What are the Radix Public Network and Radix Ledger?

Radix Public Network

The Radix Public Network is the live set of computers (nodes) that use the internet to connect and send messages amongst themselves to submit and verify transactions and agree to commit them to the Radix Ledger in consensus. Those computers are all the full nodes, validator nodes, and archive nodes enabled by the Radix Node software. Of these, validator nodes are the most critical, as they are responsible for driving progress through phases of consensus and verifying transactions.

The security of the Radix Public Network is thus dependent on these validator nodes. Full nodes and archive nodes only mirror the state of the Radix Ledger as defined by the ledger that is committed by Validator Nodes. It is, therefore, vitally important that XRD token holders delegate stake to validator nodes wisely to secure the network.

The Desktop Wallet and Radix Explorer connect to the Radix Public Network, either to submit transactions or retrieve information about balances, accounts, transactions, and more.

Radix Ledger

The Radix Ledger is the ledger that serves as a record of all transactions that have ever occurred on the Radix Public Network since the very start, also known as “genesis”.

The Radix Ledger records the ownership of all XRD. In fact, everything to do with Radix that will need to be immutable (cannot be changed) is stored on the Radix Ledger. With the release of Babylon, this will include the state of “components”, user-created assets, NFTs, or even data as esoteric as the average temperature on a specific day, for example, in an agricultural derivatives decentralized application.

By agreeing with one another on every change to the Radix Ledger, validator nodes, in consensus, can agree on the state of the Radix Ledger. This is what allows Radix to be decentralized, permissionless, and trustless.

Changes to the Radix Ledger are created through transactions, which in turn contain a set of low-level updates to state called substate.

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