Hi!

Firstly, thank you for being interested in Radix and taking the time to prepare such an in-depth post.

To start with the comparison with other cryptocurrencies - one might say that Bitcoin evolved into an SoV, yet it’s still very much true that the store of value narrative isn’t something that all parties agree on. Moreover, the creation of L2 solutions such as Lightning Network even more so signifies the fact that some people see BTC as a medium of exchange.

As for Ethereum, please have in mind that it started as a ‘decentralized world computer’ to evolve into a platform for crowdfunding (given the amount of money EOS, the self-proclaimed ETH killer raised via erc20 token, it’s even ironic). Then we had the dapp phase, while currently, the ethereum community works on the decentralized finance movement. Moreover, the BTC community currently ridiculizes the Ethereum foundation for describing ETH as a store of value.

As you can see, it’s not really simple in the world of crypto, and previous assumptions (BTC as peer-to-peer cash, Ethereum as a decentralized world computer) evolve under real-world conditions

Before we go into why we’ve decided to change the economics model - I should remind you that it is not the only whitepaper we are working on currently. Even though the community is interested in the new economics whitepaper, we will be publishing the Tempo security whitepaper in the following weeks. It is written to withstand peer review and to be the formal backbone of the consensus mechanism. There’s no one-single whitepaper and from a technical point of view - economics doesn’t need to be first.

We understand your scepticism, yet this is precisely the reason why everything takes so long. We cannot afford the situation in which someone losses money on the ledger and we respond with "Radix is a very new technology...". Given this, there is no identity crisis - Radix wants to be the first truly scalable, decentralized and safe protocol, providing the building blocks to developers for making applications, tokens and coins as easy to deploy as possible.

As for the economic model - yes, the networks native token will be fixed supply and we intend to release a subsidy to node runners. The last economic model based on Approved Minters was discarded due to two reasons:

-community criticism
-the risk of AMs forking off the network

Given these, the model based on cash reserves was no longer feasible - that’s why we’ve come to a conclusion to create a fixed supply coin, while still incorporating the element of stability - fees tied to 1 cent. Nevertheless, a secondary currency intended to be stable is still something we will work on - it just won’t be the native token of the network.

Just to end up with replies to the summary points you’ve prepared:

1.Be a store of value (with a fixed money supply?) - we do not decide whether the native currency of the network will become an SoV or not.

2.Be a relatively stable currency - stability, and therefore ease of use as an MoE was always something very important for Radix DLT and Dan personally and we will continue to work on a solution

3.Be a platform for running smart contracts - I think we might have a misunderstanding here. Smart contracts are difficult to create and secure (think DAO), moreover smart contracts slow down the network. Our whole approach is based on an API-driven approach, possibly minimizing the use of smart contracts for ease of building. This also allows us to be language-agnostic, with different client libraries interacting with the ledger, not only one language for smart contracts (solidity). Nevertheless, a smart-contract language (scrypto) is in the works.

4.Be a decentralized exchange - that’s just one of the features. Creating a toolset for deploying solutions on the ledger is the priority at the moment.

5.Others - that’s not up to us, though we have some propositions - https://docs.radixdlt.com/alpha/learn/use-cases/ :)

We are fully aware that this response mixes both the platform qualities and the economics, yet we wanted to respond to each and every point you brought up.