Unnoticed L1 project? Xelis preparing to launch a fully on-chain DEX — any thoughts?

I came across a project that has been building quietly for months without marketing, and I’m genuinely surprised how little attention it’s getting. This is not a “moon soon” post — just a breakdown of recent technical upgrades that might interest people who follow infrastructure-level crypto projects.

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What Xelis actually is (in simple terms)

Xelis is a Layer-1 that uses a DAG-based parallel execution layer while still finalizing into a traditional blockchain.

So unlike pure-DAG networks (IOTA etc.), Xelis still maintains blockchain finality while enabling parallel TX processing. It also has confidentiality, which means transaction amounts and wallet balances are hidden.

That’s the basic design — but what happened recently is more interesting.

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Major updates shipped on December 13th

1. Block time reduction from 15 seconds → 5 seconds

A pretty significant performance improvement, especially considering the network is still young and not heavily optimized yet.

1. Smart contract support went live

Not “coming soon” — actually implemented and active.

1. Introduction of XVM (Xelis Virtual Machine)

This is a ground-up, custom virtual machine, not a fork of EVM.

It was designed to work with their parallel execution layer and a new account model built specifically for this architecture.

Meaning:

• not an EVM clone

• not WASM

• custom instruction sets

• compatibility with their DAG→blockchain hybrid model

Whether this becomes useful long-term is up to adoption, of course — but technically it’s impressive for a small team.

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1. DEX launch scheduled for January 7th

Their first native DEX (Xelis Forge) is going live this month.

It should allow:

• on-chain swaps

• liquidity pools

• smart-contract-based trading

• block-native TX routing (no third-party chain)

The launch will probably be small at first because they don’t do paid marketing, but it’s still a milestone.

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Why I found this interesting

Most L1s ship testnets for years before real features appear.

Xelis, with no hype, influencers, or marketing, quietly delivered:

✔ custom VM

✔ smart contracts

✔ block-time reduction

✔ new account model

✔ DEX infrastructure

✔ hybrid DAG/blockchain architecture

… all within a short timeframe.

Again — I’m not saying it will succeed or that anyone should buy it.

But from a technical standpoint, it’s one of the more interesting low-profile L1 projects I’ve seen recently.

If anyone else has been following it, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.