XELIS is an innovative cryptocurrency from scratch with BlockDAG, Homomorphic Encryption, Zero-Knowledge Proof and Smart Contracts.

It's using the famous programming language Rust, to be secure using its memory safe features and fast.

Based on an event-driven system, its using asynchronous tasks for I/O (database, P2p, API).
It is extremely easy to monitor the network with the event system available for developers to be notified on any events happening on the network and to be able to react instantly to them.

Main Features

BlockDAG is enabled to improve the scalability and the security of the network.
Instead of chosing between two chains during soft forks, BlockDAG merge both chains in one.

Homomorphic Encryption is enabled using ElGamal to provide privacy on transactions (transferred amounts) and balances.

ElGamal cryptosystem was chosen because it's a well known and studied encryption algorithm which has homomorphism features. ElGamal is fast and is used in combination with Ristretto255 curve to provide a good level of security (~128 bits of security).
Homomorphic operations availables using ElGamal are addition/substraction between ciphertexts and/or plaintext and multiplication against plaintext value.

Account Model (instead of UTXO like Bitcoin) was chosen in order to be faster, smaller, and easier for everyone. It allows to have a more flexible system than UTXO model and to have a better privacy because there is no need to link inputs and outputs, which provide real fungibility.
It also enables the fast-sync feature to only download the last state of the chain instead of downloading all its history.

Pruning system is also available to reduce the size of the blockchain by removing old blocks and transactions.

P2p Encrypted Network is used to prevent any network traffic analysis and to provide a better privacy. It is using ChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption algorithm to encrypt all messages sent between nodes with a key rotation happening every GB of data sent.

We also aims to enable Smart Contract support in the future.

To read more in details about all features available, please use the Features tab.

Network

We provide differents built-in networks for the ease of everyone.

These 3 networks have the exact same consensus rules, except not the same chain or peers.
Testnet and devnet are availables for testing purposes only, and can be reset at any moment.

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 differents networks, we set them a prefix.
For mainnet addresses, they all starts using xel prefix, while others networks (devnet/testnet) starts with xet.

Objectives

We want to provide a 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 Contract 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 focus to attracts 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 helps its development, success, and provide continous 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.

Current dev fee halving is as following:

• 10% from block 0 to 3,250,000 (expected time is ~1.5 years with BlockDAG).
• 5% from 3,250,001 until the project being developed is stable on major facets of the ecosystem in order to reduce it.

Old dev fee halving was:

• 15% from block 0 to 1,250,000 (expected time is ~6 months with blockDAG)
• 10% from block 1,250,001 to 3,000,000 (expected time is another ~6 months with blockDAG and network growing)
• 5% from 3,000,001 until the project being developed and stable enough to reduce it.

The reason the old fee does not apply is that we launched the chain with the incorrect hardcoded function. We proposed the community whether they wanted us to reapply the 15% at block 60,000 or stick with the 10% but for a longer period. The majority was in favor of keeping the 10%.

There are multiple reasons why we opted for a dev fee halving, but one amongs 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 impactfully as you could back in the days. We are aware that there are big miners we can't compete with, and we absolutely need funds for maintaining a healhty 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.