The X1 DEVNET exceeds all expectations

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On January 28, Jack Levin, a serial entrepreneur and former Google engineer, deployed the X1 DEVNET to test the new Layer 1 he’s going to launch in 2024. The testnet garnered enormous attention from the XEN community, which flocked to collect the airdrop of the XN tokens and mint XEN and XENFTs. DEVNET is the first step toward constructing the X1 blockchain, which will bring together XEN Crypto communities from all ten chains. It is also the first large-scale implementation of Polygon Edge with a 1-second block time.

what is DEVNET

DEVNET is the test network for the X1 blockchain, which will be created in 2024.

Its native token is XN, and it was created to test the airdrop to the XEN community.  Connection to DEVNET is trivial. It’s enough to go to the explorer, scroll down, and press the fox to add X1 to Metamask.

Each user who minted XEN on the Ethereum network received XN tokens according to the below conversions:

 

Users eligible for the airdrop are the first minters, not the holders of XENFTs. The XN tokens have no real value and will never be ported to the upcoming testnet network that will eventually become the mainnet.

DEVNET is the first implementation of X1. It’s built on the Polygon Edge open source technology, and it has its own load tester, which means that there was no need to stress test the network before the launch, which made things easier and faster. After just 24 hours of running the network, Jack Levin opened DEVNET to the public. 12 hours later, 1175 real users claimed their XN airdrops and engaged in different network activities. 

There are already over 1000 addresses holding XENFT and 6688 transfers. The XEN Crypto contract has also been launched.

There are, in total, a staggering 123 different smart contracts visible on the explorer, 17 of which are verified. This is the sign of very high activity from developers.

At the time of writing, there are over 21,000 addresses. The average transaction speed is 1400 transactions per second.

 

In his tweet, Mr. Levin concluded: “I think it’s safe to say X1 Devnet Chain had more load than any testnet ever launched.”

 

Mr. Levin’s team now runs four block producers on DEVNET, and the data written to disk has reached 8 GB. The disk space can be easily expanded and new nodes added trivially, as DEVNET currently relies entirely on the AWS cloud. With time, the network can add other cloud providers like Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure. When it’s opened to external validators, they will be able to bring their own hardware for load distribution.

What is X1 blockchain

X1 blockchain is set to become the fastest and most scalable chain with a 1 second block time, parallel execution, zero knowledge proofs implementation, and cross-chain communication. 

It’s based on Polygon Edge, but it’s already twice as fast. The block size is the same, which means that it’s possible to load the same amount of transactions, which is about 1400, and have them executed 1 second faster than on Polygon. 

Polygon is about to upgrade to parallel transaction execution which will allow the processing of multiple transactions at the same time, resulting in faster transaction execution. Ethereum executes transactions sequentially, which is why it’s slow and there is often a bottleneck when high traffic occurs.

Aptos Labs have been working on parallel transaction execution and has created their Block-STM engine. The Polygon team decided to build upon their work by translating it to the Go language for Polygon’s PoS consensus and the EVM.

X1 is going to take advantage of all these improvements as well as of ZK proofs, which will be integrated into Polygon. ZK proofs is a scaling solution, minimizing the amount of on-chain data and reducing the cost-intensive computational effort required to validate it. 

ZK proofs guarantee higher throughput because transactions are batched into groups and relayed to the Ethereum network as a single, bulk transaction. A batch results in higher gas throughput, and it can be even 150% larger. This provides gas cost efficiency because the gas fee for the single transaction is split between all the participants involved in the batch. Additionally, each batch contains the hash of the batch ahead of it, and with the introduction of multiple provers working in parallel, the system is capable of generating proofs for any segment of the batch chain. 

For improved efficiency, the batches can also be aggregated, which means that one valid proof can attest to the correctness of another proof. 

 

cross-chain connectivity

Mr. Levin has mentioned Layer Zero and their Stargate protocol for cross-chain communication since the beginning. Stargate uses atomic swaps to transfer native assets between chains. Their technology is cutting-edge, and when combined with the X1 blockchain, it will ensure liquidity and instant token transfers between chains with just a few clicks and a single interface.

conclusion

DEVNET’s success is proof that the XEN community is highly involved and hungry for its own chain uniting all ten networks where XEN Crypto contract has been deployed. Although DEVNET will always remain a sandbox for developers and users willing to test dapps, it now serves as a test for technological capabilities and user behavior for the X1 testnet deployment and subsequent mainnet.