While many projects have focused primarily on marketing campaigns, exchange listings or hype, the XELIS team has remained focused on what ultimately matters most for a

Layer-1 blockchain: building, improving and securing the protocol.

The roadmap has continued to move forward at a steady pace, with regular releases delivering meaningful improvements rather than empty promises. From core blockchain optimizations and BlockDAG enhancements to smart contract capabilities, cryptographic performance, security hardening and developer tooling, each update has built upon the previous one.

Looking back at the last few months, it's clear that these weren't isolated patches—they were successive milestones in the evolution of the XELIS ecosystem.

For anyone who hasn't been following the project closely, here's a chronological overview of the major blockchain releases and why each of them mattered.

Why has XELIS released so many blockchain updates recently?

Over the past seven months, XELIS has maintained an impressive development pace:

• January 5, 2026 → v1.21.2
• February 5, 2026 → v1.21.3
• May 30, 2026 → v1.22.0 (Major Network Upgrade)
• June 7, 2026 → v1.22.1 (Mandatory Hotfix)
• June 17, 2026 → v1.22.2
• July 10, 2026 → v1.23.0
• July 26, 2026 → v1.24.0

That's seven blockchain releases in just over six months, including one major protocol upgrade and several mandatory security updates.

At first glance, this may look like routine maintenance.

It isn't.

Taken together, these releases represent one of the most significant evolutions of the XELIS protocol since the project was launched.

Instead of focusing on marketing announcements, the team has been investing its time where it matters most: improving the blockchain itself.

Here is what has actually changed—and why these upgrades are important.

January 2026 – v1.21.2 & v1.21.3

Stabilizing the foundation

The beginning of the year focused on strengthening the core infrastructure before introducing

larger protocol changes.

These releases improved:

• wallet reliability;
• transaction handling during BlockDAG reorganizations;
• chain synchronization;
• database integrity;
• XSWD communication between wallets and future dApps;
• node stability.

Version v1.21.3 also prepared the blockchain for the next major network upgrade by introducing internal improvements and fixing issues that could potentially crash nodes or corrupt databases.

In other words, the team first ensured the foundation was solid before building new functionality.

May 2026 – v1.22.0

The largest protocol upgrade since XELIS launched

Released on May 30, 2026, version v1.22.0 wasn't simply another software update.

It was a major network upgrade that required every node operator to re-synchronize the entire blockchain from genesis.

That may sound inconvenient, but it was necessary because the blockchain's internal architecture had fundamentally changed. Existing databases couldn't simply be reused—they

had to be rebuilt so every node could compute the new data structures required by the upgraded BlockDAG.

Stronger BlockDAG security

One of the most important improvements was the integration of the k-cluster check into the cumulative difficulty calculation.

Unlike traditional blockchains that follow a single chain of blocks, XELIS uses a BlockDAG, where several blocks can coexist simultaneously.

This architecture increases throughput but also requires much more sophisticated consensus rules.

By incorporating k-cluster validation directly into cumulative difficulty calculations, the protocol

became significantly more resistant to attacks while improving consensus reliability.

Fairer mining rewards

Another important protocol change concerned miners.

Previously, side blocks received lower rewards than regular blocks.

From v1.22 onward:

Every valid block now receives the same block reward.

This is much better aligned with how a BlockDAG operates.

Instead of encouraging competition for one "winning" block, the protocol now rewards miners more fairly for contributing valid work to the network.

Smoother difficulty adjustment

Mining difficulty is critical for every Proof-of-Work blockchain.

If difficulty changes too aggressively:

• blocks become unpredictable;
• mining profitability fluctuates sharply;
• network stability decreases.

XELIS changed its algorithm so that difficulty is now calculated using the last 50 ordered blocks, producing much smoother adjustments and reducing abrupt oscillations.

Blob Transactions

One of the most innovative additions was the introduction of Blob Transactions.

Traditionally, blockchain transactions exist primarily to transfer coins.

Blob Transactions introduce something different.

Applications can now send up to 32 KB of arbitrary data to as many as 255 recipients without

transferring any monetary value.

Why is this important?

Because many decentralized applications don't always need to move money.

Sometimes they simply need to exchange information.

Examples include:

• encrypted messages;
• game events;
• application state;
• private notifications;
• decentralized communication between services.

Instead of paying for a standard financial transaction every time, applications can now communicate much more efficiently and at a much lower cost.

Smart Contracts become far more powerful

Version 1.22 also significantly expanded the capabilities of Silex, XELIS's smart contract language.

Among the improvements:

• Iterators added to the standard library.

Developers can now manipulate collections of data much more efficiently while writing cleaner and more expressive smart contracts.

• Numerous new built-in functions.

These extend what contracts can accomplish without developers having to reinvent common logic.

• Contract Events.

This is arguably one of the most exciting additions.

Smart contracts can now emit events that other applications or contracts can react to automaticallyentirely on-chain, without requiring centralized servers or external infrastructure.

This opens the door to far more sophisticated decentralized applications built entirely on XELIS.

June 2026 – v1.22.1

When the network came under attack

Only a few days after the major upgrade, attackers discovered a vulnerability inside the Smart

Contract Virtual Machine.

Their objective was simple:

Create counterfeit coins by exploiting a flaw in gas accounting during scheduled contract executions.

Fortunately, several built-in safeguards limited the attack.

The protocol's maximum gas limits capped potential gains.

The dynamic fee mechanism made repeated attacks increasingly expensive.

MEXC also reacted quickly, preventing any counterfeit coins from reaching the market.

Most importantly:

No user funds were ever at risk.

The vulnerability affected neither the cryptography nor the consensus algorithm.

Instead of hiding the incident, the development team publicly explained:

• how the exploit worked;
• why it happened;
• how it was fixed;
• why users remained safe.

That level of transparency is unfortunately still rare in the blockchain industry.

Infrastructure improvements

The emergency release also delivered numerous technical improvements:

• faster block verification caches;
• improved daemon stability;
• better mempool configuration;
• stronger database reliability;
• improved performance.

One particularly interesting announcement was the integration of AI-assisted tooling into the development workflow.

As attackers increasingly leverage AI to discover vulnerabilities, the XELIS team announced that they are also using AI during code review and security analysis to identify potential weaknesses earlier in the development process.

June 2026 – v1.22.2

Improving scalability and network efficiency

With the major protocol upgrade stabilized, attention shifted toward improving overall node

performance.

Among the additions:

• configurable mempool limits to prevent excessive memory usage;
• better peer selection during synchronization based on latency;
• temporary bans for malicious peers;
• improved chain synchronization;
• Blob Transaction support added to wallets;
• configurable WebSocket limits;
• improved wallet tracking of pending transactions.

None of these features make headlines.

But together they make the network faster, more stable and more resistant to abuse.

July 2026 – v1.23.0

Making cryptography dramatically faster

This release focused heavily on performance.

One announcement particularly stood out:

• AVX-512 optimization for Zero-Knowledge proof verification.
• Zero-Knowledge cryptography is computationally expensive.
• By leveraging AVX-512 instructions available on modern processors, XELIS dramatically
• accelerates proof verification.

The published benchmark shows verification times of approximately 0.043 milliseconds per transfer on compatible CPUs.

For privacy-focused blockchains, this kind of optimization can have a major impact on scalability.

Developer ecosystem improvements

Version 1.23 also introduced:

• additional automated tests;
• signed releases using GPG;
• automatic dependency security audits through CI/CD;
• DNS-based seed node discovery;
• richer RPC documentation.

These improvements won't be noticed by most users.

But developers, infrastructure providers and businesses building on XELIS certainly will.

A mature ecosystem depends just as much on tooling as it does on blockchain technology.

July 2026 – v1.24.0

Preparing XELIS for production-scale usage

The latest release continued the same philosophy:

Strengthen reliability before expanding adoption.

Several denial-of-service vulnerabilities were eliminated.

Memory consumption was reduced.

Smart Contract execution became safer.

Database implementations received additional testing.

Wallet transaction history became richer.

Contract interactions became easier to inspect.

RPC handling became more robust.

The emphasis was clear:

Build a blockchain capable of supporting real applications—not simply processing transactions.

Looking at the bigger picture

When viewed individually, each release may appear incremental.

Taken together, however, they reveal a clear roadmap.

January

Stabilize the protocol.

↓

May

Upgrade the blockchain architecture.

↓

June

Strengthen security and resilience against real-world attacks.

↓

July

Optimize cryptographic performance and developer infrastructure.

↓

Today

A significantly stronger Layer-1 platform is emerging.

XELIS now combines:

✔ Proof of Work

✔ BlockDAG architecture

✔ Privacy by default

✔ Confidential Assets

✔ Zero-Knowledge cryptography

✔ Smart Contracts (Silex)

✔ Contract Events

✔ Blob Transactions

✔ Continuous security improvements

✔ Active protocol development

For a project of this size, that's an impressive amount of engineering progress in just a few months.

The technology is becoming increasingly mature.

The next challenge is no longer the protocol itself.

It's building applications that allow anyone—not just blockchain enthusiasts—to benefit from everything this infrastructure now makes possible.