission helps everyone.
The more hands we have in it, the faster we will build this industry to $1Tn under management.
Education is still the biggest issue.
Bilo 2000
We are all essentially partners in expanding adoption
Piers from Radix
100% — there is so much white space to expand into, and there is so much consumer unhappiness with what is on offer today in CeFi.
All about evangelism.
Anyway, carry on, sorry!
Bilo 2000
As the GoodFi alliance seems to be in-step with the positioning of Radix going for the DEFI angle. In the Charlie Shrem interview, you mention that the Radix Component catalogue was going to be made up of “defi specific components”. The underlying architecture doesn’t limit Radix to be sorely a defi platform. Is this simply what Radix wants to focus on for the early days of the system? Or will there be more flexibility on launch? Or do I have it wrong, and Radix intends to be a defi-only platform?
Piers from Radix
It’s an interesting question for many reasons. A public ledger like Radix can be used for pretty much any applications. However, when you build a community, the shared mission and purpose matters, the shared knowledge matters. It is about bringing together like minded people who can share tools and knowhow and libraries and support each other. If you know what market you are looking to disrupt and why, that becomes a lot easier to build an ecosystem around.
We have actively chosen finance because we believe that the future of finance is decentralised and our ledger and technology is uniquely good at serving that sector.
If people want to use Radix for other stuff, awesome, if we just end up being the place that finance comes and lives, also awesome; but we are probably the best first evangelists around why you would want to use Radix for a specific reason, and that reason is DeFI.
GoodFi exists because it has to. This is not about Radix so much as the DeFi industry. We all need to work harder to get in as many people as possible.
Bilo 2000,
+
Piers from Radix
We love being able to work with all the best people in the industry to bring that about. Everyone wins if we do.
Bilo 2000
You certainly set up the project to do so
Piers from Radix
More coming…
Bilo 2000
Will any of the teams in the GoodFi alliance be building components for the Radix Component catalogue?
👀
Piers from Radix
No comment at this stage.
Soz
Bilo 2000
What is the RADIX token used for? Can you describe the Tokenomics?
Piers from Radix
Sure! The Radix token is a finite supply token that is the fundamental currency of the network for:
1. Paying for transactions
2. Deploying components (smart contracts)
3. Staking
There is a burn on use, meaning that as the throughput of the network increases the total potential supply decreases.
Bilo 2000
That’s good!
Piers from Radix
It also the easiest collateral type to use on the ledger, so we expect a number of DeFi applications to be locking up reasonable proportions of it within the Radix DeFi ecosystem.
Bilo 2000
Thanks for that…So, the betanet is launching soon! What are the biggest challenges leading up to this launch?
Piers from Radix
TESTINGGGGGGG
Just as much of it as you can
And then some more
And then a bit more for luck
Bilo 2000
😂
Piers from Radix
But yea, Betanet launches on the 28th of April — it is the first public chance to run nodes and have the network working in the wild
Bilo 2000
👀
Piers from Radix
We’ll be running the standard set of tests, including extreme scenarios like liveness and safety breaks. Plus making sure all the basic functions like staking and transactions work correctly.
Bilo 2000
A few days ago you had an article you wrote published by CoinTelegraph (congrats!). In it, you discuss the need to make defi accessible to the everyday person, and how education and accessibility are the major bottlenecks to wide adoption. If there is one specific angle that Radix is working on that you see as the most important crux problem that is preventing the bridging of that gap, what would it be?
Piers from Radix
Haha, just the one?
God, there is so much here
Bilo 2000
Feel free — you have all our attention
Piers from Radix
As an industry we are really bad at two things:
1. User centric design
2. Explaining things simply
Bilo 2000
DEFI GOOD — CENTRALIZED BAD — not so hard to explain 😁
Piers from Radix
The entire universe of DeFi applications are so difficult to parse for any non-crypto user
We don’t hold people’s hand in any way
And as a result the entire space is terrifying to someone not hardened
Bilo 2000
This is where Crypto Society comes in
Piers from Radix
Accessibility is a huge issue — so many in crypto thinks Metamask is a well designed product. It SUCKS but we are gaslighted into thinking it is great because everything that came before was even worse
You guys should join goodfi.com — we’d be unstoppable!
:-D
Bilo 2000
Noted @BORGBRAIN
Interestingly enough, you also mentioned the need for a better user experience(accessibility) in the previously mentioned podcast with Charlie Shrem. You said that much of the technical aspects of interacting with the blockchains, like private cryptographic keys, need to be hidden from the user for blockchain to see widespread adoption. I couldn’t agree more. Is Radix looking to address this on a foundational programmatic level, or is this a more surface level problem/implementation? If Radix is addressing this on a base level, how so, and could you elaborate?
Piers from Radix
Great question!
I can give some info here, but not all of it.
So, yes, at base the user experience has to be integrated from the interface all the way down to how the protocol functions.
Right now we think of private keys and accounts as the same thing. They are not and they do not have to be. If you start separating out keys from accounts, such that you can create a much more granular permission stack, and you make the interfaces understand that, then you can build things like social key recovery directly into the protocol without the need for smart contracts. You can create the idea of multi-user accounts, with different permissions. You can abstract away the complexity of key management without losing the self-custody aspect of it.
This is a wholesale change to the way accounts are created on ledgers. Radix is not going to force people to adopt this way though — the old way can be also done, but we believe that these slight shifts in tools that are available to developers will lead to infinitely better user experiences around private key management.
Beyond that, the way users interact with smart contracts also needs to fundamentally change.
Bilo 2000
Really like your vision and your goals
Piers from Radix
We need to surface what we are agreeing to in ways that is human readable. We need to give users more understanding about what things are going to cost and have determinism in the ability to submit actions to the ledger. We need ways in which the user interface can prevent people doing stupid things.
Putting in $1m in gas, and the ledger accepting that? How is that acceptable user design?
Asking a user to agree to a hex string for a contract interaction, how is that acceptable design?
Bilo 2000
Piers. I am really impressed with your enthusiasm and commitment to decentralisation.
Piers from Radix
Thanks!
Bilo 2000
Lukso has been on @BORGBRAIN mind lately when it comes to the erc725 standard, and their universal profiles, which lay at the heart of their network. The concept is to make the user experience better by essentially hiding these things(cryptographic keys, etc.) from the user, and by enabling other ways of retrieving an account(like social proofs). There is so much potential in these new methods for the explosive growth of daily blockchain usage by the average person. They also have brought in Ethereum compatibility. I thought I heard a rumour the other day that someone was planning on building an Ethereum compatibility layer for Radix…. Is this true?
Piers from Radix
Yep, No ether, awesome guys.
Bilo 2000
And to continue with the thought of why I brought up another project. With so many projects in the blockchain space, and so many different groups with different experiences and perspectives working on the same problems, often enough, how do you see this? does Radix try to do everything different from everyone else, or is there a lot of inspiration from the rest of the world of blockchain that helps influence how Radix does stuff, or plans for the future? Kinda like, looking at the rest of blockchain as a sort of RnD repository from which to pull ideas and implementations and whatnot?
Piers from Radix
Absolutely. Nothing is built in isolation. The crypto world is still drawing inspiration from distributed systems work done in the 1980s. Everything here is built on the shoulders of giants.
Bilo 2000
Facts
Piers from Radix
We just took the approach that this is still such a new and young industry that we could take a bit more time to do it properly. We have taken the time to build on the mistakes that trailblazers like Ethereum have done, as well as admire the great strides they have made and use that to help our thinking.
I’m going to have to go shortly (at the top of the hour), but I don’t want to leave if you have some pressing last questions!
Bilo 2000
OK — will cut through some questions: What are you currently working on and can you describe your future roadmap?
Piers from Radix
We are currently working on the Betanet and mainnet release. Mainnet is scheduled for end of Q2 of this year, and then Alexandria is scheduled for Q4. Alexandria is when we start really ramping up the DeFi functionality, you can think of our Q2 release as the foundations for what is to come.
Otherwise, Dan is doing some amazing work with a project called Cassandra
Bilo 2000
With the Radix community incentive program well over halfway through, is there any incentive for token holders not to dump their bags when the program is finished? I mean, outside of the fundamentals of the project itself? Will it coincide with the opening of Radix mainnet staking?
Piers from Radix
More or less — there will be a gap between the two as the LP program winds down and people start the process of transitioning for mainnet. More details of that will be released closer to the time, but the staking rewards for the mainnet are looking pretty healthy right now.
Bilo 2000
We have many more questions for you but understand the time limitations. so we will wrap it up here. Do you wish to let us know anything else that was not covered in the questions above?
Piers from Radix
Fundamentally we don’t want to have an overlap otherwise it creates a counter incentive to people securing the Radix mainnet, which is pretty important!
Bilo 2000
Thank you for your time in answering our questions here today. We are all very appreciative of your time and of the answers you have provided.
With this, we will open up the chat for those who wish to personally thank you for your time with us here today.
