What is RadicalxChange?

Come up with a new way of voting, or a new way of handling property or data, and without a place to try it out, it stays an idea on paper. RadicalxChange is an organization, and a movement, of people who think up such ideas and test them in real settings. It is also closely connected to the book Plurality.

In short

RadicalxChange (RxC for short) is an international nonprofit set up by the economist E. Glen Weyl, building on the response to his book Radical Markets (2018). Researchers, artists, entrepreneurs and activists have gathered around it, making it a movement [1][2][3].

It designs new mechanisms for voting, property and data, and tries them out in practice [1][2]. The author profile in Plurality describes Weyl as its founder [4]. TIME magazine (2024) writes that Audrey Tang and Vitalik Buterin also sit on its board together with Weyl [1].

For example

Trying out Quadratic Voting. According to the Chinese-language Wikipedia, Quadratic Voting (a voting method in which piling many votes onto one option becomes increasingly expensive) was used for the first time in Taiwan at the Presidential Hackathon (總統黑客松) held in Taipei in 2019, organized by RxC [5].

Using it for its own decisions. On how to avoid the concentration of power in liquid democracy, where votes can be delegated to others, chapter 5-6 of Plurality writes: "RadicalxChange, a non-profit advancing ⿻, has implemented a related system for its internal decision-making" [6].

Making and promoting Plurality. In September 2022, an outline of the book under the names of Tang and Weyl (which they presented as a first rough draft) was published on the RxC blog, with a call for help in writing it collaboratively [7]. In May 2024, RxC, working with local organizations, held a tour in which Tang and Weyl visited European cities including Madrid and Paris [8].

In more detail

Beginnings

According to TIME, Radical Markets drew a lot of attention when it came out in 2018. Weyl channeled that energy into setting up the RxC Foundation, a nonprofit to advance the book's ideas [1]. The first RxC conference was held in Detroit in March 2019, and Buterin was among the speakers [9].

Earlier, in September 2018, Weyl had published an exchange of emails with Buterin. In response to the problems Buterin raised, Weyl replied, in essence, that none of them stood in the way of experimenting in the near future [10].

The "X" in the name

In a 2020 interview with a Japanese publisher, Tang said that the X in RxC is the X of the "mode of exchange" (in her words in Chinese: RxC的「X」是交換模式的「X」) [11].

This draws on the thought of the Japanese philosopher Kojin Karatani (柄谷行人). As Tang explains it, exchange can be sorted along two axes: whether it is with people you know or with strangers, and whether it expects something in return or not. After the family (people you know, nothing expected in return), the state (people you know, with payment) and the market (strangers, with payment) comes a fourth kind: sharing with strangers without expecting anything in return. Karatani called this "X", she says [11]. In another session, Tang said that when she got to know Weyl she introduced him to Karatani's ideas, and the two came together to become this foundation [12]. This is covered in more detail in the article on modes of exchange.

What it aims for

In a 2019 piece, "What is RadicalxChange?", Weyl set out the diagnosis that serves as the movement's starting point [13]. Capitalism, he writes, handles poorly the situations in which people working together can do more than the sum of their parts. National democracy, which is supposed to make up for this, also tends to become rigid. Weyl then listed numbered principles, such as moving beyond the oppositions between capitalism and statism, and between individualism and collectivism [13].

A piece from the end of the same year lists the following as mechanisms RxC has promoted [2]:

• Quadratic Voting (QV)
• Quadratic Funding (QF, a mechanism for allocating money to public goods)
• A property system that auctions self-assessed licenses (SALSA; for the related idea see the article on the Harberger tax)
• Data dignity (the idea of respecting the rights of the people who create data)
• Social data that reflects the fact that people belong to many groups

Current activities (2025–2026)

As of 2026, its executive director is Jess Scully, a former deputy lord mayor of Sydney [3]. In a September 2026 post on the RxC blog, Scully writes that RxC will join Weyl's reverse alignment (an effort to rework society's institutions, rather than AI, for the age of AI) in the area of democracy [14].

What is debated

• Results as a movement. TIME writes that the foundation achieved some things, but fell far short of the goals Weyl has set for Plurality (by 2030, a core of 1,000 people, a million copies sold and a billion people sympathetic to the ideas) [1].
• Who founded it? Sources put it differently. The book's author profile calls Weyl its "Founder" [4], and Tang also said in a 2020 interview that it was Weyl who set up the foundation [12]. On the other hand, an excerpt from one of Tang's Japanese books, published as an article, says that she set up the foundation in New York together with Weyl [15]. Ken Suzuki's commentary on the Japanese edition also uses both phrasings: that Weyl founded it himself, and that he founded it together with Tang, Buterin and others [16]. The Reverse Alignment coalition website calls Weyl a co-founder [3].
• The origin of the "X" does not fully match Karatani's original. Karatani's own term is "mode of exchange D". According to Sunji Lee, a scholar of education, Karatani says that his theory of modes of exchange and Tang's differ slightly. Lee explains that Tang combines Karatani's "mode of exchange D" and "social formation X" and calls the result "mode of exchange X" [17].

Where it fits in Plurality

The author profile in the English edition of Plurality says Weyl "is Founder of RadicalxChange" [4]. Chapter 5-6, "⿻ Voting", calls RxC "a non-profit advancing ⿻", cites its internal decision-making as an example, and links to an RxC page for the example of the Colorado state legislature's use of Quadratic Voting [6].

Chapter 5-7, "Social Markets", and chapter 4-3, "Commerce and Trust", also point to the RxC website for more detailed explanations [18][19].

According to TIME, it was Buterin who introduced Weyl and Tang to each other in 2018 [1]. RxC serves as a bridge between Weyl's Radical Markets, the forerunner of the book, and Plurality itself.

Further reading

1. Glen Weyl, "What is RadicalxChange?" (English, article) — https://www.radicalxchange.org/updates/blog/2019-02-25-xjekue/
2. Glen Weyl, "The Political Philosophy of RadicalxChange" (English, article) — https://www.radicalxchange.org/updates/blog/2019-12-30-gqx4th/
3. Jess Scully, "On Reverse Alignment" (English, article) — https://www.radicalxchange.org/updates/blog/on-reverse-alignment/
4. Plurality, chapter 5-6 "⿻ Voting" (English, book) — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-6/eng/
5. Audrey Tang, "Digital Press 第四次來訪" (fourth interview with Digital Press) (in Chinese, interview transcript) — https://archive.tw/2020-07-24-digital-press-%E7%AC%AC%E5%9B%9B%E6%AC%A1%E4%BE%86%E8%A8%AA
6. Ken Suzuki, commentary on the Japanese edition of Plurality (in Japanese, commentary) — https://note.com/digitaldemocracy/n/nb8b59a6b775d

Sources

1. TIME, "Inside Audrey Tang's Plan to Align Technology with Democracy" (2024) — https://time.com/6979012/audrey-tang-interview-plurality-democracy/
2. Glen Weyl, "The Political Philosophy of RadicalxChange" (2019-12-30) — https://www.radicalxchange.org/updates/blog/2019-12-30-gqx4th/
3. Reverse Alignment coalition website — https://reversealignment.ai/
4. Plurality, 0-1 "About the authors" — https://github.com/pluralitybook/plurality/blob/main/contents/english/0-1-About-the-authors.md ［CC0］
5. "平方投票法", Chinese-language Wikipedia (in Chinese) — https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/%E5%B9%B3%E6%96%B9%E6%8A%95%E7%A5%A8%E6%B3%95 ［CC BY-SA 4.0］
6. Plurality, 5-6 "⿻ Voting" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-6/eng/ ［CC0］
7. Audrey Tang and Glen Weyl, "Plurality: Technology for Collaborative Diversity and Democracy" (2022-09-15) — https://www.radicalxchange.org/updates/blog/plurality-technology-for-collaborative-diversity-and-democracy/
8. RadicalxChange, "2024 Plurality European Tour" — https://www.radicalxchange.org/events/2024-plurality-european-tour/
9. Vitalik Buterin's talk at the RadicalxChange 2019 conference in Detroit (video) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ98-7GM55Q
10. Glen Weyl, "A RadicalxChange between Vitalik Buterin and Glen Weyl" (2018-09-29) — https://medium.com/@glenweyl/a-radicalxchange-between-vitalik-buterin-and-glen-weyl-328d8ad088cf
11. Audrey Tang, "Digital Press 第四次來訪" (2020-07-24, in Chinese) — https://archive.tw/2020-07-24-digital-press-%E7%AC%AC%E5%9B%9B%E6%AC%A1%E4%BE%86%E8%A8%AA ［CC0］
12. Audrey Tang, "Digital Press 第五次來訪" (2020-08-14, in Chinese) — https://archive.tw/2020-08-14-digital-press-%E7%AC%AC%E4%BA%94%E6%AC%A1%E4%BE%86%E8%A8%AA ［CC0］
13. Glen Weyl, "What is RadicalxChange?" (2019-02-25) — https://www.radicalxchange.org/updates/blog/2019-02-25-xjekue/
14. Jess Scully, "On Reverse Alignment" (2026-09) — https://www.radicalxchange.org/updates/blog/on-reverse-alignment/
15. GENTOSHA GOLD ONLINE (excerpt from a book by Tang, 2021-05-28, in Japanese) — https://gentosha-go.com/articles/-/34442
16. Ken Suzuki, commentary on the Japanese edition of Plurality (in Japanese) — https://note.com/digitaldemocracy/n/nb8b59a6b775d
17. Diamond Online, interview with Sunji Lee (part 2, in Japanese) — https://diamond.jp/articles/-/370388
18. Plurality, 5-7 "Social Markets" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-7/eng/ ［CC0］
19. Plurality, 4-3 "Commerce and Trust" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-3/eng/ ［CC0］