December 21, 2022

Thanks to technology, living has never been easier than it is today.
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With tech continuing to supplement the way we operate important tasks in our day-to-day lives, increased tech dependency for important things like our finances has generated a need for more complex routes of access to digital accounts, like long-winded passwords and authenticator apps. While this can significantly reduce risk of exploitation, it also often results in increased accessibility issues for users.

Forgetting passwords can be a headache, but with most commonly-used products today, centrally-operated Web2 applications can easily allow users to resolve log-in dilemmas through a number of recovery measures, like two-factor authentication and helpdesk operators.

While, in the Web2 world, being a consumer may never have been easier than it is today, that is not true for Web3. The current Web3 user experience is like going back to a time when only really hard-core, tech-savvy users could use the internet. It makes anyone looking to make the transition to decentralized finance think twice before even giving it a try — and that’s a big problem. As soon as a user creates an account on a decentralized platform today, years of advancement in user experience across the Web2 space simply vanishes, when it comes to account access and recovery.

Seed Phrases Will Never Enable Mass Adoption

One of the biggest advantages of decentralized finance (DeFi) is the notion of ‘self-custody’ for account management, which, on most existing Web3 networks — like Ethereum — comes in the form of private keys and public keys. These private keys are most often manually backed up using something called a “seed phrase”. While seed phrases are a step in the right direction for self-custody and decentralizing the future financial landscape, a huge downfall tied to seed phrases is the incredibly poor user experience they create.

Today, when most users set up a new wallet, they’re supplied with a ‘seed phrase’ — a randomly generated list of words that can be used to recover access to their account should the need ever arise. To ensure users have sole ownership of their account, seed phrases play a fundamental role in Web3. The problem though, is that they’re really, *really* impractical.

Because a seed phrase can be used to gain complete control of an account, it’s highly recommended that users store a backup copy of their seed phrases offline (to avoid hacks and exploits), and put that backup in a secret place where nobody will ever find it — perhaps even splitting it up, so that if it is found, the person still can’t gain access. If you don’t store it, or, you misspell it, or you misplace it, or your house gets set on fire (you get where this is going), you may lose access to your account permanently. TL;DR, losing your seed phrase can mean your assets are lost forever.

And, the risk with seed phrases doesn’t end with losing your backup. While they offer a thick layer of account protection — there are still a number of hacks and exploits taking place on a regular basis that succeed through phishing and stealing account seed phrases. The thing is, even if you’re incredibly careful with your seed phrase, like keeping it recorded on a steel plate and locked away in a hidden crypt, assets in your account are still vulnerable when you do need to legitimately access them.

By this point, many would-be token holders have more than enough reason not to chuck their life savings into a Web3 wallet (and rightly so), yet, even the savviest of token holders possess some level of anxiety about their seed phases — often taking extreme measures (like dispersing assets across multiple wallets) to ensure their livelihoods won’t be gone in a flash.

While the system of seed phrase backup might be hailed as the hero of DeFi today thanks to their ability to help keep accounts truly decentralized, the reality is, they’ll never be fit to support the demands of a global userbase or enable Web3 to truly become mainstream.

Radix Smart Accounts Will Provide the Solution

On Radix, seed phrase-based backup of private keys will no longer be a required part of the user experience (although for those that want to, they can of course still use one). At #RadFi2022, the minds behind Radix unveiled a radically different approach — one that, once fully launched, will finally enable an infrastructure that can provide a Web3 user experience that anyone can use. In Q2 2023, the Babylon version of the Radix Network will go public, launching a range of innovative features, set to change the way Web3 works forever.

‘Smart Accounts’ will be a fundamental feature of the Radix Network at the 2023 network launch of Babylon. Smart Accounts are an on-ledger container for assets that have logic to enable user-configured on-ledger multi-factor control and/or social recovery.

On networks like Ethereum, ‘accounts’ are essentially just created from a user’s public key, meaning losing your private key loses all of the assets controlled by that ‘account’. On Radix, Smart Accounts are an actual component on the ledger which has the ability to function similarly to a Smart Contract — meaning they have more flexibility to meet the demands and needs of users.

Compared to an all-or-nothing seed phrase, Smart Accounts enable multiple factors as a way to recover your account, meaning users can access their account through a variety of options — including keys held in the Radix Wallet on a user’s phone, authenticator devices (such as a Yubikey), ledger hardware wallets, and 3rd party recovery services. In addition, features like ‘social recovery’, which allows users to nominate a trusted person to support with wallet recovery, enable users to set up extra account recovery in the case that primary digital access routes are unavailable. This means they always have multiple routes into their account, giving them peace of mind that their assets are always retrievable.

For the first time in Web3, users can choose what security measures they apply to their accounts and never have to rely on Seed Phrases for account backup and recovery again. While Smart Accounts can still allow the use of seed phrases, they remove the requirement for the user to rely on them, even for a fully non-custodial wallet like the Radix Wallet.

With this innovative technology, Smart Accounts will enable users to confidently use a Web3 wallet as easily as they access their go-to banking apps today… except without any intermediary or centralized authority having the final say in what you can and can’t do with your assets.

Smart Account home screen on the Radix Wallet that will launch in 2023

Expecting consumers on a global scale to sacrifice and compromise the comforts of their day-to-day will simply never work. Comfort aside, the risks of total loss aligned with all-or-nothing seed phrases are far too dangerous to ever support a wider economic shift for the financial industry as a whole.

If we want Web3 to truly scale for mainstream adoption, we need to make the experience radically better.

With Smart Accounts and the Radix Wallet, it’s about to be.

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At #RadFi2022, the team behind Radix unveiled a radically new chapter for Web3. The Radix Wallet — set to launch with Babylon in 2023 — is the first ever Web3 wallet built for a mainstream market. Still not convinced? Watch the Radix Wallet Keynote to learn more about its revolutionary technology and features like Smart Accounts here. To read more about Smart Accounts head here.

Originally published at https://www.radixdlt.com.

Betanet is live!

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Radvocates and Scryptonauts rejoice, Betanet is officially live! This long-awaited moment is the first integration of all the major elements of the full stack for DeFi, including an early developer preview of the all-new Radix Wallet for Babylon.

The Babylon Betanet is all about letting our developer community start getting serious about building dApps intended for release at the Babylon Mainnet update in Q2 2023. We’re releasing not just the test network for development, but a set of updates and new tools for devs to dig into.

If you’re not a developer, nothing changes for you today. The Olympia network and the current Radix Desktop Wallet will keep running right up until the Babylon Mainnet update. Stay tuned for the building momentum of activity from our amazing developer community, working on creating the next generation of web3 apps for you.

If you’re already a member of our dev community, or taking the opportunity now to get started, let’s jump right in and see what you’ll find inside the box.

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Scrypto v0.7

The big push for Scrypto this release was to get as close to feature complete as possible, in order to take the leash off any projects which were awaiting a promised but undelivered capability. You can check out a lengthier list of new additions in the release notes, but here are some notable highlights:

• Royalties — developers may set costs for the use of their blueprints and components, which the network will automatically collect on their behalf.
• Recallable tokens — the native resources implementation has been expanded to permit developers to optionally specify rules under which a token can be taken from its owner, and these rules will automatically be exposed to consumers like wallets. This enables whole new classes of functionality for regulated tokens, membership NFTs, and projects that need a controlled ecosystem for their assets, while ensuring that users are armed with knowledge about which tokens can be recalled.
• Real-world time — developers have been clamoring for the availability of wall-clock time since the Alexandria preview event over a year ago, and a first implementation has shipped with Betanet. The mechanics of how network time works is a deep topic, one that is particularly important for some financial applications, and you can expect detailed documentation to appear over the coming months.

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There’s still an assortment of smaller items and fit-and-finish work to do, but with all the big ticket items now present in Scrypto, the focus for the language for the next few months will be on making everything as intuitive and frictionless as possible. The team will be listening closely to the developer community to discover any pain points or awkward designs, ensuring that development on Radix isn’t just best-in-class for smart contracts, but a completely delightful experience from the first “hello world” steps all the way through to safe production applications.

→ Learn more about Scrypto v0.7

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Radix Wallet & Connector extension developer preview

Betanet enables the first public test of the mobile Wallet connection and signing workflow shown at RadFi. Developers can download an iOS preview of the Wallet from TestFlight as well as a new browser extension to enable the connection between desktop and mobile. Please note that this early release is very much focused on developer needs for successfully passing and signing transactions, and isn’t yet suitable for general users who just want to get a feel for the Wallet experience.

Part of the Wallet implementation strategy is for iOS to be the “pathfinder” implementation to shake ideas out, with Android following behind as things are settled. Consequently, an Android preview release is not available on Betanet launch day, but one will be released during Betanet.

If you’re eager to get started on development using the preview Wallet, you can jump straight to a guide to installing and using the Radix Wallet preview here.

→ See the vision for the Radix Wallet on RadFi

→ Jump to the getting started guide

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Radix Dashboard preview

Radix Dashboard is a dApp website that will replace the Radix Explorer at Babylon launch. It includes typical explorer functionality like searches on accounts, transactions, and more — but also will let users connect their Radix wallet and use a variety of helpful utilities. The Betanet release of the site is a very early form, and is focused on some core searches and utilities for developer use. The full plans for Babylon release and beyond are still under wraps, but you can check out the first version here.

→ Check out the Radix Dashboard

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Web developer SDKs

Naturally, frontends are going to need to communicate with the Radix Wallet, and there’s a Wallet SDK just for that purpose. The Wallet SDK also contains a very basic manifest builder, providing a JavaScript interface for manifest generation that meets the most common needs, as well as the ability to request account addresses from the Wallet. Please see the README for an explanation of where the SDK is headed, and you can start working with the basic features now.

There’s also a convenient √ Connect Button UI element that acts as a useful wrapper for the Wallet SDK.

→ Check out the Wallet SDK documentation

→ Check out the √ Connect Button

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Querying ledger state is done via the Gateway API, which has undergone an overhaul since Alphanet. The Gateway interface is still under development, so please don’t hesitate to head over to Discord and provide your feedback about what sorts of queries would be most useful to you. As always, laying out a concrete use case is the best way to present a need.

→ Jump to the Gateway SDK

→ See the Babylon Gateway API specification

→ Join the Discord community and give feedback in #scrypto

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Radix Engine Toolkit

Some adventurous community devs have already encountered Scrypto Binary Object Representation (SBOR), which is a custom encoding used by multiple parts of the Babylon tech stack, and an SBOR-encoded transaction manifest is what is actually submitted to the network to run. To spare developers from having to learn and implement the intricacies of SBOR, the Radix Engine Toolkit is now available for anyone to use. This nifty tool handles encoding and decoding for you, converts transaction manifests between JSON and string representations, and leaves your breath minty fresh!

→ Learn more about the Radix Engine Toolkit

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New Babylon-centric technical documentation site

In preparation for Babylon, a new technical documentation site focused solely on Babylon concepts is now live. Information about the current Olympia network will remain at the main docs site until the mainnet upgrade. Much remains to be filled in, but have a look through for the latest Scrypto documentation, as well as getting started guides for dApp developers, information on the Radix Wallet, links to the various libraries and APIs for dApp developers, and more.

→ Check out the new Babylon Tech Docs site

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What’s Next

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There will be additional Betanet releases in the coming months, either to enable features that didn’t quite make the launch date or to adjust interfaces in response to community feedback.

Community node running will open up in late January or early February, and messages have already gone out to existing validators seeking volunteers to join the testing pool.

Explanations of the mechanics of key Babylon concepts like smart accounts will be trickling out, along with other updates to the completely Babylon-focused documentation site.

And, of course, an Android preview of the Wallet will be made available as soon as it’s ready.

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Betanet Lightning Q&A

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Does Betanet have “real” tokens and applications on it that will become part of mainnet?

No, Betanet is strictly a test network, and everything on it will eventually vanish.

Will Betanet experience ledger resets during operation? Can my data on it be wiped?

Yes and yes. New Betanet releases may include a reset of the ledger.

When will Betanet run until?

Betanet will be shut down after the release of RCnet, just as Alphanet is now being shut down with the release of Betanet.

When is the Android Wallet expected to reach parity with the iOS Wallet?

Not until the Babylon mainnet upgrade.

When will Scrypto 1.0 be released?

Concurrent with the mainnet upgrade, although user-facing changes are planned to end with the release of RCnet.

Can I still test Scrypto locally?

Of course! The Radix Engine Simulator isn’t going anywhere, and will continue to be available.

Have the fee tables been updated since Alphanet?

No, fees are in the midst of a research effort and should still be treated as random numbers which have no relation to what actual costs will be.

Why don’t I see the Radix Wallet on the App Store/Google Play Store?

Prior to the mainnet upgrade, both applications will be distributed through their respective platform’s testing process via an invite link for developer use.

Where’s the Babylon desktop wallet?

Babylon Wallet development is strictly mobile first, and no desktop-native version is under development at this time. Check out RadFi or the related roundtable discussion to learn more about this, and about how the mobile app still lets you interact with DeFi on desktop!

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Babylon is Coming

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It’s hard to believe that it’s only been a single year since the release of Alexandria, the first glimpse of a radically different way to develop for Web3 and DeFi. The evolution of both Scrypto and the Radix Engine in 12 short months is nothing short of staggering, and the amazing output of the burgeoning Scrypto developer community has, incredibly, already dramatically exceeded the output that other networks have burned millions and millions of dollars to achieve. And all this before smart contracts are live on the network!

Add in crypto’s first mainstream-ready wallet experience (watch RadFi, if you missed it!), and Babylon is nothing short of a revolution for users, developers, and entrepreneurs. It’s such a game-changer that the naysayers have retreated to claiming that the whole thing is vaporware and “too good to be true, won’t ever ship.” Well, it’s time to tell them the bad news — Babylon is right on schedule. Let’s get building.

Originally published at https://www.radixdlt.com.

Along with the Babylon Betanet test network release, an early Betanet-only preview version of the Radix Wallet is now available. This wallet is offered specifically to support developers who are building on betanet, preparing for the big Babylon mainnet upgrade.

The Radix Wallet preview mobile app includes the core pieces of functionality needed to let developers start building and testing full Web3 and DeFi dApps that work smoothly with the Radix Wallet.

If you’re a Radix developer, or thinking about digging in, let’s talk about how the Radix Wallet relates to dApps you create and how you can start using the Radix Wallet developer preview now.

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The Radix Wallet and dApps

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The Radix Wallet is a crucial enabler of great user experience for Web3 and DeFi dApps on Radix.

First, the Radix Wallet is designed as a trusted point of personal control for the user. It is a mobile app where users can easily and confidently view and manage all of their accounts and assets “on ledger” on the Radix Network, as well as their Personas, personal data, and various preferences held “off ledger” locally in the app. It makes it easy for users to configure and use the multi-factor account features of the Radix Network that give users great security while not having to deal with seed phrases or passwords.

Even more importantly, the Radix Wallet is designed to let users connect to a limitless variety of dApps that developers (like you!) will create. With it, users can instantly sign in and make the contents of their wallet selectively available to your dApp, however they wish. It is designed to “get out of the way” and let you create whatever user experience you imagine, while relying on the wallet to represent the user and what they own.

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So for you to build a user-facing dApp for the Radix network, you should build your dApp’s website frontend to interact with the Radix Wallet for things like logging users in using Personas, requesting account information, requesting pieces of personal data, and of course proposing transaction for the user to review and submit to the Radix Network.

The developer preview of the Radix Wallet mobile app gives you the essential features and interfaces for you to start testing these interactions with your dApp frontends, using a variety of provided tools and libraries.

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What Works and What’s Coming

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The first developer preview version of the Radix Wallet for betanet includes these essential features:

• Create accounts on the Radix Betanet network
• See tokens and NFTs held in accounts
• Handle one-time requests from dApps for account addresses
• Handle receiving transactions from dApps, and signing/submitting them
• Automatic addition of a fee-locking instruction to transaction manifests from dApps
• Link the wallet to a Radix Wallet Connector browser extension, for interacting with desktop dApps (via Radix Connect)

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The user experience for even these functions is far from complete. For example, initially transaction manifests are shown as raw text in the wallet, rather than using the intended nice preview UI with the ability to set guarantees and more. Errors are passed through unfiltered. You may experience crashes. But what is present should be sufficient to confidently get started building.

It is expected that some developer-oriented features are coming to the preview wallet during the betanet and RCnet period. Some that are particularly high on the list for developers are:

• Handling requests for Persona logins, and ongoing permission to account and personal data
• Better transaction previews
• Better asset information display

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Not all features shown during our Web3 UX vision demo at RadFi will make the v1.0 release of the Radix Wallet at the Babylon Mainnet upgrade in Q2 2023 — but many of the most essential certainly will. And we’re certain v1.0 will provide a compelling first user experience for the public when using it to connect to your dApps.

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How to Get Started

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If you’re ready to start building dApps on Radix, a great place to start is our developer’s hub website. Or you may want to head straight to our technical documentation where you’ll find guides on What is a dApp on Radix?, Building Your First Scrypto Component, and more.

To get access to the Radix Wallet preview, sign up here with your email address to receive an invitation link.

(If you’re waiting for an Android release, go ahead and sign up, and we’ll let you know as soon as available.)

Then, check out instructions for Wallet installation and usage.

Join the Discord #Scrypto channel to ask questions, get help and share your experience.

Originally published at https://www.radixdlt.com.

As we start the new year afresh, Radix is kicking things off with a bang at CES 2023, January 5–8.

2022 has been a challenging year for the tech sector, paving the way for a period of growth and opportunity as we look to the future. Following a year of monumental development for the Radix mission, the team at RDX Works is gearing things up a notch as we progress toward the milestone launch of Babylon in Q2 2023.

From January 5–8, Radix will share the vision for a radically better financial future at CES 2023. Hosted in Las Vegas, the event will be the global center for groundbreaking technology & innovation, with over 100,000 set to attend and more than 2,400 industry-leading technologies exhibiting. This year’s event marks one of the biggest the tech industry has seen post-pandemic.

This world-leading event will host thought leaders, industry giants, and major brands over the four days, and — from AR to AI — will have focus sessions fit for just about every aspect of modern technology.

Want to find out more? Find the 4-day agenda here.

With several seminars throughout the event putting a hard focus on Web3 and Crypto, the Radix booth — situated in the Main hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center — will generate substantial opportunity for tens to hundreds of thousands interested in how DeFi is finally about to change the financial landscape for good.

This year, the Radix booth will be a digital-only experience while the RDX team continues to focus on building a radically better future for finance. If you’re headed to CES 2023 or know someone who is, be sure to head to booth 17992 to learn more about the Radix mission and how Radix is about to give crypto the refresh it’s long needed.

As the team continues to build momentum on the road to Babylon, CES will be the first of many upcoming events on the Radix calendar this year — driving the financial paradigm shift, taking DeFi mainstream, and sharing the ‘Radix Revelation’ on a global scale.

Radix is bringing DeFi to the masses, and if you’re headed to Vegas — you’re about to find out how.

Interested in joining Radix’s next venture? Keep an eye on the events page to find out what else is coming up, or sign up to the Radix newsletter for regular Radix updates.

Originally published at https://www.radixdlt.com.

In today’s digital era, banking apps dominate the financial world. If Web3 is ever to go mainstream, it needs a radically better user experience, and it needs it now.

The world of technology moves fast, as does the way we consume, survive, and exist in the ever-changing economic environment around us. Compared to the days before digitization — where bank cheques and ATMs were a primary function of the financial system — the majority of consumers in today’s world rely heavily on the use of pocket technology to go about their day-to-day finances. Thanks to the evolution of smart phones, fintechs like banking apps have scaled at such a rate that a mammoth 89% of consumers in 2022 reported having some level of dependency on them to access their personal finances.

While this might sound like music to the ears of those passionate about a Web3-centric future, the industry driving it is in critical need of a major rehaul if those numbers are ever to transcend to a new financial era led by Web3.

Decentralized applications (dApps) are the veins of Web3 when it comes to consumer adoption. In the mere 14 years since crypto’s birth they’ve somewhat scaled to try to meet the demands of users, and user consciousness has significantly improved since the early days. But, improvements considered — they still have a long way to go before they’re fit for the mass market.

Web3 and The Transaction Paradox

One of the biggest downsides to dApps today is the way transactions are processed and presented. While the interface on many dApps has significantly improved, they still rely on underlying technology to process a transaction. In today’s DeFi, when a user wants to send tokens to another wallet or dApp, the process leans on an intermediary application — like MetaMask — to submit the transaction to the network. Aside from the fact that dApps like Metamask are incredibly complicated for the average user to figure out, the process that takes place when you make your transaction is deplorable. Think less ‘traditional banking app’ and more… ‘Russian roulette’.

When you make a transaction on DeFi, you’re presented with a cryptic message you’ll need to approve, which will then be sent to a smart contract to action the request. Essentially, in order to transact tokens in Web3 today you have to blindly trust a program, built by a developer somewhere, to do what you ask it. Pair this with the exploits and bugs (not to mention nefarious dApps) enabled by existing smart contracts and your assets have a high chance of being irretrievably lost. Forever.

Unfortunately, for Web3 users today there really is no alternative, and while this might be a risk many in the space are willing to take for the odd trade — translate that to a global consumer base and that risk isn’t going to cut it.

To ever be adopted on a mass-scale, financial infrastructure must support the financial needs of many — not the side hustle of a few. Your local green grocer likely doesn’t want to stack Dogecoin or mint an NFT, but he might move houses, or buy a new car, or sell his business one day. Give him the transactional infrastructure of the Web3 industry today and his livelihood might disappear in a flash.

Today’s DeFi isn’t fit for purpose, and if we’re serious about Web3 — we need to build it better.

Radix Transaction Manifests: Putting Users Back in Control

On the Radix Network, things are done a little differently. At #RadFi2022, the minds behind Radix unveiled a radically different approach — one that, once fully launched, will finally enable an infrastructure that can support a Web3-centric future for finance. In Q2 2023, the Radix Network will go public, launching a range of innovative features set to change the way Web3 works forever.

With Radix, transactions will work exactly how they should work. Compared to networks like Ethereum that rely on messages to convey transactions, the Radix Engine enables dApps to build with an asset-oriented approach. This means that when you make a transaction on the Radix network — thanks to features like Transaction Manifests — it functions how you’d expect it to.

‘Transaction Manifests’ on Radix work with the network’s functionality that allows dApps in the ecosystem to seamlessly and securely connect without placing the end user in a position where their only option is to sign and hope for the best. With dApps on Radix, users can access, create, and approve transactions from right within their wallet in just a few clicks, confident that it will do exactly what they’ve asked it to. In short, the transaction is actually human readable.

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Transaction Manifests in the Radix Wallet

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Much like traditional banking apps, for the first time in Web3, users can securely move funds without the headache of a complex interface or the need to blindly trust an unfamiliar system. With robust technology and world-first user features, the Transaction Manifest on Radix puts ownership of asset transactions back in the hands of asset owners, meaning they can be confident when using Web3.

With Radix, users can experience a Web3 that reflects the ease of use, security, and personalization they’re used to from the banking apps they’ve grown to depend on. Everyday financial consumers can finally reap the rewards that the new financial era has to offer, without sacrificing the benefits of the one they’ve grown accustomed to.

Unlike anything that exists in today’s Web3, Radix is building tomorrow’s DeFi.

If Web3 is to become mainstream, it needs to work for mainstream users, developers, and entrepreneurs. The Web3 that exists today bears little resemblance to its founding purpose, and is far from ready to support those who truly need it. For a new era of financial evolution to succeed, it needs users. For Web3 to succeed, we need to start building it for them.

With technology and features like the Transaction Manifest, Radix is doing just that.

At #RadFi2022, the team behind Radix unveileved a radically new chapter for Web3. The Radix Wallet — set to launch with Babylon in 2023 — is the first ever Web3 wallet built for a mainstream market. Still not convinced? Watch the Radix Wallet Keynote to learn more about its revolutionary technology and features like Transaction Manifests here.

Originally published at https://www.radixdlt.com.

Today we’re pleased to announce the pilot launch of a Radix Grants Program. Its purpose is to accelerate the creation and deployment of great Web3 and DeFi dApps on the Radix network at the launch of the Babylon network and beyond. But as with everything we do, we’re taking a radically different approach that we’re excited to tell you about.

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Grants Program Goals

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Building a Web3 or DeFi project is tough work. Aside from the fact that you’re building the digital world of tomorrow, compared to the usual difficulties faced by traditional business owners, the pioneers of Web3 face a plethora of new challenges in the way of tokenization, decentralized code management, and Web3 user experiences.

When it comes to building and growing an ecosystem in Web3, the team behind Radix knows these challenges well. What started as a “one-man-mission” back in 2013 with founder Dan Hughes has grown into a team that has lived through it all.

As the saying goes, “people overestimate what they can do in one year, and underestimate what they can do in ten” — and our team has always been focused on the ten. From bull and bear cycles to unprecedented macroeconomic shifts, Radix has continued to scale, adapt and grow to achieve the Radix vision:

A radically better financial system

The bigger a network, the more powerful it can become. At Radix, we’re committed to helping the innovators and visionaries in our community thrive, and we’re focused on growing the Radix ecosystem to unleash the potential of Web3 at global scale. To create that kind of revolution, we believe our grants program must be designed to support a grass-roots movement that is already growing inside our developer community — not just take short-term approaches that create a flash mob that quickly dissipates. A revolution is created by true builders, not mercenaries.

The underlying technology of the Radix network provides powerful tools to the builders who choose to build their project on Radix, but it’s important to us that those within our community are really set up to make the most of what’s in the toolbox. That’s why we’ve put our focus squarely on supporting the projects already committed to building on Radix, and to provide extra help on all of the factors of success that lie outside the realm of tech.

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The Radix Grants Program: Offering guidance to support web3 entrepreneurs

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The pilot launch of our Radix Grants Program isn’t just a way to provide financial support for those building on the Radix network; it’s a program to bring to bear all of our collective experience and know-how, both in and out of the crypto space. This will allow us to get great dApps to market on Radix. As part of the program, our incredible team of Radix innovators will be on-hand to offer support, guidance and direction for successful projects to make the most out of the opportunities presented through DeFi and Web3.

Much of this program is heavily inspired by Radix CEO Piers Ridyard’s experience going through the world-famous Y Combinator accelerator program and the lessons he learned there about maturing and developing an idea into a successful in-market product (hint: most of the work isn’t building cool tech).

The Radix Grants Program is for those with a passion to build on the Radix network and a shared vision for the future of DeFi and Web3. Only teams that are already building — or preparing to build — their project on Radix will be considered. That way, the team can prioritize providing the best possible support for committed founders, and to help their projects succeed within the Radix ecosystem.

If you truly believe in building a better financial future and that the Radix ecosystem is the best place to do that, this program is for you. Not only will you be given access to 1:1 advisory sessions with senior Radix team members, including Dan Hughes (Founder), Piers Ridyard (CEO), Matthew Hine (CPO) and Adam Simmons (CSO); you will also attend private master classes with insights and key learnings from Radix’s long history..

Here’s an overview of what to expect from the first Radix Grants Program and the benefits you will get as a founder:

• 30,000 USD value in XRD tokens, paid at the beginning of the program or when your company is incorporated.
• Bi-weekly 1–1 with your RDX Works mentor to follow on your progress.
• Access to office hours with the RDX Works leadership team.
• Access to exclusive masterclasses with the RDX Works leadership team on key topics such as product development, customer interviews, community building, tokenomics and more.
• Practical guidance on compliance, cyber security, incorporating your company, and more.
• Help with user testing.
• Promotion and exposure to the wider Radix community via official Radix channels.
• In-person kickoff bootcamp and demo day

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Building the future isn’t light work, but together we’ve got the power to accomplish something revolutionary.

Sound interesting? Learn more about admission standards and requirements, and apply to the grants program today.

Originally published at https://www.radixdlt.com.

On December 8, #RadFi2022 unveiled the future of Web3. Missed the Livestream? Catch it here.

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Every so often, something radically different comes along. Something so far from what we’re used to that it has the potential to change the world as we know it.

After 9 years of building the next phase of financial technology, Radix will do just that.

Web3, crypto, and DeFi aren’t broken — they never worked properly in the first place. Designed to improve on the archaic, self-destructive, and corrupt systems of traditional finance, the roots from which these innovative technologies first sprouted are why we’re still growing today.

Traditional finance (TradFi) has outstayed its welcome. Derived from a world where trade was once simple — and once decentralized — centralizing a global monetary system was never done for the benefit of the people. Some few hundred years later, and one too many manipulations en masse finally gave way, enabling the anonymous creator of Bitcoin — Satoshi Nakamoto — to begin the unraveling of a whole new era of finance, technology, and a radically different way of living.

Nakamoto will be remembered as one of the greatest pioneers in history. Creating a decentralized monetary system that actually stood a chance of making waves in the institutionally-owned financial industry was a monumental feat for mankind. While the mammoth aftershocks of the Bitcoin tsunami continue to rattle traditional finance year after year, the industry it created along the way has grown far too fast for its own liking.

Though revolutionary innovations across Web3 and DeFi have been redefining what finance ‘is’ since inception, as builders persevere on their race towards the finish line, they’ve wound up being followed by the very problems they set out to defeat in the first place.

Fraud, exploits, and fractured infrastructure founded the need for Web3 — and they’re still the driving force behind it. But for those same reasons, the Web3 of today isn’t working.

That’s why Radix spent 9 years building the Web3 of tomorrow.

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The Web3 of Tomorrow

Yesterday, #RadFi2022 marked a milestone — not just for the Radix ecosystem, but for everyone sick of the 1000+ ways DeFi, and TradFi, are broken.

Change has been long needed for the crypto industry, but until now — we’ve not had the tools to truly make it happen.

That ends with Radix.

At the rapid pace it’s grown, the crypto industry has been stuck together like a quick spin on Tetris — one solution built after the next in the hopes that each new layer would seal the tears of those before it. From cars to skyscrapers — building like this has never had a happy ending.

People have lost their trust in traditional finance, yet, without a solution fit for their needs, they’ve no choice but to stick with the devil they know. With daily headlines reporting the billions of dollars lost in CeFi and daily hacks reaping havoc across DeFi, how can we expect anyone to trust crypto? To truly enable a future of Web3 fit to meet the demands of a globally lost population, a solution has to be built — from scratch.

In 2023, Radix’s full stack for Web3 will do just that.

After almost a decade of building, the team behind Radix has developed infrastructure designed specifically to support the $400T global financial system. With a core focus on meeting the needs for scalability, security, developer experience, and user experience, the Radix network is the first in crypto history that is actually designed to be able to take Web3 mainstream. At #RadFi2022, this vision was shared with the world.

A Radically Better User Experience

Web3 user experience really, really sucks.

From extremely complex transaction processes to impractical security measures like handwritten seed phrases — adapting DeFi for users has always been left as an afterthought. Aside from the need for a deep level of financial & technological literacy before a DeFi user can even begin to grasp decentralized applications (dApps), the pressures placed on users across DeFi today pose a plethora of critical issues for crypto’s growth in the long run. Take common human error — like misspelled or misplaced seed phrases.

Mistakes like this in TradFi are forgiven easily, but DeFi’s story doesn’t have the same ending. An estimated 20% of Bitcoin alone is already irretrievably lost in the system today due to simple mistakes that have locked thousands of users out of their accounts forever. It doesn’t even take a day in the game to realize that this will never support a global financial system.

With the launch of Babylon Mainnet in Q2 2023, Radix will release five core technologies as part of the Radix Wallet set to revolutionize the way users can interact with dApps. Picture an experience as safe as traditional finance and as intuitive as the best Web2 apps — that right there is the Radix Wallet.‍

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBJqvk1FQ4U‍

A Radically Better Programming Experience

The crypto industry is home to some of the greatest minds of our time. Yet, the continued shortfalls of the infrastructure they’re forced to build on are fundamentally blocking them from ever being able to truly unleash the power of their ability and create an ecosystem fit for global adoption.

Ever wondered why less than 1% of developers globally build on Web3? Developers need tools that let them express their Web3 ideas in code easily, quickly, and securely. Until Scrypto, that hasn’t been possible.

Unlike other smart contract languages, Scrypto is the world’s first programming language that removes the barriers for developers to do what they do best. With most smart contract environments today, due to their overly-complex design, developers spend a reported 80% of their time ensuring their code is secure and only 20% building features and functionality. Even then, flaws in the foundations of smart contracts have amassed billions of dollars worth of exploits and hacks in 2022 alone.

Project development aside, the years of study it takes to learn most smart contract languages can be credited for much of the slow developer growth we’re seeing in Web3 today.

With Scrypto, developers can learn faster, build easily, and launch innovative projects on the Radix Network without worrying about risking their users’ livelihoods. With Scrypto, building in Web3 finally makes sense.‍

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrWOeoTCujc‍

A Radically Better Execution Environment

Without good dApps, there aren’t users. Without users, it’s always going to be the “demo” form of DeFi.

One of the biggest barriers to building solid, secure dApps today falls right back to a network’s execution environment (otherwise known as a virtual machine). On most of today’s popular networks, what should be simple concepts — like token swaps– are incredibly complex processes due to the way the networks are built and their fragmented approach to processing assets, opening them up to the colossal hacks we see each year.

In the Radix Engine, asset behavior is baked in — with assets and asset security being a primary function of the network… not an afterthought. Common hacks like re-entrancy attacks & spend approval hacks often seen on networks like Ethereum become near impossible on the Radix Engine.

With the Radix Engine, it’s how it should have always been.‍

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQNDO7jrLlY‍

A Radically Better Consensus Layer

For Web3 to support the $400T global financial system, it needs to be able to scale, infinitely. It also needs to create an environment for billions of digital finance users to access and move their assets freely and securely. In today’s DeFi, solutions built to achieve scalability all have one critical problem: to achieve more scalability they sacrifice atomic composability. Without atomic composability, Web3 will never offer the user experience needed for global adoption.

Cerberus is the world’s first consensus algorithm that doesn’t break atomic composability as it scales. Using an existing consensus mechanism — sharding — Radix’s consensus layer will enable infinite scalability on its Xi’an release in 2024, while maintaining interoperability at the highest standard.

To sustain global adoption, Web3 needs to become an asset super-highway — scaling interconnectivity as it evolves.‍

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n7IFDUmicQ‍

Next Stop: Global Adoption

Building a new map for the future isn’t light work, and the developments achieved with crypto in just 14 years are groundbreaking. But, success is not linear, and at the core of almost all of the industry’s growing pains is the simple fact that so far — we’ve been treating it as though it is. The early values Web3 was built on are the very reason it’s still growing, but that doesn’t mean sticking with the early frameworks is the right way to go.

To deliver mainstream Web3 and mainstream DeFi, the whole technology stack has to be built and designed together. Only then can the industry deliver the user experiences, developer tools, and network infrastructure that can actually take this industry global.

By starting at the end and working backward, Radix is finally making that happen.

See the true potential of Web3 with the full #RadFi2022 experience here.

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Originally published at https://www.radixdlt.com.

Saying that wallet user experiences suck in crypto, DeFi, and Web3.0 isn’t a shock. But how are we more than 5 years into DeFi and it’s still so confusing, so blatantly risky, that we wouldn’t dream of recommending it to friends and relatives who aren’t super tech-savvy?

The reason it’s not getting better is that the problem isn’t just bad wallets — it’s that every one of today’s DeFi networks make it virtually impossible to build a good user experience.

With the upcoming Radix Babylon mainnet update, Radix will become the first DeFi network with a full technology stack that finally makes a mainstream-ready user experience possible. And that user experience is coming in the form of the Radix Wallet.

The DeFi Usability Minefield

“Not your keys not your crypto” sounds good, but to most people, handing them a seed phrase might as well be telling them to carry around their life savings in a lockbox that is opened with a single key, and has a lock that can’t be changed. To most people, this is insanity, not empowerment.

On top of that complexity, using DeFi dApps with today’s wallets means dealing with a minefield of risks and confusion. It’s a world where you have to accept things like front-running, meaningless-looking LP tokens, “logging in” with a token account, tokens and smart contracts with back doors, an inability to move smoothly between mobile and desktop, and worst of all: blindly signing smart contract calls with unpredictable results (see here and here for example hacks due to this).

Just like the personal computer before the mouse, the internet before the web browser, and the smartphone before the touchscreen… DeFi and Web3.0 are going to remain at the fringes until we can give them the right user experience. And today, DeFi is nowhere close.

It’s enough to make many ask, ”Are the Crypto experts making everything confusing on purpose?”

The answer is no, not really. The reason for such terrible UX is rooted in some real technical limitations, and removing those limitations means some pretty deep architectural changes at the platform level.

A Network Problem, Not Just a Wallet Problem

Decentralization doesn’t have to mean bad user experience, but the need for platform-level re-architecture means that a mainstream-ready UX solution isn’t going to come from the wallet alone. It’s not going to be a new version of a Metamask web browser wallet, and it’s not going to be a crypto phone (sorry Solana).

The RDX Works team has spent a year and a half researching, designing, and building a DeFi user experience that’s ready for mainstream users. The goal was to give people true decentralization and a user experience that is just as safe and easy as what they’re used to in traditional finance.

The solution required designing both the platform tech and the wallet together to make it possible.

The UX we can achieve in the wallet by taking this “full-stack” approach with Radix is striking. Take, for example, reviewing a DEX swap transaction:

This is both revolutionary and obvious. Of course this is what a DEX swap transaction should look like: clear, simple, clean with all actions human readable and comprehensible. But getting here required changes throughout the Layer 1 protocol technology stack. Here’s what we learned — and what we’ve built as a result:

Smart Account

How can we get rid of seed phrases while still giving users true self-sovereign control of their accounts and assets? We had to redefine token accounts themselves.

An “account” on a DeFi network today is really just a key (thus the all-important seed phrase). Lose the key, and you lose your access to that key’s entry in 1000 different token smart contracts (translation: you’ve lost all your stuff). With that as the basis, there’s very little a wallet can do to keep your account safe for you.

On Radix, instead we have Smart Accounts. Smart Accounts are an actual on-ledger container for assets — and that container has logic that enables on-ledger multi-factor control and recovery. With that as our basis, the Radix Wallet can use multiple decentralized signing factors to create a user experience that feels more like a traditional bank — but without centralization. There’s no single magical seed phrase to write down, and you can always recover access to your stuff.

Smart Accounts mean: You always keep control of your stuff. No pass phrases needed, fully decentralized, fully non-custodial.

For more, see: What are Smart Accounts?

Personas

How can we bring the personalization of Web2.0 logins into the decentralized Web3.0 era — and eliminate the password? We had to create an on-ledger representation of anonymous identity.

Metamask would like you to think that connecting a token account address can be your Web3.0 “login”. But a login should be who you are, not just where some of your stuff is. You should be able to have a consistent identity with websites, while connecting multiple token-holding accounts.

Apple, Google, and Microsoft would like you to think that “PassKeys” provide next-generation logins without passwords using your phone. But the dirty secret is that it only works because the secret key on the phone gets backed up to their proprietary cloud in case you lose the phone. If they get hacked, or someone tricks their support staff into resetting your cloud password, the attacker gets everything in one shot.

On Radix, we provide the best of both worlds with Personas. Personas use an on-ledger identity with the same on-ledger multi-factor features as smart accounts. That means that logging in has the same strong cryptographic security as signing a transaction with a smart account — and losing your phone doesn’t mean recovering from iCloud; you recover directly with the multiple factors configured on-ledger by the Radix Wallet.

Personas are a true decentralized identity system. Logging in with Personas can give you the rich, personalized experience of a great Web 2.0 app, but without passwords and with all the power of Web 3.0.

For more, see: What are Personas (and Identities)?

Radix Connect

How can we give users a natively mobile digital wallet while still letting them securely and seamlessly use that wallet with DeFi dApps on desktop? We had to create a new P2P link between mobile wallet and desktop browser.

Today, a mobile wallet is largely confined to doing DeFi on mobile, and doing desktop DeFi means running a browser extension wallet that doesn’t travel with you (and is terribly insecure).

To fix this properly, we had to create Radix Connect. Radix Connect creates an encrypted P2P link between the Radix Wallet on your mobile phone and each desktop web browser you want to use. Once that link is established using a one-time QR code, DeFi dApps on desktop magically connect to your Radix Wallet on your phone whenever needed.

Unlike systems like Wallet Connect, Radix Connect does not pass your messages through any centralized service and works like magic. Nor does it mean spreading your accounts and assets between multiple devices. It is designed to be fast, reliable, and to let you use your accounts and assets anywhere.

Radix Connect means you can enjoy your favorite Web 3.0 and DeFi experience from any screen, instantly and securely.

For more, see: What is Radix Connect?

Native Assets

How can we ensure that a wallet for Web3.0 can always clearly show you what assets you own? Assets have to be a feature of the platform itself — not an afterthought implemented in smart contracts the wallet has to trust.

Metamask may give you the impression that it’s holding your assets — that it knows what you own on the network. In reality, networks today have no notion of what an asset is, and your tokens and NFTs are just balance entries in independent smart contracts that Metamask has no choice but to trust. You can see the cracks in the facade whenever you have to manually add a token to your wallet. This is not only confusing, it opens the possibility of exploits and scams that happen constantly in DeFi today.

Even if Metamask can show your balance of a token, it doesn’t necessarily know what that balance actually means, or what that token is for. You may have noticed that LP tokens and NFTs look almost meaningless in your wallet; you generally have to go to a third party website to get a sensible idea of what they’re worth or what they represent.

On Radix, every token and NFT you can imagine is a Native Asset. They aren’t just balances in smart contracts; the Radix network natively understands these assets as real objects that are held inside Smart Accounts.

Native Assets aren’t only the basis of our asset-oriented developer experience, they mean that the Radix Wallet can always confidently show you everything you own, and how they behave. There are no such things as back doors in token smart contracts, and it’s possible to see what an LP token is worth or what makes your NFT unique. And as new kinds of assets are created using Native Assets, the wallet immediately understands them without having to adopt a new standard.

Native Assets make assets on Radix real. They behave how you expect, they’re always visible in your accounts, and you always get the complete picture of what makes them unique and valuable.

For more, see: What are Native Assets?

Transaction Manifests

How can we finally eliminate the fear and uncertainty whenever users review and sign transactions? We had to redefine the whole concept of a transaction on a DeFi network.

Today every time you sign and submit a transaction in Metamask, you’re taking a leap of faith. What appears on your screen to sign is a cryptic message that will be sent to a single smart contract, and that smart contract will do… something as a result. To predict the result, you would have to audit the smart contract code. Predictably, this leads to users getting used to blindly trusting that the transaction they got from a webpage is going to do what the website claims. From malicious dApps to buggy smart contracts to bot-driven front-running, users often don’t actually get what they expect.

On Radix, we started with what a transaction should be: instructions to the network for what the user cares about. Things like what assets you want to withdraw, where you want those assets to go, and what assets you expect to get back at the end.

We call them Transaction Manifests. Rather than a single cryptic message, a transaction manifest is made of a list of these direct descriptions of movements of assets between Smart Accounts and dApps. Not only are they much more flexible, because they describe what the user cares about, the Radix Wallet can always provide a direct, understandable summary of transaction results.

Not only that, but the wallet can modify the Transaction Manifest. If the user requires that they receive a certain amount of tokens at the end of the transaction, that rule can be added by the wallet. The network, not third party smart contract logic, will make sure that requirement is respected.

Every Transaction Manifest on Radix tells you — and the Radix network — everything you are about to do in a transaction in human-readable format. Every movement of your assets, every dApp interaction is there — and with guaranteed results where they matter.

For more, see: What are Transaction Manifests?

Tying it All Together

These five technologies alone let us solve some really crucial usability problems. But ultimately what matters is combining those technologies to create a Web3.0 user experience that actually works for everyone. The best way to understand what that user experience can be is to show you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBJqvk1FQ4U

That’s our vision of a user experience that is so simple and straightforward that users can finally enjoy all the benefits of a new generation of Web3.0 dApps that are just better.

Everything in that video is made possible by the five new platform technologies that are all going live at the Babylon update to the Radix Network in Q2 2023. The Radix Wallet we’ll be releasing then, for iOS and Android, will include many of the features you saw there — and we have everything we need to continue to build out the rest.

In Q4 2022 — very shortly — we’ll be releasing a Babylon Betanet test network that includes an early developer preview with the crucial features developers need to start working on next-generation Web3.0 dApps on Radix.

Originally published at https://www.radixdlt.com.

Hello community!
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Isn’t it crazy just how fast time flies? What is even crazier is the amount of Scrypto blueprints that have been created since the beginning of the Scrypto challenges 🤯. So far, we’ve received 64 submissions, so if you have participated in any of the challenges so far then a massive well done to you. We set these challenges to help push our community out of their comfort zones and showcase the talent we have around us, so a big thank you to everyone who has shared this journey with us, why not check out all the entries on this GitHub repository.

If you are a Scryptonaut, Piers (CEO of RDX Works) has a message for you…

Now as we come close to drawing a line under the year, during the month of December, we are going to take a break from Scrypto challenges to give you the opportunity to polish your Scrypto skills ready for 2023 and reward yourself with well-deserved relaxation during the holidays.

You might also be asking yourself “what is a good way to get started with Scrypto?” and thinking about ways you can get to a level where you’ll feel confident submitting blueprints for the challenges. Well, good news. We recently launched the beta version of the Scrypto 101 course, meaning you can participate as a beta tester! This is a great way to learn the basics of Scrypto and get you started on your dApp development journey.

‍To register as a beta tester for the course, come and speak with us in the #scrypto channel of our Discord server where someone from the RDX Works team will give you instructions on how to register.

For the 6th and final challenge of 2022, we asked developers to come up with a Scrypto blueprint where they used non-fungible tokens in novel and original ways. You probably know NFTs as a way to represent art on decentralized networks, but did you know that it can be so much more than that? This use-case is only the tip of the iceberg.

By looking at the three winning submissions of the Scrypto NFT challenge, you will learn about other useful ways in which non-fungible tokens can be used. So let’s move on to the part we have all been waiting for… the Scrypto NFT challenge winners announcement! 🏆
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Each entry was judged based on the following five criteria:

• Quality and asset-orientedness of the code: did the participant show a good understanding of the asset-oriented programming paradigm?
• Breadth of functionality: the more we could do with the submitted package, the more points the participant got.
• Creativity of the concept: was the idea creative and original?
• Quality of the documentation and comments in the code: did the participant provide documentation to make it easier to understand the code?
• Usage of the frontend javascript SDK or the transaction manifest: did the participant show a good understanding of the frontend SDK or the transaction manifest?
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Now, without further ado, the winners are…

1st place: RadSense by backyard-coder

For this entry, backyard-coder decided to build a decentralized version of Google AdSense, a platform that people use to get their ads displayed on the internet. Many parts of the RadSense system are tokenized. User information is stored inside a NFT that is used to authenticate them. The ad itself is represented by an NFT that is owned by the advertiser. Website ad slots are also represented as NFTs and contain information such as the tags describing the website, the size constraints and the list of people who are allowed to decide which ads get displayed in this slot.

In RadSense, there are three types of users: advertisers, ad-slot providers (owners of websites) and ad brokers. Users of this last type, are the link between ad-slot providers and advertisers. They are the ones that find ads posted by advertisers and decide which ad-slot will display them. They are also responsible for invoicing the advertisers and delivering the money to the ad-slot providers.

Backyard-coder even implemented a way for advertisers to dispute their invoice through a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization). Something cool is that for this submission, backyard-coder didn’t write the whole DAO from scratch, he used the DAO system he built during the previous competition. This shows how straightforward it is to connect different blueprints together using Scrypto.

With his submission, backyard-coder will receive $8500 worth of XRD.

“Developing with Scrypto was a lot of fun, as always. It was especially cool to see that the asset-oriented model is also perfect for non-DeFi applications. Representing real-world objects as moveable and ownable assets makes a lot of sense in other domains as well.” — backyard-coder
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2nd place: MoonWork by talesofbeem

Moonwork is a decentralized freelancer platform. There are two types of user on the platform: contractors and clients. People can register as either type and get a non-fungible token that represents their identity on the platform. Clients can list the projects they have and contractors can query the ledger to find available projects to work on. Once a contractor finishes a job, they get a “WorkCompleted” soulbound NFT in their account. This “soulbound” part means that once they receive it, they cannot transfer it to someone else. This means that anyone looking at the resources in the contractor’s account can see all the work they have done in the past. If you want to know more about soulbound tokens, read our article about it here.

Just like the submission that won first place, Talesofbeem came up with a dispute resolution DAO system. This consists of a component that is used whenever the freelancer and the client need to settle on some issues. Having a DAO that works with the main dApp you’re building which allows its users to vote on certain things is a pattern that is seen regularly, as people are starting to like using tools that they know aren’t controlled by a single entity that can decide on everything.

Finally, beem did an amazing job when writing the tests of its Scrypto package. You can see here that they wrote a test for every method and function available in their package (that’s around 5000 lines of code just for the tests!). This is great for the community because they can take this submission as an example when looking into writing the tests for their blueprint.

With this submission, talesofbeem will receive $4500 worth of XRD.

“I wanted to show people what it means to leverage NFT as a technology. As a result, I came up with MoonWork, this idea is the perfect use case for NFTs which for this service means complete transparency of work and disputes held between clients and contractors.

Scrypto makes abstracting ideas into code easier than most smart contract tools. I thought that testing was quite limited but actually, we just need a bit more understanding about querying the substate store. Once I got the hang of this, it was reasonably okay to create test helpers. With my newfound knowledge of testing, I am now more confident in being able to produce production-ready blueprints! Can’t wait for Babylon!” — talesofbeem
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3rd place: Neverland by alanci

In their submission, alanci explored different ways in which non-fungible tokens can be used to represent items and data in a metaverse. To achieve this, they built an ecosystem of Scrypto blueprints in which users are identified with a soulbound NFT. This NFT is what follows them throughout the ecosystem and is used to keep track of their interactions within Neverland.

The ecosystem alanci built starts with the blueprints that make up the “Land Protocol”, where users can register as residents of Neverland. On registration, they get an identity NFT that stores things such as the real-estate properties they own and their active loans. It also stores education data for the residents who go through the “Academy” part of the ecosystem. This academy connects students with teachers and offers a way to keep track of the education history of the students. Teachers can open new courses and publish tests that students can take.

A second set of blueprints that make up this ecosystem is used to manage an on-chain real-estate market and a house construction system. People who went through architecture courses in the academy can submit construction projects to the protocol and land owners can buy a project and find people to work on it. To acquire lands, there is a market that implements three different trading methods. People can buy land for a fixed price, a variable price through an auction or through a raffle (where a random participant gets the land).

This only covers a small portion of everything alanci included in their submission. The amount of features in this Scrypto package is wild. Just take a look for yourself here.

With their submission, alanci will receive $2000 worth of XRD.

“Implementation of SBT (Soul-bound tokens) and NFT into citizen’s everyday life could extend — as well as melt — cities from physical urban agglomerations to ephemeral yet extremely efficient Metaverse entities.

In Neverland concept non-fungibility and immutability of such tokens certify citizens’ digital identity as well as their owned assets, and their achieved degrees. Land parcels are auctioned to citizens, and Asset NFTs are minted to testify their legitimate ownership.

Working with powerful but ductile Scrypto’s Lego-style approach during this challenge has been extremely inspiring and gratifying as the concept took shape, at the point it was hard to take a break the last few days to be able to write down docs stuff. It scared me a bit to see what you can achieve in terms of code in a limited timeframe with Scrypto.” — alanci
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We would like to congratulate everyone who participated in this competition! You all did an amazing job. A market like this is the perfect moment for sharpening your Scrypto skills as you will be ready for the next positive cycle. We hope you learned a lot from this competition, as we can expect from the previous feedback we received. It’s also a great time to perfect your Scrypto skills because Babylon is approaching fast.

In case you missed the last Radix report, the Babylon Betanet is launching by the end of December. This will bring long-awaited features and a way for you to try a full-stack experience that is closer to what you can expect for Babylon.

Stay tuned to our Radix Discord channel and join our developer mailing list to be among the first to learn about our developer events and upcoming competitions next year.

Thanks everyone — keep coding awesome stuff!‍

Originally published at https://www.radixdlt.com.

November 24, 2022

Overview (Piers Ridyard, CEO)

It has been a month since the last Radix report and the crypto industry has changed in that month in some monumental ways. The blow-up of FTX is going to have reverberations for years to come.

The most important thing that has been highlighted, yet again, is the importance of self-custody; the importance of transparency of the financial applications that we rely on; and the importance of the core mission of crypto.

Focusing Radix on Decentralised Finance was not an obvious path when we chose it; but it was the one that felt most true to the ideals of creating systems for storing, transferring and investing value that could be more resilient and more accessible than any other financial system in the history of humanity.

We saw that smart contracts on their own were a great idea, but it wasn’t until those smart contracts could be designed to actually reduce risk, rather than just move it from institutional to “bug” or “exploit” risk that the world could actually start to rely on DeFi.

The work on Cerberus, the work on the Radix Engine, the work on Scrypto — it all comes under the wider mission of making a system that the world could actually build a future financial infrastructure on — one that minimizes the requirement for trust and maximizes control and transparency for the end user.

As we come closer to Babylon that vision gets closer and closer. The next step on that journey will be RadFi on the 8th of December — make sure you sign up and mark it on your diary as it’s going to be epic!

Strategy & Marketing (Adam Simmons, CSO & Jeremy Epstein, CMO)

From the marketing side, we’re all hands on deck driving awareness for RadFi 2022.

Not only are we maximizing outreach through email, social media, and paid media, but we’ve struck a number of relationships with key thought leaders in the space, most notably, Ivan on Tech, who will be commenting live on RadFi on December 8th to help spread the word. We’ll also be doing a Twitter Space with him on December 15th to talk about industry reaction to RadFi.

We’ve also leveraged a content distribution relationship with Benzinga to further tell our story in a variety of ways including establishing a position as a thought leader, as well as demonstrated momentum on the PR front, where we’ve had articles and mentions in a number of publications including Venture Beat, IB Times, Crypto Daily, Hack Read, Coinpedia, Crypto Wisser, Finance Feeds, Tech Startups, CryptoNewz, and Investing Cube, among others. While not all of these are household names per se, they do a lot for our reach, awareness, and SEO. Meanwhile, we continue to refine our narrative for better Tier 1 placement.

Finally, the team got together for an in-person planning session a few weeks ago, where we put together a framework for driving additional awareness and $XRD demand on the road to Babylon.

Remember to spread the word about RadFi 2022 and, if you are interested, join or host one of the 15 RadFi 2022 watch parties around the world, with more locations on the way!

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Development (Russell Harvey, CTO & Matthew Hine, CPO)

To the surprise of no one, Betanet preparations have the tech team in a frenzy of coding and coordination. We’re on track for a pre-Christmas release which will give developers their first crack at the full stack, including a dev-focused preview version of the Wallet, enabling more complex end-to-end applications with a web component and user workflow aligned to what will be available at Babylon release.

Oft-demanded Scrypto capabilities such as recallable tokens and royalties will be present, and we’ll also be rolling back the curtain on some more details around things like the mechanics of the Babylon account model and what the migration process from Olympia will look like.

In non-Betanet news, our esteemed Developer Ecosystem team has launched a beta version of a Scrypto 101 course to smooth the onboarding process for new developers, and it’s already been receiving some very positive feedback. Please drop a message to Clement in our Discord server if you would like to be added as a participant; we’d love to hear what you think of it so far.

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Update from the Radix Community Council*

• Radix Community Council is gearing up for the Blockchain Expo London event between 1–2 December and we will be at booth 68. There will be a number of project owners at the Radix Community booth and anyone who is willing to join is more than welcome! Blockchain Expo London expects 6,000 attendees to congregate for the event including CTOs, Heads of Innovation and Technology, IT Directors, Developers, Start-Ups, OEMs, Government, Automotive, Operators, Technology Providers, Investors, VCs and many more. https://blockchain-expo.com/global/

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• Radix Ecosystem Quiz Vol: 4 was very fortunate to get donations from generous project owners such as SingularityX, Mystic Tigers Brotherhood as well as Scrypto Heroes! We hope you had fun while learning more about the Radix Ecosystem and as always thanks for the 4.8/5 star rating! Here is the list of winners: https://getradix.com/updates/news/2022-11-23-community-updates

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• We are happy to announce the collaboration between RadixTalk and RadixCharts! As you may know RadixTalk is the first community-run forum and RadixCharts provides regular statistics, charts and rankings of Radix-related projects. You may read the weekly report about which projects gained the most followers/users and which projects might be the most promising to follow or DYOR. Here is the latest report, check it out: https://radixtalk.com/t/radixcharts-summary-week-46-2022/1745

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• We’ve done an interview with Nelly from RadixCharts where she talks about how Radixcharts started, how in 6 weeks with limited experience they built a functional product, and what the future has in store for them. Check it out at https://getradix.com/updates/communityspotlight/radixcharts-interview‍

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Originally published at https://www.radixdlt.com.