What is XELIS?
XELIS is a private, programmable proof-of-work blockchain — more exactly a blockDAG — written from scratch in Rust. The project started in 2021, led by a pseudonymous developer known as Slixe, and its mainnet went live on 20 April 2024. There was no premine, no ICO and no coins reserved for anyone: every XEL comes out of mining, and development is funded by a dev fee written into the protocol instead of a token sale.
Three ideas define it. First, privacy by default: every balance and every amount on the chain is encrypted, not just optional shielded transfers. Second, a blockDAG: a block may point to up to three parents, so blocks found at the same moment are kept rather than orphaned, and the network can target one block every five seconds without wasting work. Third, mining for everyone: XelisHash is designed to run well on ordinary CPUs and GPUs and to resist ASICs and FPGAs, and difficulty is retargeted every block with a Kalman filter.
Wallets do not have to replay the chain: XELIS is account-based, so a wallet can sync instantly by reading its encrypted balance. The official wallet, Genesix, runs on desktop and mobile and supports multisig.
- Ticker
- XEL
- Mainnet
- 20 Apr. 2024
- Launch
- Fair, no premine
- Consensus
- Proof of Work, BlockDAG
- Block time
- 5 s target
- Hash function
- XelisHash v3 (CPU/GPU)
- Max supply
- 18.4M XEL
- Dev fee
- 5% of block reward
Privacy: how encrypted balances work
Most private coins hide coins by mixing them or by moving them into a shielded pool. XELIS does something different: it keeps accounts, like Ethereum, but every balance is a ciphertext.
Homomorphic encryption
Balances and amounts are encrypted with Twisted ElGamal over the Ristretto group of Curve25519. The scheme is homomorphic: nodes can add an encrypted amount to an encrypted balance, or subtract one from another, without ever decrypting them. Only the wallet holding the private key can read what it owns.
Zero-knowledge proofs
If nobody can see the numbers, something has to prove they add up. Each transaction carries zero-knowledge proofs showing that the sender owns the funds, that the new balance is not negative and that no coins were created. The network checks the maths; it never learns the amounts. The same privacy applies to confidential assets — tokens issued on XELIS — and peer-to-peer traffic between nodes is encrypted too.
Be precise about what is hidden: XELIS hides how much, not who. Addresses and the fact that two accounts transacted stay visible on the explorer. It is closer to confidential transactions than to Monero-style anonymity, which also makes it easier to audit — and so far easier for exchanges to list.
Smart contracts: the December 2025 hard fork
For its first year and a half XELIS was private money and not much more. The hard fork at block 3,282,150, activated in mid-December 2025 with node release 1.19, changed that. It is the largest upgrade since launch.
XVM and Silex
Contracts run in the XELIS Virtual Machine (XVM), a sandboxed environment built for the chain, and are written in Silex, a statically typed language designed from scratch for ease of use, performance and security. A public playground had let developers try it on testnet since late 2024.
Fees, burn and XelisHash v3
The same fork introduced dynamic transaction fees that follow network load, a fee burn that permanently removes part of every fee, and XelisHash v3, whose larger 544 KB scratchpad makes GPU and FPGA parallelism harder so that ordinary hardware stays competitive.
What comes next is on the published roadmap: smart-contract improvements driven by developer feedback, confidential value transfers inside contracts — so dApps can inherit the chain's privacy — and further blockDAG work on scalability and security, all targeted for 2026. None of it has a fixed date yet.
XELIS in 2026: where it stands
Development has been steady: more than fifteen node releases since the smart-contract fork, including a storage rework in May 2026 (v1.22) that asked every node to resync, and v1.25 at the end of August. The market is another story. XEL listed near its peak in May 2024 at about $37.75 and has lost around 99% since. It is a micro-cap: most of its trading happens on MEXC, and a whole day of volume often stays below $100,000.
- Price (29 Sept. 2026)
- ≈ $0.50
- Market cap
- ≈ $3M
- All-time high
- ≈ $37.75 (May 2024)
- From the high
- ≈ −98.7%
- Emitted so far
- ≈ 6.08M (33%)
- Block reward
- ≈ 0.33 XEL
- Latest node
- v1.25 (Aug. 2026)
- Spot on Binance / Coinbase
- Not listed
Price from CoinPaprika and supply from the XELIS mainnet node, both on 29 September 2026; our market cap multiplies the two, because aggregators do not all track the circulating supply. The live widget at the top of this page is the one to trust for the price.
Why buy XELIS?
Our thesis in one sentence: XELIS is one of the few projects that combines fair-launched proof of work, encryption by default and smart contracts on a single base layer, and it is still small enough that anyone can mine it at home. Here is how we weigh it.
What works
- Fair launch: no premine, no ICO, no insider allocation
- Every balance and amount encrypted by default, not as an option
- Smart contracts live on mainnet since December 2025, with its own VM and language
- Mineable on CPUs and GPUs, with a fee burn since the last hard fork
- Original code written from scratch, with regular releases
What does not
- XEL trades around 99% below its May 2024 high
- A micro-cap with thin daily volume, mostly on one exchange
- Two-thirds of the supply is still to be mined, plus a 5% dev fee on every block
- A small team led by a pseudonymous developer
- Privacy coins face delistings and regulatory pressure, even when only amounts are hidden
How to buy XELIS? (MEXC, step by step)
XEL is not on the largest exchanges, so you buy it where it is liquid. MEXC has the deepest XEL/USDT market and a 0% maker fee on spot, and that is the route we use. The short version:
- Open a MEXC account and enable two-factor authentication with an authenticator app.
- Complete identity verification — it raises your withdrawal limits and unlocks card purchases.
- Fund it with USDT: buy it by card on MEXC, or send USDT or another coin from an exchange you already use.
- Buy XEL on the spot market (pair XEL/USDT) with a limit order — on a market this thin, a market order can fill far from the last price.
- Withdraw to your own XELIS wallet (Genesix): send a small test amount first, then the rest.
In the European Union? MEXC holds no MiCA licence and told EEA users in June 2026 to withdraw their funds before 1 July. Read our MEXC page before you open an account. XEL also trades on CoinEx, NonKYC and SafeTrade, and through the Trocador swap aggregator.
XELIS: Official websites
Start with xelis.io and the documentation, then check any transaction on the explorer. XELIS never sold tokens: anyone offering you an “official” XEL presale or airdrop is running a scam.
XELIS: Social Networks
Releases and hard-fork dates are announced first on X and Discord.
XELIS FAQ
Short answers to the questions people ask about XELIS in 2026.
What is XELIS?
XELIS is a layer-1 cryptocurrency written from scratch in Rust. It is secured by proof of work, orders its blocks as a blockDAG with a 5-second target, encrypts every account balance and transfer amount with homomorphic encryption, and has run smart contracts on mainnet since December 2025. Mainnet launched on 20 April 2024 with no premine. Its native coin is XEL.
How does XELIS keep amounts private?
Balances and amounts are encrypted with Twisted ElGamal, a homomorphic scheme: the network can add and subtract encrypted values without ever decrypting them, and zero-knowledge proofs show that nobody spends more than they own. Only the owner of a wallet can read its balance. Addresses and the fact that a transaction happened remain visible, so XELIS hides how much, not who.
Does XELIS have smart contracts?
Yes. A hard fork at block 3,282,150, in mid-December 2025, enabled smart contracts on mainnet. Contracts are written in Silex, a statically typed language built for XELIS, and run in the XELIS Virtual Machine (XVM). The same fork added dynamic transaction fees, a fee burn and version 3 of the XelisHash mining algorithm.
How many XEL will ever exist?
18.4 million. About 6.08 million had been emitted by late September 2026, roughly a third of the supply. The block reward falls smoothly with every block instead of halving in steps, and the last coins are expected around 2061. A protocol dev fee takes 5% of each block reward, down from 10% before block 3,250,000.
Is XELIS a good investment?
It is a very high-risk, very small-cap bet. The technology is original and shipping, the launch was fair and the coin can be mined on ordinary CPUs and GPUs. Against that, XEL trades about 99% below its May 2024 high, its market value is only a few million dollars, daily volume is thin and two-thirds of the supply is still to be mined. Do your own research and only invest what you can afford to lose.
Where can I buy XELIS?
MEXC has the most liquid XEL/USDT market, and XEL also trades on CoinEx, NonKYC, SafeTrade and the Trocador swap aggregator. Binance and Coinbase do not list it. Buy USDT or send crypto to the exchange, trade it for XEL with a limit order, then withdraw to a XELIS wallet such as Genesix. MEXC holds no MiCA licence, so readers in the EU should check the rules that apply to them first.