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Radix’s Babylon Mainnet is the second major version of the Radix Public Network and came to life in September 2023 when the previous Olympia Mainnet upgraded to Babylon. The Radix Babylon Mainnet precedes the Radix Xi’an Mainnet, which is the next major version of the Radix Network (see What is the Radix Roadmap for more).
Babylon brings Radix’s Full Stack together, bringing smart contracts written in Scrypto and executing in Radix Engine v2 to production, as well as a radically better user experience and developer experience, and as a result, the birth and flourishing of Radix’s ecosystem of dApps (see How do I discover dApps and tokens in the Radix ecosystem for more).
The Babylon Mainnet Upgrade included the following upgrades to the Radix Public Network and launch of core supporting applications and tools:
Radix Wallet
The mobile Radix Wallet app for iOS and Android marked a transformative leap in the intuitiveness and security of the DeFi and Web3 user experience, enabled by unique features of the Radix Network. With the Radix Wallet, your friends and family can now use Web3 and DeFi with confidence, without compromising on decentralization.
You can download the Radix Wallet at: wallet.radixdlt.com.
Five Platform Technologies
The Radix Wallet, in conjunction with the rest of the Radix Full Stack, offers Radix’s groundbreaking user experience by leveraging the following five platform technologies:
Transaction Manifest - a powerful new transaction model that puts an end to blind signing with human-readable transactions and customizable transaction guarantees.
Personas - a dedicated system for on-ledger identity and authentication, allowing users to log in to Web3 applications without a password.
Smart Accounts - on-ledger containers for assets with the capability to be accessed and recovered with multiple factors such as phones, hardware wallets, or through social recovery (while available at the network level, these features were not available in the Radix Wallet as at the completion of the Babylon Mainnet Upgrade in September 2023).
Native Assets - the introduction of Radix’s native resource model that provides predictable behaviors for tokens and NFTs, thereby improving security and reliability.
Radix Connect - a way to connect the mobile Radix Wallet app to desktop sessions through an encrypted P2P connection.
See The Problem with Crypto Wallets Today for a blog article explaining how these technologies massively improve the Web3 and DeFi user experience.
See The Problem with Crypto Transactions Today and Radix’s Asset-Oriented Transactions for two blog articles explaining how the Transaction Manifest massively improves Web3 and DeFi transactions.
Scrypto and Radix Engine v2
The Babylon Mainnet Upgrade enabled powerful smart contract functionality for the Radix network, thanks to intuitive “asset-oriented” programmability with Scrypto and the execution environment Radix Engine v2.
Scrypto and Radix Engine v2 offer a developer experience that is easy to learn, highly intuitive, and inherently secure; allowing anyone with even just a small amount of development experience to quickly learn how to build powerful, secure consumer-friendly dApps.
Scrypto and Radix Engine achieve this with native features for assets (tokens and NFTs), transactions (via the Transaction Manifest), and access control baked into both the programming language and execution environment.
To learn more about how Scrypto and Radix Engine offers a radically better developer experience, see the RadFi Keynote, the blog series starting with The Problem with Smart Contracts Today, the blog series starting with The Problem with Crypto Transactions Today, and Comparing Virtual Machines: Message Only vs Asset-Oriented.
To get started with the Radix Developer Experience, check out the Radix Developer Hub.
Radix Dashboard
The Radix Dashboard serves a dual purpose: Firstly, it functions as a comprehensive explorer for the Radix Network, enabling users to effortlessly search and access information available on the ledger. This makes tracking transactions, balances, and other ledger-related activities a breeze. Secondly, for those who actively want to participate in the network's growth and security, the Dashboard offers functionalities to stake, unstake, and claim XRD from validators.
See Start Here! Radix Dashboard User Guide for how to use the Dashboard.
Further Reading:
