What Is Radix Engine?

On Ethereum, a token is really a balance table held by a smart contract, and each token contract implements its own transfer logic. In the Radix Engine, on the other hand, tokens, NFTs, and authority badges are resources defined at the platform level. These resources move between accounts and components like physical objects; the engine prevents an asset from being accidentally copied or lost through its own rules.

Developers write applications for the Radix Engine in Scrypto, a Rust-based language. Reusable templates are called 'blueprints', and the live applications created from them are called 'components'. The transaction manifests that users sign show which asset will go where in a human-readable form in the wallet. With this approach, Radix aims to reduce some types of bugs and vulnerabilities common in DeFi applications.

The Radix Engine is not a scaling engine but an application layer; the network's scalability goal is addressed mainly through a shardable consensus design called Cerberus. Although the asset-oriented model is interesting, it is not directly compatible with the EVM ecosystem, so developers need to learn a new language and toolset.