Radicle

The RAD token is the native governance token of the Radicle network. Its primary functions are:

• Governance: Voting on protocol upgrades and treasury management.
• Incentives: Rewarding network participants and contributors.
• Protocol Treasury: Funding public goods and ecosystem development through a community-managed treasury.

Radicle operates on a peer-to-peer (P2P) network using the Git protocol. Instead of a central server, each participant hosts their own repositories and replicates others' work. This is powered by the libp2p networking stack, creating a resilient, censorship-resistant network where data is stored and shared directly between peers.

User identity is managed through a decentralized public key infrastructure. A Radicle ID is a unique identifier derived from a user's cryptographic key pair. This self-sovereign identity is used to sign commits, issues, and patches, providing verifiable authorship and collaboration without a central authority.

The network is built on a layered stack of protocols:

• Radicle Link: The P2P replication layer built on Git and libp2p.
• Radicle Upstream: The client application for interacting with the network.
• Radicle Orgs: A smart contract system (typically on Ethereum) for managing decentralized organizations and project funding. This stack separates the data layer from the application and financial layers.

Code collaboration is centered around patches, Radicle's equivalent to Pull Requests. Patches are proposed changes to a repository that are shared, reviewed, and discussed on the P2P network. They are tracked via a Project Heartbeat, a special Git reference that maintains the state of all open patches for a project.

Radicle Orgs are Ethereum smart contracts that allow projects to form decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). They enable on-chain governance for project decisions, treasury management, and token-based membership. This integrates the code collaboration network with decentralized funding and ownership models.

Unlike centralized forges (GitHub, GitLab), Radicle has no central point of failure or control. It is permissionless to join and censorship-resistant. Unlike merely decentralized Git (where you can host your own server), Radicle provides a global, shared namespace and discovery layer for projects via its P2P gossip protocol.

Radicle replicates the core Git experience—commits, branches, merges—over a peer-to-peer network instead of a central server. Developers host and share repositories directly with peers using the Radicle Link protocol, which leverages Gossip for data propagation. This creates a censorship-resistant foundation for code collaboration.

The network operates without central servers. Each user runs a Radicle node that stores their repositories and replicates data from peers they follow. Discovery and collaboration are managed via a decentralized tracking graph, where users "seed" projects they care about, ensuring redundancy and availability.

Beyond Git, Radicle provides tools for decentralized workflow:

• Patches: A native alternative to Pull Requests, allowing for review, comments, and merging directly within the P2P network.
• Issues: Track and discuss bugs or features in a decentralized manner, stored alongside the code.
• All collaboration data is stored and synced via the Radicle protocol.

Radicle offers a distinct value proposition compared to platforms like GitHub or GitLab:

• Ownership: Users retain full control of their data and infrastructure.
• Censorship Resistance: No central entity can remove projects or users.
• Resilience: The network persists as long as peers are seeding projects.
• Integration: Adds programmable, on-chain social and financial layers via Ethereum.

The RAD token is the native governance token of the Radicle network, used for:

• Governance: Voting on protocol upgrades and treasury management via Radicle DAO.
• Incentives: Potentially rewarding network participants like seeders.
• Access: Required for creating Radicle Orgs, which are on-chain developer organizations.

Radicle's model fundamentally shifts trust assumptions from platform operators to the protocol and its users.

• No Single Point of Failure: No company can deplatform a project.
• User-Controlled Identity: Identity is portable and not owned by a platform.
• Verifiable Collaboration: Interactions are signed and can be cryptographically verified via the peer-to-peer network and Ethereum state.

The RAD token secures and governs the network's social layer. Its primary functions are:

• Governance: Voting on protocol upgrades and treasury management.
• Project Ownership: Representing ownership and control over Radicle-native projects.
• Incentive Alignment: Providing a mechanism to reward contributors and maintainers through community-managed treasuries, though direct code contribution rewards are not automated by the protocol.

The foundational distributed version control system upon which Radicle is built. Radicle extends Git's peer-to-peer model by adding decentralized identity, peer discovery, and collaboration workflows, removing the need for centralized servers like GitHub.

• Key Extension: Adds a global namespace and gossip protocol for discovering peers and repositories.

A decentralized network architecture where participants (peers) interact directly without a central coordinator. Radicle uses a P2P gossip protocol for replicating Git repositories and tracking user identities, ensuring censorship resistance and user sovereignty over their data and social graph.

A self-sovereign identifier controlled by the user, not a central authority. In Radicle, a user's identity is a DID (a public key) stored on the Radicle Identity protocol. This DID anchors their profile, repositories, and social interactions (like code reviews) on the network.

The Radicle-specific term for creating a new project repository. Unlike 'pushing' to a central server, forging creates a new project identifier on the Radicle network. This identifier is replicated peer-to-peer, and the project's history and metadata are anchored to the creator's decentralized identity.

Radicle's mechanism for peer-to-peer code collaboration. Instead of pull requests on a central server, contributors submit Patches. These are proposals for changes that are shared, reviewed, and discussed directly between peers via the P2P network, with all activity linked to participants' DIDs.