Messari Mainnet 2022 was an amazing experience to say the least. My plan for Mainnet was centered around getting to know the RDX Works team and other Radvocates at the conference and learning from them, and the conference my surpassed my expectations. I met Radix Tokens Ltd CEO Andy Jarrett, RDX Works Marketing Director Rebecca Stratford, RDX Works CMO Jeremy Epstein, and the RDX Works CEO himself Piers Ridyard!!! I also had the pleasure of meeting Tony Ballard, Radix Ambassator for Montreal, and even Florian Cäsar, former Radix DLT team member and co-author of the Cerberus white paper! It was great to not only meet them but also have a few conversations with them and share our experiences around Radix. Personally, this served as a major motivational boost and I came back ready to get more engaged in the Radix ecosystem, going beyond just running a validator node by supporting an existing project or starting my own project. I also want to get more involved with the Washington DC Radix meetup, and I'll be sharing some updates on that shortly. Here are some pictures with the awesome people that I met at the conference.
As if meeting these folks wasn't amazing enough, in the last day on Friday I actually won one of the Lambos! For those who might not know, the RDX Works team gives out several Lego Lamborghini sets at crypto conferences as a humorous way of finally answering "Wen Lambo?" 😊 I felt blessed and very grateful because I have a 12-year old son who's really into Legos and was very happy to get his Lego Lambo. But then, I wasn't even done celebrating winning the Lambo yet when the Hacken team calls me to let me know I won their Lego set also! They were giving out a Star Wars Republic Gunship Lego set that was just as massive as the Lamborghini Lego set.
I wasn't sure whether to even post about this or not because I didn't want to sound like I'm gloating. I'm just very grateful and I feel blessed to have won these Lego sets for my son. Thank you so much RDX Works and Hacken teams, you guys made this an extra special Mainnet for me this year!
Messari Mainnet brings the big names in the crypto industry, and they didn't disappoint this year by having appearances from Vitalik Buterin and Charles Hoskinson, among others. Charles' session was sort of the same old, same old: he was given the floor to clear up the misconceptions on Cardano, so he described how it's not a ghost chain and there are many people using it, and how it's having direct impact in people's lives such as World Mobile bringing Internet access to places that did not have Internet connectivity, and Empowa building affordable houses in Africa. As always, he got pressed on "why another chain that's already doing what Ethereum is doing?", "what is Cardano doing different that Ethereum is not already doing?", and "why does Cardano take such a long time to release instead of doing it quick like Solana?" I keep a close eye on how people keep asking these questions repeatedly for Cardano because these questions could easily be asked about Radix also, especially in relation to the "measure twice, cut once", "slow and steady wins the race" approach that the RDX Works team takes to get things right, instead of the "release now, fix later" approach that Solana and some other chains take.
It would be terrible in the future for Piers to be in the same position having to keep justifying "why Radix?", but I think Radix will follow a different path because of our "secret weapon": Scrypto. The entry barrier to Cardano development is significant if you don't already have expertise in Haskell and Plutus, and the dApp development level of effort is much higher compared to other blockchains because of Haskell and Plutus constraints. The RDX Works team made a brilliant decision to make Radix a developer-focused DLT and lowering the entry barrier significantly, and it's showing in the number of projects already deployed or under development (at least 94 projects as of today according to Radix List.
Vitalik Buterin's discussion was centered around the recent "Merge" that transitioned Ethereum from PoW to PoS and whether or not it was really successful (of course, Vitalik said it was successful 😊), and also on the next big step, the "Surge", in which sharding will be introduced into Ethereum. The way Vitalik described the path to sharding made it sound very complex: a lot of moving parts and integrations, numerous dependencies among multiple stakeholders, and some type of phased approach so that it's not a Big Bang type of migration. This complexity, dependencies and integrations at multiple levels left me with the impression that a DLT that is optimized from the ground up for sharding like Radix will eliminate the complexities described by Vitalik, making it easier to use and develop dApps for Radix compared to Ethereum (once both are fully sharded). However, Vitalik was optimistic that the Ethereum developers will be able to make it happen, so the sharding of Ethereum is another event that we need keep our eyes on because of the potential impact on Radix depending on its success, especially if it happens before Xi'an. Nevertheless, even if the "Surge" is successful and improves the Ethereum user and developer experience, Radix may still have the upper hand because when asked if L2s like Polygon will still be needed after sharding, Vitalik's answer was "Yes", and that makes me think Radix will have a better sharding solution.
Last but not least, I made a nice connection with the Hacken team because they're big fans of Radix and they can't wait to do their first dApp security audit in the Radix ecosystem. To make things interesting and encourage some competition, I stopped by the Certik booth to let them know they'll get behind the competition if they don't keep up, so they stopped by the Radix booth to find out how to get involved also.
Messari Mainnet 2022 was an awesome experience in many ways and absolutely worth the investment. Looking forward to Mainnet 2023 after the Babylon release, where Radix will have an even stronger presence at the conference!
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