This article was translated by myself. There might be unintentional errors or mistakes. For the original German article, please click here.
As promised I want to write a short piece about the Radix Alpha Launch event that took place this Tuesday, June 19th 2018, in London. It was a pleasure for me to attend myself and meet the Radix team. Everyone who does not know what Radix is, please go and check out my introduction here.
The event itself was attended by approximately 200 people who filled up the Rocket Space and the available seats pretty well. Prior to the event, participants had the chance to network and meet other Radix enthusiasts and the networking continued after the event with wine, beer and pizza. But now, let’s get down to the essentials.
The event started with a Keynote from the Radix CEO Piers Ridyard, who made a basic introduction to Radix and its history. Following his opening, the developers Edgars nemeses, Marc Rubio and Joshua Primero presented the alpha version of the desktop and mobile wallet, while Joshua introduced the underlying Java library. The following news and announcements were made:
- The alpha version of the wallet can now be tested. The desktop version is available for OSX, Windows and Ubuntu, while the mobile app is only available for Android at this point. To create a wallet one has to simply enter a password with a minimum of six characters. The wallet can be imported to any other device via the provided import tool. After you are logged in you can receive test tokens and send and receive tokens in a very straightforward way.
- There will be a new and updated technical whitepaper concerning Tempo, which will introduce a new feature: „mass“. Mass gets created with every transaction based on a formula and gets passe don to the second node taking part in the temporal proof where it remains. Through this mechanism further attacks shall be prevented. For more accurate information please watch the talk of Dan Hughes at the Alpha Launch (you can find the video at the end of this post).
- Most impressive to me was the messaging feature which is integrated in every wallet. You can send messages to other Radix addresses in a very simple and fast way, using the decentralised Radix network. This feature is currently working with the usual WhatsApp/telegram speed and its simplicity is impressive.
- Concerning Smart Contracts the team indicated that we could expect something really amazing here but did not go further into detail.
- Adding to this, we can expect a node runner update very soon, but again no further information on how to run a node were given at the Alpha Launch event.
When testing you should always recall that this is the alpha version of Radix. There will be bugs! If you find one while testing, please inform the developers via the official discord channel. Furthermore, the transaction fee is being replaced by a small amount of Proof of Work for the alpha. This is to prevent spam, but means that the network appears to be a little bit slower than it actually is.
I am very excited about the coming releases ahead and will most likely keep informing you about these. Below is the recorded Alpha Launch event for everyone who missed it.
-Lukas Fiedler
Disclaimer: The author is invested in the crypto currencies named above or may be invested in the future.
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