The Radix Engine [ /ˈrædɪks ˈɛnʤɪn/ ] is a protocol-level runtime environment and application layer, analogous to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The Radix Engine utilizes finite state machines to define permitted asset states, improving the developer experience for building decentralized applications (dApps) by removing asset logic to the protocol layer.

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How the Radix Engine v2 works.

How the Radix Engine v2 works.

Overview

The Radix Engine is the core protocol component that executes transactions and maintains ledger state in the Radix network. It is responsible for sharding the ledger and processing transactions in a scalable, secure way. Some key aspects of the Radix Engine:

• Implements a UTXO model customized for scalability and performance.
• Breaks ledger state into substates that can be sharded across nodes.
• Groups components and their owned resources into single substates for efficiency.
• Uses a ceramic sharding model that can scale to an unlimited number of shards.
• Executes single-shard transactions via consensus within each shard.
• Processes multi-shard transactions via cross-shard coordination.
• Supports transactions that specify intent rather than direct substate inputs/outputs.
• Resolves conflicts from concurrent transactions by aborting one transaction.
• Verifies validity of transactions via owner signatures rather than script conditions.
• Provides inherent atomicity and isolation via the construction/destruction mechanism.

The Radix Engine is able to process transactions in parallel across shards while maintaining a globally consistent ledger state. Concurrency is maximized by specifying intent and resolving conflicts with selective transaction abortion.

Cross-shard coordination for multi-shard transactions is minimized based on the sharding model and construction/destruction mechanism. The Radix Engine architecture enables the linear scalability needed to support global finance applications with high transaction throughput.

The Radix Engine is one of the few application layers compatible with the Cerberus consensus protocol.

Game Engine Analogy

The Radix Engine has been characterized as a game engine for DeFi in that it defines and enforces properties such as asset permanence, transfer logic, minting, burning and other properties as a physics engine simulates gravity, collisions, rotation and other physical properties for game assets.

“[Building a high quality game] would have been utterly impossible without the game engine because they would have spent 90 percent of their time trying to reimplement the physics. Building DeFi is now a question of “What's the what's the functionality you want?”, not “Well let's start by defining what we mean by an asset or what we mean by a transfer; what we mean by a atomic swap; or something like that. All of that is just given by the Radix Engine.” - Matthew Hine

Properties

Asset Management

The Radix Engine ensures that fungible and non-fungible assets are understood at the protocol level, rather than having to be implemented by developers as local smart contract applications. This means that tokens can be created by an API request without the need for a smart contract.

Error Handling

All illegal operations are automatically blocked.

Object Permanence

The Radix Engine enforces object permanence, such that a token that can only exist at one location and only be moved by agents with permission rights.

Development History

Radix Engine v1