
Radix DLT – Decentralized Ledger Technology - pcr910303
https://www.radixdlt.com
======
DocSavage
Here’s a whitepaper on the underlying technology:

[https://docs.radixdlt.com/alpha/learn/whitepapers/tempo](https://docs.radixdlt.com/alpha/learn/whitepapers/tempo)

The conclusion in the paper:

“This paper has proposed a method for determining total order of events within
a distributed system, without relying on trust, that is scalable, efficient
and agnostic to its operating environment. To reduce overhead and increase
performance, our solution defines a structured, shardable architecture that
limits state transfer information to only members of the network that need it.
A peer-to peer network provides the means for communication and information
routing via a reliable and robust gossip protocol. Nodes maintain a logical
clock when witnessing events and periodically produce a tamper-proof
commitment representing those events. When witnessing events, nodes
collaborate to create Temporal Proofs which contain verifiable space-time
coordinates which are used to construct vector clocks and determine when an
event was first seen by the network. Nodes can join and leave the network at
will and rely on detectable consistency anomalies to synchronize and bring
them up to date.”

The periodically produced commitment log is done with a Merkle tree.

~~~
EGreg
You don’t need verifiable time-space coordinates. You just need the topology
of connections. We came up with largely the same thing two years ago:

[https://intercoin.org/technology.pdf](https://intercoin.org/technology.pdf)

We call it the Permissionless Timestamping Network and it is one optional
component of a cryptocurrency system - but can be used for tons of purposes
and is very easy for anyone to join. And since all connections are voluntary,
there is no question of overwhelming any nodes either. Pure win :)

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tryptophan
I quote the founder of ethereum(one of the very few people I trust to actually
not be scammer and be level-headed about blockchain stuff):

>Right. The claim that a mere DAG structure can solve the scalability trilemma
is very false. You need to find a way to ensure that not every node needs to
verify each transaction.I don't understand why they can't just group
transactions into blocks and then have the DAG structure be over blocks,
letting clients verify individual blocks with fraud proofs and data
availability proofs. That would give them quadratic sharding right there.IMO
the desire some people have to make "blockless" consensus algorithms is a huge
mistake and step backwards; the way to get scalability is to have more layers
of packaging.

>In a sharded chain, scalability of data[storing all the tx data] is going up
a lot, scalability of computation[validating all income transactions] is going
up but less than scalability of data (and additionally, sharding inherently
makes latency of computation go up[nodes must communicate more]), and
scalability of state[part of validating transactions - every node must know if
a cross-shard tx is valid] is, in the current designs, not going up at all.

Looks like radix is addressing the data salability issue here, and maybe
computation. Salability of state - not sure how this is addressed, if at
all(will state be sharded as well?). There is nothing magical about DAGs vs
blockchains.

Their webpages and whitepaper are so full of buzz terms that its hard to
understand what they are actually doing. Some things are too high level,
others are too dumbed down. All sorts of crap about atoms and constraints. 0
relevant explanation as to how it solves scaling better than ethereum's plan.

Also what is up with all the hyperbolic claims? 17 sextillion shards? Why
would that ever be a good idea? How would you even start to maintain state
across that? My BS detector is beeping.

~~~
DocSavage
Scalability of state seems to be addressed by minimizing the need for nodes to
retain the full state, and the main mechanism is shards. From whitepaper: “A
further benefit is that any Atom that performs an inter-shard transfer is
present in both the previous owner's and new owner's shards. This, in part,
eliminates the need for a global state and mitigates any expensive inter-shard
state verification operations needed to prevent "double spends".”

I’ve only skimmed the whitepaper and the consensus check against conflicts
seems to be a series of methods with escalating computational cost. I think
they assume Atoms (e.g., Transfer Atoms) won’t grow so big that they span
massive numbers of shards.

I agree about the proliferation of buzzwords. Why not use Ledger instead of
“Universe”?

Not sure how the eventual consistency model works in an economic context,
although that’s how ATMs work.

~~~
jmeyer2k
Sharding in this context is different from the sharding Vitalik is talking
about.

In their whitepaper, they're talking about splitting up the state storage so
that nodes don't need to retain the full state.

However, Vitalik is talking about splitting up the computation so that all
nodes don't need to verify every single transaction.

ETH 2.0 (or Phore Synapse which I work on), splits the chain into many
different "shards" which are basically lower-level blockchains. Then,
validators get assigned various tasks to validate these subchains. (Verify
these 50 blocks are valid). There are also mechanisms for ensuring that
somebody stores blockchain history/state for a certain amount of time (proof-
of-custody).

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marknadal
A Radix tree is definitely the right way to go, something we've been doing for
years (gun.eco/docs/RAD).

They seem to be claiming global consistency tho, which is a much harder claim
to achieve especially if you're heavily sharding. Worse if you are in a
trustless system. Any fast answers as to what the solution is here?

~~~
ChainOfFools
I don't think there will be any useful answers, fast or otherwise, until a
definition of the term decentralized is settled on which incorporates a
fundamental requirement that the system so labeled be always tending toward
greater decentralization by default, rather than (as most systems do, all
blockchain projects included) tending to converge toward centralized leverage
over time.

the key seems to be that there has to exist, on the part of all members of the
group seeking to collectively optimize their behaviors to foster some shared
set of values, an established and non-negotiable priority of decentralization
over (even at the expense of) every other value (cost, speed, personal gain).
Inevitably this priority becomes compromised as decentralization is 1. a
poorly defined value to start with and 2. accrues benefits that are local to
the group but non-local to its individual participants. As the group grows
this dilution of its value, manifest as an increasing remoteness to the
interests of each individual it depends on for support, becomes a hindrance to
its support vs., say, transaction speed or cost or personal gain.

one of the very rare nontrivial examples of such a system would be the pre-
capetian custom of equal division of estate inheritance in Merovingian France,
vs. the primogeniture commonly practiced nearly everywhere else. And this too
eventually succumbed to its own success, as the frankish state was
"decentralized" due to this custom, its identity dematerialized and its
integrity made vulnerable to regional rivals.

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Witos89
Also, a bit on the test proving scalability (over 1MTPS using the BTC
blockchain) [https://www.radixdlt.com/post/test-method-
part1/](https://www.radixdlt.com/post/test-method-part1/) and
[https://www.radixdlt.com/post/test-method-
part2/](https://www.radixdlt.com/post/test-method-part2/)

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truth_seeker
This is a nice high-level overview of Tech behind Radix and why blochchain and
directed acyclic graph cant scale.

[https://www.radixdlt.com/developers/technology/](https://www.radixdlt.com/developers/technology/)

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Witos89
Just dropping in to comment on the 'light on details' whitepaper - the team is
currently working on an updated Tempo whitepaper, covering the consensus in
much more detail.

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codetrotter
Is it going to be open source or not?

~~~
a9i
They say in the future, and only partially:
[https://docs.radixdlt.com/alpha/learn/faq#is-radix-open-
sour...](https://docs.radixdlt.com/alpha/learn/faq#is-radix-open-source) For
me is a STOP signal.

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wslh
We should wait the peer reviews.

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waynenilsen
If it is a DLT without blockchain is it DAG based or something else like
maidsafe? Please a quick tldr on what the tech is on the homepage would be
great

~~~
Witos89
It's something else - a new consensus algorithm, called Tempo. In one sentence
- it's reactive, rather than proactive, therefore easily scalable. Based on
the passage of logical time, but there's of course much more detail to it.

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DJBunnies
Pretty light on details, code.

