TL;DR
- Hyperscale Unveiled: After over a decade of relentless innovation, Radix is ready to revolutionize crypto with unparalleled scalability.
- Xian on the Horizon: In 2027, Radix will deliver a system capable of supporting billions of users.
Unveiling Radix Hyperscale Roadmap
I’ve been involved with crypto for over a decade, starting in 2012 when I first explored Bitcoin’s potential. As an engineer, my key question was: Can it scale? A new monetary system must handle vast transaction capacity to onboard millions or billions of people and devices.
After extensive investigation, it became clear that scaling Satoshi’s original blockchain would involve significant trade-offs—the “Moore’s law” increases in bandwidth and computing power alone wouldn’t be enough.
Determined to find a solution, I embarked on a journey to solve scalability. Along the way, I built a following of like-minded people with similar concerns. The main challenge was scalability, but security, decentralization, and volatility also needed attention.
In 2021, we achieved a major breakthrough with Cerberus, a core pillar of Radix’s scalability solution.
Instead of immediately launching with fully shared Cerberus, we prioritized Scrypto and Radix Engine—our smart contract stack that improves developer productivity and user experience. This decision set Radix up for success as a full-stack solution.
However, scalability work continued, leading to the Cassandra research network, which embodies this continued progress since 2021. Cassandra has demonstrated extremely high throughput, low finality, and sustained performance for days on end—proving that true scalability is achievable.
As great as Cassandra may be, it is not a Xian candidate for a network upgrade. While it performs all mandatory functionality to demonstrate scale, which satisfies any scrutiny, it was not implemented in a way that could be considered commercial grade.
From Cassandra to Xian
Now, it’s time to pull out all the stops and leverage everything we’ve learned.
Enter Xian, Radix’s next big leap. Xian will take us from proof-of-concept to a commercial-grade system ready to scale globally.
There’s been a lot of speculation about the timelines for Xian. While it’s not five years away, it’s also not launching next week. We have a head start, though—the research is done, the core concepts proven through Cassandra, and the roadmap to implementation is clear.
The Roadmap to Xian & Hyperscale
Three main tracks of work will run in parallel to reach Xian: Cassandra, the Radix Engine, and Xian itself.
- Track 1 – Cassandra: Through most of 2025, Cassandra will serve as a testing platform to support other crucial work like integrating the Radix Engine. By late 2025, Cassandra will complete its role as an R&D platform.
- Community tests at scale – December 2024
- Additional community + 3rd party tests – throughout H1 2025
- Completed integration of Radix Engine with Cassandra – Q3 2025
- Community-scale testing of Cassandra + Radix Engine – Q4 2025
- Cassandra de-commissioned as a R&D platform
- Track 2 – Radix Engine: The Radix Engine, already implemented in Babylon, was built with sharding in mind. Upcoming work will focus on enhancing its capabilities to align with Xian, with community testing to follow throughout 2025. It will include interfacing Radix Engine with the Cassandra network as a rudimentary test bed as the stage 1 and 2 milestones of this section are complete.
- Planning of Radix Engine sharding upgrade – Q4 2024
- Completed implementation of sharding upgrade – Q3 2025
- Two stage implementation
- Stage 1 = Simple dApps (Gumball, Faucet)
- Stage 2 = Complex dApps (DEXs)
- Two stage implementation
- Soft audit of sharded Radix Engine – Q4 2025
It is important to note that the Radix Engine is of commercial grade and received the only 10/10 audit score from Hacken. The “shardification” of the Radix Engine will be performed in a manner to preserve that commercial integrity, which should reduce the audit intensity of a ready Radix Engine along with significant development time savings overall.
- Track 3 – Xian: Finally, the Xian production track will implement our hybrid consensus mechanism into a production network candidate, further enhancing network performance and preparing for global deployment. We’re targeting an Alpha release in early 2027, followed by a Beta later that year, with a full launch slated for the second half of 2027
- Production planning of Xian – Q4 2025
- Implementation of Xian in Rust – 2026
- Peripheral layers + functionality (networking, database, cryptography)
- Cassandra consensus implementation
- Integration of sharded Radix Engine
- Alpha Xian – early 2027
- Beta Xian – mid 2027
- Launch – H2 2027
A large portion of the work in the Xian track is the desire to implement entirely in Rust, moving away from Java and the hybrid nature of Babylon.
Get Ready for the Future
Radix Hyperscale is the culmination of over a decade of dedication to solving the core blockchain scalability issues. As we move towards Xian, we are closer than ever to realizing a future where Web3 and DeFi can support a truly global user base.
Now is the time to get involved—before the rest of the world catches on.
Learn more on the Radix Labs page.
