XE is a decentralized compute and networking platform. Consumers pay XUSD to lease real VMs from providers; providers earn newly minted XE when a lease settles. Underneath sits a lattice ledger where every account maintains its own chain, with cross-chain references forming a directed acyclic graph — parallel transactions, no miners, no global bottleneck — extended with DAO governance, peer-to-peer messaging and an account directory.
[!WARNING] Everything here is a work in progress XE is pre-1.0 and runs on a testnet only. These docs describe the system as designed and as built, and the two are not always the same thing: not every command or endpoint documented here works today, and parts that do work go down without notice. Where something is known to be unavailable, the page says so — start with Getting Started, which lists what is currently broken.
There is no backward compatibility. Protocol changes ship as a testnet wipe: the network is re-bootstrapped under a new network ID and every account, balance and block on it is discarded. Testnet coins have no value.
The source is public at github.com/xeprotocol/xe under the GPL-3.0, and bugs are worth money — see the bug bounty.
Core Properties
- Account-chain architecture. Each account has its own chain of blocks. Sends debit the sender's chain; receives credit the recipient's chain. No miners, no global ordering.
- Dual assets. XE is emitted as a reward for compute providers and confers voting weight for consensus. XUSD is used to pay for compute leases; it carries no consensus weight, because XUSD is mintable by authorized minters and minting must never mint voting power.
- Compute leasing. Consumers lease virtual machines from providers. Resource costs are denominated in XUSD; providers stake collateral and earn XE emissions upon settlement.
- DAO governance. A deterministic state chain allows the network to evolve parameters through signed proposals without hard forks.
- P2P messaging and directory. Nodes exchange messages and register in a decentralised account directory.
Components
| Component | Stack | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Core node | Go, libp2p, BadgerDB | Block lattice, consensus, networking, API |
| Embedded Web UI | Plain HTML + ES modules + Web Crypto, embedded via //go:embed | Explorer, wallet, DAO console, state inspector — served by xe node --ui |
| Proof of Uptime | Design proposal | Verifiable uptime proofs for compute providers (not yet implemented) |
Documentation Sections
Overview
- Getting Started — build, run, and connect to the testnet
- Architecture — package breakdown and startup sequence
Concepts
- Block Lattice — the DAG structure and cross-chain references
- Accounts & Keys — ed25519 key pairs, addresses, multisig
- Assets — the dual-asset model (XE and XUSD)
Protocol
- Consensus — delegation, conflict detection, voting, quorum
- Networking — libp2p, gossip, frontier sync, DHT, messaging
- Compute Leasing — lifecycle, cost model, attestations, VM management
- State Chain — DAO governance via deterministic state machine
- Proof of Uptime — heartbeat chains, merkle epochs (design stage — not yet implemented)
Interfaces
- API Reference — HTTP REST API for accounts, blocks, leases, chat, and more
- CLI Reference — unified CLI for node and client operations
- Explorer & Web UI — embedded web UI served by
xe node --ui - Web Wallet — client-side wallet with Web Crypto, embedded in binary
Reference
- Binary Encoding — block and vote wire formats
- Cryptography — ed25519, SHA-256, signing contexts
- Constants — all system constants
- Deployment — configuration, production setup