What is XOS: A Universally Verifiable Sovereign Settlement Layer
Abstract
X Operating System (XOS) is a compact, stable, and universally auditable Proof-of-Work (PoW) settlement mainchain (Layer 1). Its native token is X. XOS's core positioning is as a sovereign and final settlement layer: enabling anyone to easily run the full ledger and independently verify without relying on centralized servers or permissioned validator sets, nor being controlled by concentrated hashpower.
We adhere to the principle of "L1 Sovereignty + L2 Scale":
- L1 (XOS) focuses on secure finality and verifiability, reducing hardware requirements to consumer-accessible levels, pursuing ultimate decentralization
- L2 (Official L2 + Open Ecosystem) handles high-throughput and low-fee scenarios (such as AnyAI's on-chain AI annotation marketplace), but no L2 changes L1's security and sovereignty boundaries
Vision
To become the most decentralized and robust general settlement layer after BTC/Monero—anyone can mine, anyone can independently verify, anyone can continue bookkeeping under extreme network conditions; high throughput is handled by L2 competition, finality always returns to L1.
Design Philosophy and Principles
Why Universal Verifiability of the Full Ledger is Critical
- Supply and History Auditability: Total supply, inflation curve, and contract state can be locally re-verified without trusting block explorers or centralized APIs
- Resistance to Social-Layer Intervention: Under extreme network/jurisdictional conditions, peer-to-peer verification and bookkeeping can continue, maintaining minimal viable operation
- Distributed Sovereignty: When full nodes are sufficiently distributed, any protocol change must pass the reality check of "user verifiability"—security comes from users, not infrastructure owners
Conclusion: Choose a "compact and stable" L1 (20s blocks), supplemented by pruning + snapshots + archival layering + deduplication, making "full ledger" a default capability on consumer hardware, not a luxury.
Political Economy Trade-offs of PoW
PoW anchors security costs to external resources like electricity/hardware, with low entry/exit barriers and strong censorship resistance; PoS has higher capital efficiency but voting power and yield overlap tend toward endogenous concentration. X chooses PoW as L1's sovereignty and security anchor, delegating scale and experience to free competition among L2s.
Why ASIC Resistance: The Necessity of Node Democratization
Centralization Dilemma of Existing PoW Networks
Current mainstream PoW networks face severe hashpower concentration:
- BTC/ETC ASIC Monopoly: Specialized mining hardware completely excludes individual miners, creating a situation where a few mining farms control the network
- Monero's CPU Preference Drawbacks: While successfully resisting ASICs, its CPU-friendly design introduces new problems—botnets and cloud service providers' hidden hashpower can be maliciously exploited
XOS's Balanced Solution: GPU Democratization
We choose GPU mining + ASIC resistance based on the following considerations:
- Hardware Ubiquity: GPUs are general-purpose computing devices widely used for gaming, AI, and content creation. Hundreds of millions of PCs globally are equipped with GPUs
- Balancing Accessibility and Security:
- 2GB VRAM entry threshold allows older graphics cards to participate (GTX 1050 and above)
- Avoids the risk of CPU mining being exploited by botnets
- Continuous ASIC resistance through Epoch program rotation
- Decentralization Effect: When the mining barrier is lowered to "every gamer can participate," the network achieves unprecedented geographic distribution and node diversity
Core Belief: A truly decentralized network should allow anyone with an ordinary computer to become a network guardian, not a game for specialized miners.
Design Principles Summary
- Decentralization First: All design constrained by "ordinary people can participate in mining/verification"
- Hardware Accessibility: Mining requires only 2GB VRAM; full nodes need only 8GB RAM + 128GB SSD
- Layered Scaling: L1 handles security and finality; anyone can build L2s on X
- Simplicity and Auditability: Keep protocols simple; small-step governance for parameter evolution
System Architecture Overview
- Participants: Users/Developers (wallets, SDKs)
- L1 (X): EVM execution; xPoW consensus; EIP-1559 fees; X-Store storage
- Interoperability Layer: Per-chain registries + light client/proofs; permissionless registration mapping
- L2 Ecosystem: Official L2 (X-L2) + arbitrary third-party L2s
- Data Flow: User→(optional L2)→L1; cross-chain messages verified by light clients and settled on-chain
Technical Implementation
Consensus (xPoW)
Goal: Balance consumer GPU accessibility with ASIC resistance while keeping verification lightweight and auditable.
Core Mechanisms:
Memory-Hard + Programmable Verification
- 2GB VRAM entry; ≈1.0–1.5 GiB working set
- Epoch Program Rotation: Each Epoch generates new "memory access/operator sequences" based on block header entropy
- Epoch Length: 60,000 blocks ≈ 13.9 days (20s blocks)
Difficulty and Block Production
- Target block time 20s
- EMA ≈480 block window
- Single-step clamping ±25%
Chain Selection and Incentives
- Nakamoto longest chain (cumulative difficulty)
- No ommer/uncle block rewards to ensure predictable issuance curve
- Miner revenue = block reward + tip (excluding baseFee)
Why 20-Second Blocks
- Propagation and Consistency Margin: Public network tail latency (P95/P99) is on the order of ten seconds; 20s provides ample margin for global propagation, significantly reducing orphan rate and reorg depth
- Home Network Friendly: Longer intervals reduce upstream bandwidth, IOPS, and CPU peak pressure, making home broadband/mini PCs more stable participants
- Promoting Decentralization: Lower propagation/IO costs favor geographic distribution, single hashpower less likely to dominate network
- Synergy with Storage Optimization: Combined with X-Store's deduplication and snapshot sync, even Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB) + external 128GB SSD can run a full ledger
Storage (X-Store: Full Ledger Footprint Optimization)
Goal: Make "full ledger" sustainable on consumer hardware long-term.
Layered Design:
- Hot State Layer: Store only "current world state + recent history"; key prefix compression + batch writes
- State Delta Journal: Append-only state diff log, periodically generate verifiable snapshots and prune old diffs
- Block Archive Layer: Content Addressable Storage with CDC deduplication
- Witness and Log Dictionarization: Event topics and common log headers maintain global dictionary
- Multi-Party Snapshot Verification: On-chain registration of stateRoot/snapshotRoot and snapshot metadata
External Benefits:
- Smaller "Full Ledger" Footprint: Reduce disk consumption by approximately 45–70% compared to traditional implementations
- Faster Initial Sync: Snapshots + shard verification reduce I/O and bandwidth requirements
- Stronger Long-term Sustainability: More full nodes = higher security threshold
Token Economics and Value Capture
Basic Parameters (Benchmarked to BTC 2020, 20s Blocks)
- Maximum Supply: 2.1 billion
- Genesis Supply: 1.8375 billion
- Remaining Mineable: 262.5 million
- Halving Cycle: 6,307,200 blocks (≈4 years)
- Block Reward (Current): 20.809551 X/block
- Annual Blocks: 1,576,800 (365.25 days)
- First Year Output: 32,812,500 X
Fees and Value Capture (EIP-1559)
- baseFee: Auto-adjusts based on congestion, 100% burned
- priority tip: 100% to miners
- Protocol commission: Default 0 (no protocol-layer commission)
Deflation Threshold and Scenarios
Single-block net change: ΔS = Rₙ − Burn_baseFee; net deflation when Burn_baseFee > Rₙ
Current Period (n=0) Example: R₀ = 20.809551
| Scenario | Assumed baseFee Burn/Block | Annual Issuance | Annual Burn | Annual Net Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Low Activity | 4 X | 32,812,500 X | 6,307,200 X | +26,505,300 X |
| Medium Activity | 16 X | 32,812,500 X | 25,228,800 X | +7,583,700 X |
| High Activity | 24 X | 32,812,500 X | 37,843,200 X | −5,030,700 X |
Supply and Halving Schedule (First 10 Epochs)
| Cycle | Reward/Block (X) | Cycle Output (X) | Cumulative Output (X) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 20.809551 | 131,250,000 | 131,250,000 |
| 1 | 10.404775 | 65,625,000 | 196,875,000 |
| 2 | 5.202388 | 32,812,500 | 229,687,500 |
| 3 | 2.601194 | 16,406,250 | 246,093,750 |
| 4 | 1.300597 | 8,203,125 | 254,296,875 |
| 5 | 0.650298 | 4,101,562 | 258,398,437 |
| 6 | 0.325149 | 2,050,781 | 260,449,218 |
| 7 | 0.162575 | 1,025,391 | 261,474,609 |
| 8 | 0.081287 | 512,695 | 261,987,304 |
| 9 | 0.040644 | 256,348 | 262,243,652 |
Mining portion converges to 262,500,000 X; consistent with "Genesis 1.8375 billion + Mining 262.5 million = Total 2.1 billion"
L2 Strategy: Official L2 + Open Ecosystem
Our Stance on L2
- L2 approach is not wrong. The industry's pain point: without an official L2 as default anchor, mindshare and liquidity fragment
- Necessity of Official L2 (X-L2): Provide unified entry and standards, aggregate liquidity and developer mindshare, while maintaining open competition for third-party L2s
- Sovereignty Boundaries: Whether official or third-party L2s, none change L1's security and sovereignty; users can always one-click exit to L1
Technical Implementation: Optimistic Rollup
- Technology Selection: Adopt mature Optimistic Rollup technology
- Block Time: 0.5 seconds, providing near-instant transaction confirmation
- Fraud Proofs: 7-day challenge period ensuring fund security
- Launch Timeline: Official L2 launches approximately 12 months after mainnet
Application Focus
Handle high-frequency/low-fee scenarios, prioritizing:
- AnyAI Ecosystem: On-chain AI annotation markets, model training incentives, data trading markets
- GameFi Ecosystem: In-game asset trading, economic systems, NFT markets
- DeFi Protocols: DEXs, lending, synthetic assets and other high-frequency trading scenarios
- Social and Creator Economy: Content incentives, copyright trading, fan economy
Performance Targets
- TPS: 7000-10000 (depending on transaction complexity)
- Confirmation Time: 0.5-second blocks
- Decentralization Roadmap:
- Phase 1: Single sequencer, team-operated (0-6 months)
- Phase 2: Multi-sequencer rotation (6-12 months)
- Phase 3: Decentralized sequencer network (12+ months)
Omnichain Interoperability Protocol
Goal: Enable verifiable, auditable circulation of external chain standard assets/messages within X ecosystem without introducing custodial trust.
- Registry-Per-Chain: One registry contract per external chain, recording deterministic relationships; permissionless registration by anyone
- Light Client/Proofs: Messages verified on target chain through light clients or Merkle/proof verification of source chain state
- Conflict Arbitration and Fallback: Duplicates/conflicts resolved by "block height priority + canonical completeness + deposit/reputation" automatic adjudication
- Fees: No protocol-layer commission; only on-chain gas for deployment/registration
Security Model
Threat Model
- 51% attacks
- Time dilation attacks
- Selfish mining
- Cross-chain message forgery
- State bloat and resource exhaustion
- Key management failures
Technical Mitigations
- xPoW parameter evolution and fairness auditing
- Multi-party snapshot verification and fraud evidence
- P2P scoring/rate limiting
- Contract pause/withdraw-only fallback
- Data availability on-chain ensuring verifiable exit
Process Safeguards
- Independent audits, cross-audits by multiple firms
- Long-term bug bounties
- Change cooling-off periods and shadow testing
- Multi-party custody and timelocks
- Transparent disclosure and post-mortem for anomalies
Implementation and Operations
- Nodes: NVMe recommended; enable snapshot sync and pruning by default; home broadband capable
- Miners: 2GB VRAM sufficient; reference pools and open-source miners provided
- Developers: Ethereum toolchain compatible; external indexer/explorer components; complete RPC documentation and SDKs
- Monitoring: Prometheus/Grafana covering block latency, orphan rate, sync duration, node health
Key Parameters Summary
- Block time 20s; annual blocks 1,576,800
- Halving cycle 6,307,200 blocks ≈ 4 years
- Current block reward 20.809551 X/block
- First year output 32,812,500 X
- EIP-1559: baseFee 100% burned, tips entirely to miners
- Protocol commission: Default 0
- Minimum miner hardware 2GB VRAM
- Full node 8GB RAM + 128GB SSD
- Epoch length 60,000 blocks ≈ 13.9 days
Counter-Narrative and Market Positioning
- "High-Performance Chains" ≠ Blockchains: If relying on permissioned validators/centralized sequencers/large data centers for throughput, they're essentially databases hosted by a few servers
- Security Layer Scarcity: After ETH's transition to PoS, fair, low-barrier PoW settlement layers are nearly vacant
- X's Positioning: Become the most accessible and auditable PoW settlement mainchain, carrying censorship resistance and high-value settlement
Risk Disclosures
| Risk | Potential Manifestation | Mitigation Measures |
|---|---|---|
| Mining Centralization | Hashpower or geographic concentration | xPoW fairness auditing, parameter evolution, pool concentration monitoring |
| State Bloat | Rising node costs | X-Store pruning/snapshots/archival layering, external indexing, deduplication |
| Cross-chain Risk | External chain verification complexity | Light client/proof-first, "withdraw-only" fallback mode on exceptions |
| Liquidity Fragmentation | Multi-L2/multi-chain fragmentation | Official L2 as default anchor, standardized interfaces aggregating liquidity |
| Regulatory Uncertainty | Jurisdictional differences | Advisory opinions, jurisdictional restriction lists and KYA announcements |
"In a world racing toward centralization, XOS stands as the guardian of true decentralization: a sovereign settlement layer that belongs to everyone and no one."