Xi'an Protocol Upgrade

Overview

Xi'an is the next major protocol upgrade for Radix, designed to deliver linear scalability by sharding the Radix Engine itself. Unlike traditional blockchain sharding approaches that partition state, Xi'an shards execution at the engine level, enabling throughput to scale proportionally with the number of validators. According to the Radix Labs roadmap, the alpha is targeted for early 2027, with beta in mid-2027 and full launch in H2 2027.

Current Progress

Radix Engine sharding was completed in Q3 2025 in two stages: Stage 1 covering simple applications and Stage 2 handling complex multi-shard applications. A soft audit of the sharded Radix Engine was conducted in Q4 2025.

As of 2026, a full Rust implementation is underway, covering networking, database, cryptography, consensus, and the engine itself. The community implementation (hyperscale_rs) led by Foxy is using HotStuff-2 consensus, providing a parallel development track toward the same scalability goals.

Impact

Xi'an represents the culmination of Radix's scalability vision. By enabling linear throughput scaling, it positions Radix as the only Layer 1 capable of handling the transaction volume required for global-scale DeFi and autonomous AI agent operations. The upgrade will maintain Radix's unique properties — native assets, atomic composability, and machine-readable transaction manifests — while removing the single-shard throughput ceiling.

External Links

• Radix Labs Roadmap — To Hyperscale and Beyond
• Hyperscale Open Source — related wiki page
• Hyperscale-RS Community Implementation — related wiki page