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We discuss the problem of designing channel access architectures for enabling fast, low-latency, grant-free and uncoordinated uplink for densely packed wireless nodes. Specifically, we extend the concept of random-access code introduced at ISIT’2017 by one of the authors to the practically more relevant case of the AWGN multiple-access channel (MAC) subject to Rayleigh fading, unknown to the decoder. We derive bounds on the fundamental limits of random-access coding and propose an alternating belief-propagation scheme as a candidate practical solution. The latter’s performance was found to be surprisingly close to the information-theoretic bounds. It is curious, thus, that while fading significantly increases the minimal required energy-per-bit Eb/N0 (from about 0-2 dB to about 8-11 dB), it appears that it is much easier to attain the optimal performance over the fading channel with a practical scheme by leveraging the inherent randomization introduced by the channel. Finally, we mention that while a number of candidate solutions (MUSA, SCMA, RSMA, etc.) are being discussed for the 5G, the information theoretic analysis and benchmarking has not been attempted before (in part due to lack of common random-access model). Our work may be seen as a step towards unifying performance comparisons of these methods.