TLDR:

1. Successfully streamlined team (70 → 14), several wallet updates released and essential services uninterrupted.
2. Bridge breakthrough: Hyperlane. Priority integration secured to get permissionless and open sourced bridging between Radix and 100+ chains. Code targeted to be audit ready by mid-Aug. 
3. Hyperscale testing picking up speed, perfectly coinciding with the launch of our 1 billion XRD incentives & Hyperlane.
   
   

It’s been an intense few months at Radix. Today, I want to update you on where we’re heading, what’s working, and what’s changing. 

Where we are

Firstly, the restructuring is largely complete. We've down-scaled from around 70 full-time staff to 14. That's a massive change, and it means some activities are running at a lower scale than last year even though efficiency has improved significantly which was my priority one. 

The team is going above and beyond constantly and I’m extremely proud of what they have achieved in a short time. They’ve maintained every critical service without issue. The wallet, node, gateway, and all auxiliary services are rock solid. And we’ve continued to support builders, promoting the Radix word valiantly, and a side benefit is everyone involved now has a solid backup career spinning plates. 

But, with fewer people and resources, we need to be smart with what we prioritize. We need growth. 

That is where our focus is currently, and following a number of positive strategy outcomes over the past weeks, a high level plan on how we intend to catalyse that growth over the next months is prudent. 

Three Strategic Priorities That Will Drive Growth

During our recent Foundation Strategy week, Andy, Adam, and I settled the details on three clear priorities:

1. Radix Rewards Incentive Campaign. 

A 1 billion XRD incentive campaign,  tasked with attracting more users, capital, and genuine activity to our growing ecosystem. It’s designed to reward real participation in trading, lending, liquidity provision, and more, with mechanisms in place to discourage gaming and encourage long-term involvement.

2. Hyperscale Testing. 

This is critical. I'm personally focused on hyperscale testing with every spare minute, building the robustness we need for the ultimate stress test. A slight change to the strategy is to bring in the third parties independently to validate some of our community testing, whilst organizing the hyper-throughput tests behind the scenes which require more logistical effort. This is what Radix was built for, scaling to millions of swaps per second.

3. The Permissionless Bridge Breakthrough. 

Here's the news I'm most excited about. We've solved one of the largest barriers to Radix adoption thanks to Adam & Andy’s intensive BD work at Consensus. We've reached an agreement with Hyperlane to integrate with Radix. 

That means fully permissionless and open sourced bridging between Radix and over 100 other chains. Hyperlane has already bridged over $7 billion in value and is one of the largest non-native bridges live today.

The contracts are signed, work has begun, and their non-EVM team is prioritizing our integration! We are targeting to be audit-ready by mid-August, which is months ahead of my original September-October timeline for solving this big barrier to Radix’s growth.

The timelines on these three critical growth components are lining up nicely, which is why I have tasked the team to focus wherever possible on these core growth elements. Combined, I believe they will significantly shift sentiment and momentum around Radix. 

Managing Expectations, Delivering Results

We’ve made great strides with wallet features like Dark Mode, an in-wallet dApp directory, and XRD Domains integration. Plus, we've successfully set up and concluded the token holder consultation on repurposing our stablecoin reserve, clearly signaling the community’s alignment with our growth plans. Finally, with a major permissionless bridge integration secured, no longer will Radix be an isolated island in the middle of the ocean.  It’s been an intense few months!

However, with 14 people versus 70, we've had to make some hard choices and recognise there needs to be some trade-offs. 

The most impactful of these to the community is the need to pause the grants program for three months. Over the past year, we awarded around 90 grants averaging $14k each, and while they've helped build our thriving dApp ecosystem further, we need to focus resources on core growth priorities right now. 

All outstanding grants will be honored, and we're still ready to back high-value opportunities. But our focus is on growing users, capital, and liquidity in the amazing ecosystem we have, allowing it to achieve its true potential.

Although we’re pausing grants, I want to highlight the incredible work done by the builders in the ecosystem, and the support provided by the grants and marketing team, in achieving an industry leading ROI on grants funding during the last year. Given its success, my intention is to restart this as soon as we deliver momentum on the demand side. 

The other thing we need to be realistic about is the marketing approach for the incentives launch. Unlike RadQuest, we have far less marketing staff and about 10% of the budget. Therefore, I’ve asked Adam to make sure our marketing approach focuses on steady, efficient, sustained momentum rather than large, expensive splashy launch. 

The incentives campaign is intended to be long-term, a lot can change in our industry quickly, therefore marketing efforts and expenditure will be reviewed as time goes on.

Capital and Momentum Building

To support the Hyperlane integration and minimize treasury pressure, we opened a small OTC round with a 12-month lockup last week. I'm pleased to report that with the help of Andy and Adam, we quickly saw significant interest, which is a strong signal of confidence in our direction.

We're also concentrating on drawing more capital into the ecosystem. Conversations from last week have resulted in commitments of around $500k to be deployed in Radix dApps shortly. That's the kind of real economic activity we need to build on.

The Road Ahead

Our lean team is dedicated, disciplined, and strategically aligned. But we can't do it alone.

The Radix community keeps coming up in conversations I have at events, with industry insiders, and is something I see first hand, you are one of our greatest strengths. Now is the time for all of us developers, users, and token holders to align and leverage these opportunities and spread the word. With incentive campaigns, truly permissionless bridging, and the hyperscale capabilities about to cross the line, we have the tools to get momentum behind Radix's potential.

Dan Hughes
Founder, Radix