What is XELIS?

XELIS header

XELIS is an innovative cryptocurrency built from scratch with a focus on privacy, scalability, and ease of use. It is a decentralized network that allows users to send and receive transactions without the need for a central authority.

The project was started in 2021 by a group of developers who wanted to create a cryptocurrency that was more secure, private, and scalable than existing options. The goal of XELIS is to provide a platform that is easy to use, secure, and private, while also being scalable enough to handle a large number of transactions.

To achieve this, XELIS has implemented a number of innovative features, including a new hashing algorithm, a blockDAG structure, and a number of privacy-enhancing technologies (Homomorphic Encryption and Zero-Knowledge Proofs).

Our next milestone is the implementation of our own smart contracts engine, which will allow developers to create decentralized applications and confidential assets on the XELIS network. Smart Contracts on XELIS will be powered by a new Virtual Machine named XVM, which is built from scratch for ease of use, performance and security.

Built using Rust and powered by Tokio async runtime, XELIS is designed to be fast, efficient, and secure.

Mining

Privacy

Scalability

Wallet

Others

To read more in details about all features available, click on a specific card.

Network

Three built-in networks are available for use.

The mainnet is the primary network. Testnet and devnet are for testing and development and can be reset at any time. All networks have the exact same consensus rules, but do not share the same chain or peers.

Consensus

The current configuration of the consensus is the following:

  • Target Block Time is 15 seconds.
  • Minimum transaction fee is 0.00001000 XEL per KB.
  • Full coin can be divided up to 8 decimals.
  • Maximum supply is set to 18.4 millions.
  • Maximum block size is set to 1.25 MB.
  • Maximum transaction size is set to 1 MB.

To prevent mis-using addresses across different networks, we set them a prefix.
Mainnet addresses begin with with xel prefix, while devnet/testnet addresses begin with xet.

Objectives

We want to provide better privacy than Bitcoin and Ethereum by having encrypted balances and encrypted transferred amounts. This is done using Homomorphic Encryption and Zero-Knowledge Proof.
This means nobody except you can see how much you own and how much you spend.

Scalability and security is also a point we try to solve using a BlockDAG.
Because of a low block time target we may have some orphaned blocks. We try to reduce its rate as much as we can by using a BlockDAG which allows a higher count of blocks, faster confirmation, better security and more transactions per seconds.

Smart Contracts are a necessity to build a real DeFi ecosystem, it is planned to have Smart Contracts support using our own Virtual Machine.

Confidential Assets will allow to have real decentralized tokens, with the same level of privacy and decentralization as XELIS and not just a Smart Contract managing numbers.

Decentralized network is a necessity for its own security and to remove any failure point.
We can have a decentralized network by having a lot of nodes spread across the Earth, but we can also have reward emissions decentralized. This is done by attracting CPUs and GPUs miners to join mining XELIS using a friendly PoW algorithm.

Ease of use is one of our main focuses to attract everyone and have real adoption in daily usage.
It is not only for people using our software, but also for developers to create and integrate any kind of application.

Funding

XELIS is a community-driven project and is not funded by any company or organization. To help its development, success, and provide continuous support, we have set a decreasing dev fee curve starting at 10% on block reward. The funds are crucial to ensure a strong early ecosystem. This guarantees, a constant stream of capital exclusively used for the growth of the blockchain.

The funds are not there for a money grab, nor for being dumped; they are exclusively used for past / future network development expenses. The community can also suggest, ask questions about, and help decide how the funds will be spent.

Dev fee halving is as following:

  • 10% from block 0 to 3,249,999 (expected time is ~1.5 years with BlockDAG).
  • 5% from 3,250,000 until the project being developed is stable on major facets of the ecosystem in order to reduce it.

There are multiple reasons why we opted for a dev fee halving, but one among others, is to prevent big miners from earning too much during the birth of the project, especially when the block reward is at the highest and the mining difficulty at the lowest. This is to avoid quick accumulation and manipulation of a young market. Despite all of this, the miners still have plenty of room to make a profit and reinvest wherever they see fit.

As of now, XELIS does not have Smart Contract capabilities, but after the integration, we will be able to redirect the fees into an exclusive Smart Contract with multiple trustees. It will allow to create a DAO and manage all of this trustlessly and in simplicity. On the plus side, the fees are not here to stay. They will decrease and may be exempt entirely when the network can sustain itself without it.

All in all, a dev fee is the best solution we came up with. We do not have mining infrastructures, and we cannot mine the network ourselves as easily as you could back in the day. We are aware that there are big miners we can't compete with, and we absolutely need funds for maintaining a healthy growing environment. We have the best interest for this platform, not powerful entities joining for a quick turnaround. The dev fund is here to keep us in the same playing field as them, and inject back exactly where the network needs it.