We are living in a time of darkness and paradox in the crypto market. We want to move into the mainstream, but we invest in a system that does not meet the minimum requirements of a critical security system and that delegates everything. As if Fiat currency were not enough, we still have the Mainstream Paradox to break.
But we, the Fundamento Cripto team, will always support Radix, especially here in Brazil, and we truly want to change the course of history when we think about individual sovereignty and finances. Radix is part of our daily lives, because in every study we do of other projects, we have Radix as a benchmark. Radix always stands out by a long way from other projects for many reasons, many of which are in this article.
We are still a voice that is rarely heard, but we are in no hurry, because we know that a disruptive technology comes with a change in the culture of its members, and this takes time.
We are still few and we will not give up, because we already understand that Radix is inevitable!
Always a pleasure to have you laying it down simply for us Dan.
Regardless of all the rest we have to deal with in crypto - and it's a tremendous amount of shit every day - I worry not for Radix and will keep on commited to help out, in my small way, in bringing this tech stack to fruition, to build us all a better future.
Cornerstones that stand the trials of time are not layed down every day but rather so often, as they are placed precisely and with the optimal traits to play it out in their role until the day they may eventually be replaced for a better solution.
I have no doubt Radix's tech is in that category, of being a cornerstone of the future.
This article is a must-read for everyone in the crypto space. Your 12 years of experience shine through every word. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and taking DLT technology to the next level! 🚀
As a complete non techie this is why I bought into Radix. Dans unwillingness to compromise his vision. That and the foresight to see the road blocks in the future that no other crypto enterprise seems willing to acknowledge. If I mention the parking lot known as the M25 am sure Dan gets the analogy.
Well, Dan I remember chatting with you on BitcoinTalk back in July 2013. I was amazed then on how your vision allowed to use sub-nets that would sync back to the global network ... I also remember each of your false starts on the various versions above.
But this post with all of the documented diagrams and non-technical descriptions of why the previous versions were just not good enough, brought better understanding to the Old-Fart.
Here is a summary that I came up with after reading this comment in a message exchange elsewhere.
"..the single person having a eureka moment is hollywood, and is incredibly rare. in the 21st century it mostly occurs in extremely hard to understand fields such as quantum mechanics or theoretical physics.."
I'm repeating it because other important economic and social dimensions are involved.
Bottleneck —> (leads to seeing) the advantage of treating execution as an intent rather than processing transactions directly in the consensus process.
In other words, there is a separation of concerns between processing transactions and the consensus process.
This was a simplification or an abstraction, allowing logical decomposition.
Dan then rejected these three alternatives:
Beacon Chain. Turning to a central chain for definitive signals.
Dynamic Sharding. Starting with a single chain and sharding it as the network grows.
Intra-validator sharding, in which a network-facing validator acts as a load balancer and orchestrator for a bunch of secondary validators behind it, was also rejected.
Finally, he arrived at a state-sharded ledger in which each shard maintained only a portion of the full state.
"The numerous consensus processes can operate near their maximum throughput potential for prolonged periods of time with the agreed state transitions forming a directed acyclic graph (DAG) that references all necessary consensus processes and their quorum outputs."
—
This solution is topologically still a DAG, but the quoted paragraph roughly describes how it works.
So while it is generally true that great, fundamental research takes, well a lot of research and a lot of resources, it is also possible for an individual to sit down with a problem and patiently work through it.
Dan was helped by having many alternatives to hand, which he could test against.
It also required a leap of imagination to set very ambitious goals that he would not compromise.
This helped him organise his thoughts and the conceptual hierarchy to make the chain possible.
But the contrast between big company R&D is interesting.
A huge percentage of the very expensive R&D big companies get discarded for various reasons.
Not least, simply because that is just not where their market is at the moment.
What has happened with Radix, perhaps most of the crypto world, is that the idea of market need is circumvented.
Dan's imaginative leap sets Radix far in the future.
Even if Xi'an were released tomorrow, there would be no immediate market, and the lack of a market could still spell its death.
This problem has been compounded, perhaps exploited, by the idea that discussing the actual possible use of this technology in any detail may involve some legal risk.
Radix has a strong bias towards the thrust of technology, as exemplified by Dan.
I very much doubt he will sketch out use cases in his SubStack except in the most vague terms.
But Dan and others repeatedly comment in this way:
"If networks like Bitcoin were to handle programmable money and decentralized applications, the scalability demands would skyrocket. We're talking tens of thousands of transactions per second (which would sound obvious today), not just a few thousand."
Of course, other factors, such as bots and arbitrage, are at play here.
The field of smart contracts has not been factored in, as these are also "bots" of sorts.
Excellent article!
We are living in a time of darkness and paradox in the crypto market. We want to move into the mainstream, but we invest in a system that does not meet the minimum requirements of a critical security system and that delegates everything. As if Fiat currency were not enough, we still have the Mainstream Paradox to break.
But we, the Fundamento Cripto team, will always support Radix, especially here in Brazil, and we truly want to change the course of history when we think about individual sovereignty and finances. Radix is part of our daily lives, because in every study we do of other projects, we have Radix as a benchmark. Radix always stands out by a long way from other projects for many reasons, many of which are in this article.
We are still a voice that is rarely heard, but we are in no hurry, because we know that a disruptive technology comes with a change in the culture of its members, and this takes time.
We are still few and we will not give up, because we already understand that Radix is inevitable!
Forward Radix, always!
This was the best explanation I have heard yet. Great article Dan. Thank you for making it readable for a novice like me.
Always a pleasure to have you laying it down simply for us Dan.
Regardless of all the rest we have to deal with in crypto - and it's a tremendous amount of shit every day - I worry not for Radix and will keep on commited to help out, in my small way, in bringing this tech stack to fruition, to build us all a better future.
Cornerstones that stand the trials of time are not layed down every day but rather so often, as they are placed precisely and with the optimal traits to play it out in their role until the day they may eventually be replaced for a better solution.
I have no doubt Radix's tech is in that category, of being a cornerstone of the future.
This article is a must-read for everyone in the crypto space. Your 12 years of experience shine through every word. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and taking DLT technology to the next level! 🚀
As a complete non techie this is why I bought into Radix. Dans unwillingness to compromise his vision. That and the foresight to see the road blocks in the future that no other crypto enterprise seems willing to acknowledge. If I mention the parking lot known as the M25 am sure Dan gets the analogy.
Well, Dan I remember chatting with you on BitcoinTalk back in July 2013. I was amazed then on how your vision allowed to use sub-nets that would sync back to the global network ... I also remember each of your false starts on the various versions above.
But this post with all of the documented diagrams and non-technical descriptions of why the previous versions were just not good enough, brought better understanding to the Old-Fart.
Loid
muito legal quanto mais estudo e acompanho a blockchain, mais encantado fico, muito obrigado pelo trabalho!! :)
muito legal quanto mais estudo e acompanho a blockchain, mais encantado fico, muito obrigado pelo trabalho!! :)
Still finding my way around.
But I've started on SubStack.
https://substack.com/profile/869522-this-saltiela/note/c-60409681?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=imxe
Here is a summary that I came up with after reading this comment in a message exchange elsewhere.
"..the single person having a eureka moment is hollywood, and is incredibly rare. in the 21st century it mostly occurs in extremely hard to understand fields such as quantum mechanics or theoretical physics.."
I'm repeating it because other important economic and social dimensions are involved.
Please bear with me.
Another short post from yours truly.
I don't think the above statement is right.
I have just glanced through Dan's Why Sharding?
Here:
Exploring Alternative Solutions
Starting off with Block Trees https://danxrd.substack.com/i/145944194/
Block Tree —> DAG —> CAST —> Bottleneck
Bottleneck —> (leads to seeing) the advantage of treating execution as an intent rather than processing transactions directly in the consensus process.
In other words, there is a separation of concerns between processing transactions and the consensus process.
This was a simplification or an abstraction, allowing logical decomposition.
Dan then rejected these three alternatives:
Beacon Chain. Turning to a central chain for definitive signals.
Dynamic Sharding. Starting with a single chain and sharding it as the network grows.
Intra-validator sharding, in which a network-facing validator acts as a load balancer and orchestrator for a bunch of secondary validators behind it, was also rejected.
Finally, he arrived at a state-sharded ledger in which each shard maintained only a portion of the full state.
"The numerous consensus processes can operate near their maximum throughput potential for prolonged periods of time with the agreed state transitions forming a directed acyclic graph (DAG) that references all necessary consensus processes and their quorum outputs."
—
This solution is topologically still a DAG, but the quoted paragraph roughly describes how it works.
So while it is generally true that great, fundamental research takes, well a lot of research and a lot of resources, it is also possible for an individual to sit down with a problem and patiently work through it.
Dan was helped by having many alternatives to hand, which he could test against.
It also required a leap of imagination to set very ambitious goals that he would not compromise.
This helped him organise his thoughts and the conceptual hierarchy to make the chain possible.
But the contrast between big company R&D is interesting.
A huge percentage of the very expensive R&D big companies get discarded for various reasons.
Not least, simply because that is just not where their market is at the moment.
What has happened with Radix, perhaps most of the crypto world, is that the idea of market need is circumvented.
Dan's imaginative leap sets Radix far in the future.
Even if Xi'an were released tomorrow, there would be no immediate market, and the lack of a market could still spell its death.
This problem has been compounded, perhaps exploited, by the idea that discussing the actual possible use of this technology in any detail may involve some legal risk.
Radix has a strong bias towards the thrust of technology, as exemplified by Dan.
I very much doubt he will sketch out use cases in his SubStack except in the most vague terms.
But Dan and others repeatedly comment in this way:
"If networks like Bitcoin were to handle programmable money and decentralized applications, the scalability demands would skyrocket. We're talking tens of thousands of transactions per second (which would sound obvious today), not just a few thousand."
Of course, other factors, such as bots and arbitrage, are at play here.
The field of smart contracts has not been factored in, as these are also "bots" of sorts.
But enough for now.