Are my funds safe on Radix?

In short, yes, your funds are safe on Radix as the Radix Public Network is secure (see below for why). 

However, as with any cryptocurrency platform, you, the user, also have a significant responsibility to ensure the security of your own tokens. You will need to safeguard your private keys, perhaps using a hardware wallet or using best practices for software wallet use, and back up and guard your seed phrase. ‍

You should never disclose your keys or seed phrase to any party other than perhaps trusted family or friends in case of death. Remember: RADIX WILL NEVER ASK YOU FOR YOUR KEYS OR SEED PHRASE.

Network security: Olympia, Alexandria, Babylon releases

For the Olympia mainnet, Radix uses an unsharded, simple form of Cerberus as its consensus protocol. Unsharded Cerberus draws heavily from the “HotStuff” consensus protocol. HotStuff has been mathematically proven to have strong guarantees of safety and liveness, and it is also used by the Facebook-led Diem crypto network.

One of the primary attack vectors of any DLT network is known as a Sybil attack. Unsharded Cerberus has a threshold of “2f+1” (~33.3%) of stake in order for an attacker to start adversely affecting the safety or liveness of the network. This is the same as any other “BFT-style” consensus protocol, such as Tendermint, used in networks such as Cosmos and Terra. (Even in the extremely unlikely case of a successful Sybil attack, the attacker couldn’t access the funds in your account).

However, preventing Sybil attacks is part of why it’s incredibly important for our token-holding community to stake to validators that are trustworthy. See here for guidance on how to delegate your stake.

Network security: Xi’an release

For the Xi’an release, Radix will use sharded Cerberus. Sharded Cerberus has had its safety and liveness independently and formally proven by the University of California Davis in the following academic paper: Cerberus: Minimalistic Multi-shard Byzantine-resilient Transaction Processing.

As of June 2021, the paper is under peer review.

Further reading:

• What are the Radix Public Network and Radix Ledger?
• What do security, safety, and liveness mean? 
• What are public and private keys?
• What are software and hardware wallets?
• What is a seed phrase
• What is Cerberus?
• What is a Sybil attack?
• What are Proof of Work and Proof of Stake?
• How should I choose validators to stake to?