XELIS is an innovative cryptocurrency built from scratch in Rust Language with BlockDAG, Homomorphic Encryption, Zero-Knowledge Proofs, and Smart Contracts. This allows Xelis to combine fast transaction speed, privacy, and utility all onto it's Layer 1.
Main Features:
BlockDAG is used to improve the scalability and the security of the network.Instead of choosing between two chains, BlockDAG merges both chains into one.
Homomorphic Encryption is enabled using Twisted 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 used in combination with the Ristretto255 curve to provide a good level of security (~128 bits of security). Homomorphic operations available using ElGamal are addition/subtraction 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 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 better privacy. All messages between nodes are encrypted with ChaCha20-Poly1305. Messages keys are rotated every GB of data.
Smart Contracts are not yet available on mainnet, but progress is being made towards their development. Please see Xelis github for latest status