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Overview

What is XE?

XE is a block-lattice network inspired by Nano where every account maintains its own blockchain. There is no single global chain -- instead, cross-chain references between send and receive blocks form a directed acyclic graph (DAG). The result is a ledger that can process transactions for different accounts in parallel with no contention.

XE extends the block-lattice model with:

  • Dual assets -- XE (emission rewards) and XUSD (payment for compute leases, voting weight).
  • Compute leasing -- on-chain resource marketplace where consumers pay XUSD and providers earn XE.
  • DAO governance -- a deterministic state chain for parameter updates, timekeeper management, and network evolution.
  • P2P messaging -- direct encrypted messages between nodes via libp2p streams.
  • Account directory -- decentralized name-to-address mapping propagated via gossip.

Architecture at a glance

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                  cmd/node (CLI)                  │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                   node (orchestration)           │
├──────────┬──────────┬───────────┬───────────────┤
│  core    │   net    │ statechain│  api (HTTP)   │
│ (ledger, │ (gossip, │ (DAO,     │               │
│  crypto, │  sync,   │  KV store)│               │
│  PoW,    │  DHT,    │           │               │
│  voting) │  msg)    │           │               │
├──────────┴──────────┴───────────┴───────────────┤
│  store (BadgerDB / MemStore)                     │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The core node is written in Go (~13,000 lines of source, plus tests and scripts). It uses:

  • libp2p for peer-to-peer networking, pubsub gossip, Kademlia DHT, and mDNS discovery.
  • BadgerDB for persistent key-value storage of blocks, chains, pending sends, votes, conflicts, leases, and state chain data.
  • blake2b for proof-of-work hashing (8-byte truncated digest).
  • ed25519 for account key pairs and block signatures.
  • SHA-256 for block content hashing.

Frontends

Two SvelteKit applications provide browser interfaces:

Explorer -- a block explorer and network dashboard that displays accounts, chains, blocks, leases, state chain entries, and network statistics. Connects to a node's HTTP API.

Web Wallet -- a client-side wallet for managing keys, sending/receiving assets, creating and settling leases, and interacting with the account directory. Private keys never leave the browser.

What's next