In 2025, a lot changed with Radix. There was a significant restructure of the team, a focus on getting better routes into and out of the ecosystem for assets/users, and some major setbacks like the passing of Radix’s founder, Dan. 

It was also a year where a lot was delivered from a lean team. Permissionless bridges like Hyperlane brought blue-chip assets to the network. The Radix Rewards program launched and quickly doubled on-chain transactions and DEX volume. Major USPs like multi-factor recovery moved into testing.

While headlines often focus on the big releases, the sustained heartbeat of the ecosystem tells the real story. Supported by a resilient validator set, the network processed over 4 million transactions, and spot DEXs handled roughly $130 million in volume. We prioritized community alignment, running consultations on strategic initiatives and refocusing resources to support the builders who are actually shipping. And we also delivered the "quality of life" upgrades users have long requested: dark mode, the Radix Name Service, and an in-app dApp directory.

Although there is much still to be done, and we’ve not ended the year exactly where we had hoped, let’s take a look back at some of the progress that has been made from the Foundation side, and then, at the end, we’ve highlighted some of the ecosystem highlights!

Zellic Audit

In May, Zellic wrapped up a 33-week audit of the Radix codebase, focusing on asset safety, architectural security, and liveness. Upon publishing, Radix received no critical or high-severity problems. 

The Zellic team came in skeptical about Radix's badge-based security model. After digging in, they ended up complimenting its simplicity and robustness, noting it avoids entire classes of bugs that plague other networks.

They were particularly impressed with the native resource model and how it removes common token-handling vulnerabilities. Their assessment was clear: 

"It is a very clean and simple system, and it is incredibly difficult to introduce access-control issues through user error."

Having one of the top security firms validate your architecture after 33 weeks of trying to break it? That's the kind of third-party stamp that matters when you're asking people to trust a network with real money.

RedStone Oracles: Institutional-Grade Price Feeds Went Live

In June, RedStone oracles went live on Radix, bringing institutional-grade price infrastructure to the network. RedStone already secures billions of dollars of assets across more than 100 DeFi platforms including Morpho, Venus, and Pendle. Now that same battle-tested infrastructure is powering Radix, with over 1,200 price feeds ready for immediate use.

This integration utilizes RedStone's Pull Oracle model. Unlike push oracles that waste gas updating unused prices, RedStone fetches data only when a smart contract needs it. This efficiency unlocks advanced DeFi use cases for Scrypto developers: precise lending markets, derivatives, and stablecoins without the operational drag of legacy models.

Radix Rewards: Incentivizing Activity

In September, after multiple community consultations, the Radix Rewards program was launched. It’s designed to incentivize real on-chain activity by having users earn points each week for common DeFi and on-chain activities. Season 1 is coming to a close soon, but there is still time to earn some rewards!

Users earn points by doing things on-chain like swapping tokens, providing liquidity in DEX pools on Ociswap, CaviarNine, or DeFiPlaza, lending assets on Root Finance or WEFT, paying transaction fees, and more. Those actions earn you Activity Points (AP) in different categories. Each week, your AP gets converted to Season Points (SP) based on how you rank against others in each category. Your XRD holdings give you a multiplier (0.5x to 3x) to boost your final SP.

The pools cover major pairs for wrapped BTC/ETH, USDC, USDT, SOL, BNB, and select Radix native alt-coins. Lending markets include hUSDC, hUSDT, hETH, hWBTC, XRD, and LSULP. There's even incentives for network usage, interacting with unique components and paying transaction fees all count.

Hyperlane Bridge: Radix Joins the Multi-Chain World

Alongside Radix Rewards, September saw the Hyperlane bridge go live on mainnet. Radix opened its doors to the rest of crypto with permissionless, modular infrastructure.

Users can bridge native assets to and from Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Solana and Binance Smart Chain. More routes are coming, but what's already here is enough to get liquidity flowing into Radix DeFi.

You've got two interfaces to choose from: Astrolescent (Radix-native) or Hyperlane Nexus. Both tap into the same underlying routes. Pick your source chain, select your asset, confirm, done. No gatekeepers.

Having a permissionless bridge means Radix is no longer an island. One of the key requirements for getting the assets needed for DeFi activity in an ecosystem is in place, and we will keep adding new routes as time goes on. 

Multi-Factor Authentication for the Radix Wallet

In October, Phase 1 of Multi-Factor Smart Accounts (MFA) rolled out on Stokenet, and in mid December Phase 2 went live . 

MFA is a major UX driver for both retail and institutional use, as instead of trusting a single seed phrase, you build a "Security Shield" with multiple factors: your phone biometrics, a Ledger, an Arculus Card, an off-device mnemonic, and more. You set the rules: how many factors are needed for regular transactions, what your recovery options look like, and what overrides exist if you lose a device.

The key difference from account abstraction on other chains? No single point of failure. The Access Controller handles it at the network level. Your wallet shows you exactly which factors protect your account, and every transaction respects those rules. It's clarity, flexibility, and control baked into the protocol.

Read more about MFA on Radix

Radix Wallet Supports Arculus Cards 

Speaking of hardware security, the Radix Wallet now supports the Arculus Card. This is the second phase of the Radix-Arculus partnership (XRD was listed in the Arculus Wallet app earlier).

The Arculus Card is an NFC-enabled hardware wallet that fits in your actual wallet. No cables, no charging, no bulky USB devices. Just tap to sign transactions. Your private keys never leave the card, and even if your phone gets compromised, nothing happens without that physical tap.

It works with any NFC-enabled phone, travels well (it's waterproof and tamper-resistant), and integrates directly into the Radix Wallet as a signing factor or recovery option. If you're setting up MFA, the Arculus Card can be one of your factors. One tap, secure signing, done.

Atomix & Bullring: The Power of Subintents

Radix native sub-intents, launched at the end of 2024 as part of the Cuttlefish update, create some unique functionality for Radix. 2025 saw these features being utilized by projects like Atomix and Bullring.

Atomix launched as a peer-to-peer trading platform built entirely on subintents, modular "mini-transactions" that users can pre-sign and pass around. The flow is simple: A buyer browses a seller's wallet, sends a direct offer to purchase an asset (NFT, token, whatever), chooses a payment method from whitelisted assets, sets an expiration time, and signs the subintent. The seller reviews the offer (via Notix app, or Telegram) and can accept instantly. No middlemen, no escrow contracts, no slippage, no waiting.

It's a 24/7 decentralized OTC desk where any asset becomes tradeable directly between wallets. Users are acquiring specific NFTs, building positions in low-liquidity tokens without moving markets, executing private trades, and securing time-sensitive deals that would be impossible on traditional AMMs.

Hyperscale Research Resumes

While the mainnet ecosystem was growing, the Hyperscale research continued. After Dan Hughes open-sourced portions of the Hyperscale code earlier this year, Timan took on the role of Interim Hyperscale Lead and began the work of bringing the network back online. Starting with Dan's clean, well-documented codebase and the private repositories he left behind, Timan faced two immediate challenges: generating the transaction load needed to saturate the network, and coordinating tests across multiple nodes.

The journey from zero to functional network involved learning to configure the "Universe" (shards, bootstrap nodes, timing parameters), automating node management with help from the Foundation DevOps team, and iterating through countless tests with the private testing group. The breakthrough came when Timan shifted focus from total TPS to TPS per shard, recognizing that Hyperscale's linear scalability means the right metric is throughput per shard, not absolute numbers on small node counts.

By late 2025, the results validated Dan's architecture. First 100k swaps per second on 36 nodes across 12 shards, then 250k TPS on a 32-shard setup; all running on commodity hardware: four cores, 16GB RAM. The tests follow a structured approach with three layers: internal tests on controlled infrastructure, private tests with the distributed validator-like setup, and eventually public tests where anyone can participate.

The mission continues toward 500k TPS and beyond, proving that linear scalability and atomic composability are an attainable goal.

Proof-of-Personhood: Identity That Actually Works

In November, Radix launched Proof-of-Personhood powered by idOS, addressing one of Web3's most persistent problems: identity verification that's both secure and actually usable. The current model is broken. Users verify themselves repeatedly across platforms, creating copies of sensitive data on centralized servers they don't control. Wallet addresses can't prove humanity since bots can generate thousands. Traditional KYC is repetitive, slow, and centralized.

The idOS integration changes this. Verify once, use everywhere in the idOS ecosystem. Your data stays encrypted under your keys. Apps can verify your identity without ever seeing your personal information. It's privacy-first, compliance-ready, and interoperable across chains.

What makes this work on Radix is the native Badge system. On other blockchains, identity is bolted on through smart contracts, a notorious source of exploits. On Radix, identity is built into the network itself. Badges are secure, tokenized credentials that live in your wallet. Any dApp can request proof you hold a specific Badge for access, without the Badge ever leaving your account. The Radix Engine handles authentication at the protocol level, eliminating entire classes of authorization vulnerabilities.

For developers, requiring a Proof-of-Personhood Badge is a single line of code. For users, it's a one-click approval in their wallet. The system launched with integration into Radix Rewards, users who complete their PoP verification earn Season Points toward the 1 Billion XRD airdrop. 

On-chain identity is essential for accessing regulated financial markets, and Radix's badge-based architecture makes it possible without compromising on decentralization or user control.

Looking Ahead

2025 was a year of stark contrasts. We secured permissionless bridges, stabilized operations after a restructure, pushed hard to drive real usage on-chain, and released a bunch of much requested updates. 

We also faced profound personal loss and undeniable market headwinds. We close the year with a mature network, a community that has weathered more than its fair share of storms, and clear choices to make as we move forward.

As we look to 2026, Radix needs to align on what matters most. One of Dan's core goals was deeper community input, and 2025 proved that this model works. The next phase of Radix is about leaning into that momentum.

We will share the full proposal for the 2026 Strategy in January, detailing how we turn this shared resilience into shared growth.

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Annex: The Ecosystem by the Numbers

One of Radix’s greatest strengths is our developer community and in 2025, the ecosystem cooked!

Here is a snapshot of the performance from 2025.

DeFi: Volume & Efficiency The application layer proved that the Radix stack delivers.

• CaviarNine surpassed $250M+ in cumulative trading volume, cementing its place as a liquidity anchor.
• Astrolescent became a critical router, handling $30M+ in aggregator swap volume and $9M+ in bridged volume.
• DefiPlaza validated their CALM algorithm in live markets,and launched their StableCalm algorithm.
• Dexter proved the viability of on-chain order books with 13M+ XRD in volume, while prediction markets like Delphibets processed 5.28M+ XRD across nearly 1,000 unique badges.
• Surge continued to drive millions of dollars per week of perps volume.

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Technical Innovation:

• Atomix launched the first sub-intent P2P trading platform. Zero counterparty risk, zero intermediaries, and true atomic swaps.
• Bullring utilized the Component model to run 41+ parallel auctions simultaneously, featuring trustless max-bid auto-bidding and atomic refunds.
• Prism Terminal introduced yield derivatives, successfully splitting yield-bearing assets into Principal and Yield Tokens—primitive financial engineering made safe by the platform.

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Interoperability & Scale 

• Astrolescent integrated 6+ networks (including SUI, Aptos, Sonic, BNB, and Ethereum) 
• Hyperlane enabled the first permissionless XRD ↔ eXRD bridge, removing centralized bottlenecks, that has now expanded to include BASE.
• On-chain gaming grew, with Radix Kingdoms logging 100,000 transactions in just 11 weeks post-mainnet and DCKSLAP generating over 120k transactions in 6 weeks.

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Infrastructure & Tooling

• Foton RPFS brought decentralized storage to mainnet (1GB free), removing reliance on IPFS gateways.
• Hookah launched real-time on-chain event monitoring, essential infrastructure for the coming wave of AI agents and arbitrage bots.
• Over 53,114 smart contract components have now been deployed to the Radix network.

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