Summary: Radius is better cataloged as a stablecoin settlement layer for machine-to-machine commerce than as a generic new Layer 1. Its official site and docs consistently center the same business model: microtransactions, real-time metering, pay-per-use content, and agentic internet workloads that conventional card rails and conventional blockchains supposedly handle poorly. The more revealing clues are the developer details around that thesis: fixed low fees, EVM-compatible RPC endpoints, bridge flows from Ethereum and Base, an x402 facilitator, explicit docs for API-metered services, and unusual JSON-RPC semantics that signal Radius is optimizing for a specialized payment environment rather than trying to look exactly like Ethereum everywhere.
What it does:
Provides a stablecoin-native settlement network intended for micropayments, machine-to-machine commerce, and usage-based internet billing
Exposes EVM-compatible RPC endpoints, chain configuration, contract-address references, and standard tooling guidance for Foundry, viem, wagmi, Hardhat, and ethers.js integrations
Supports bridge flows from Ethereum and Base into Radius for USDC and SBC, plus testnet faucet access for developer onboarding
Uses a fixed-fee model designed to make stablecoin transfers cheap and predictable, with Turnstile conversion when an account has convertible stablecoin but lacks fee balance
Publishes dedicated use-case docs for real-time API metering, pay-per-visit content, streaming payments, and x402-based machine-payment settlement
Maintains a public GitHub organization with open-source repos for Radius skills, agent-payment-related tooling, and EVM integration surfaces
Key claims:
The homepage says Radius is a “high-performance stablecoin network” for the next generation of commerce and highlights microtransactions, real-time metering, and usage-based pricing as core target workloads
The homepage claims 2.5M+ demonstrated TPS, sub-1-second settlement, and stable transaction fees of $0.0001
The docs index describes Radius as a settlement layer where stablecoin micropayments reach finality, purpose-built for machine-to-machine payments at the scale of API calls on the open internet
The network-configuration docs publish mainnet and testnet RPC endpoints, chain IDs, explorers, faucet paths, API-key URL format, and dedicated x402 facilitator URLs for both networks
The fees docs say a standard stablecoin transfer costs about $0.00010 on average and explain that Radius uses RUSD for fees while the Turnstile can convert SBC inline at 1:1 face value when needed
The network-configuration docs explicitly note Ethereum-compatibility differences such as eth_blockNumber returning the current timestamp in milliseconds, eth_getBalance including native plus convertible USD balance, and eth_feeHistory being pseudo-supported
The real-time API metering guide positions Radius as a way to charge per API call with instant settlement, no chargebacks, and far lower minimum-transaction economics than traditional card billing
The docs index also highlights pay-per-visit content, streaming payments, and x402 integration as first-class surfaces, which is strong evidence that Radius is packaging an agent-payments stack rather than only a base execution network
Whitepaper: No canonical standalone Radius whitepaper or litepaper surfaced in this pass. The clearest current sources of truth are the official site, docs corpus, and public GitHub organization; see ../whitepapers/radius-primary-sources-2026-05-02.md.