Xi’an [ /ʃi’æn/ ] will be the last major release of the Radix network and has been scheduled for 2024. Xi’an will introduce the fully sharded state model of 2^256 shards.
DEVELOPMENT | |
Launch Date | 2024 (Estimated) |
Antecedent | |
License | |
LEDGER | |
State Model | Sharded (2^256) |
Sybil Protection | Delegated Proof of Stake |
Consensus Protocol | |
Execution Environment | Radix Engine v2 |
Validator Node Cap | Unknown |
State Model
The Radix 'universe' of Xi’an, once deployed, will exist on a fixed space of 2^256 data shards, served by a distributed network of validators called Shard Groups. Shard coverage will be allocated according to processing power, storage and bandwidth. A fixed ledger space allows wallet addresses to be deterministically mapped to a shard and, hence, for the global state of the network to be a derived sum of shard states. With so many shards, the likelihood of two substates being mapped to the same hash (a hash collision) at 1m transactions per second (tps), has been estimated as one every 3.67^63 years.
A proto-implementation of Xi’an is currently being built in the Cassandra project.
Radix’s founder, Dan Hughes, has said that the first release of Xi’an might only have 8-16 shard groups, which will be increased as the network throughput grows.
Consensus
Radix's consensus protocol is called Cerberus. It will allow an effectively unlimited number of shards to operate independently without losing atomic composability. The Cassandra testnet is used to stress test Cerebus.
An unsharded version of Cerebus has been operating on the Radix mainnet for over 1 year. Sybil protection is achieved by Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS).