Technical basisTo deeply understand the technical foundation of the XAI token, you first need to understand the Arbitrum Orbit L3 public chain. Arbitrum Orbit is an L3 upgrade based on Arbitrum L2 Rollup, designed as a scalability solution for the settlement layer. Developers can issue a chain with one click through simple operations, and XAI is an Orbit L3 chain built on Arbitrum Nitro.
Arbitrum Nitro directly compiles Geth's core through the base layer of client software, which greatly improves Ethereum's compatibility. What’s more worth mentioning is that Nitro has built-in modules such as BOLD and Stylus. BOLD implements permissionless fraud proof, significantly reducing withdrawal delays; while Stylus supports multi-language development, which not only improves development efficiency, but also enables seamless migration from other chains to Arbitrum.
It can be said that Nitro provides a stable, safe and efficient foundation for XAI. Seamless interoperability with Arbitrum One and Nova allows XAI to directly connect to richer ecological resources. Compared with building a public chain independently, XAI uses Arbitrum's ready-made infrastructure to greatly improve development efficiency.
Token economy
Arbitrum Orbit provides the L3 public chain with considerable freedom, including consensus mechanism, governance model, Gas fee token selection and economic model. Therefore, XAI was able to design a unique token economic model, adopting an esToken dual-token model similar to GMX. The native token XAI and the pledged version esXAI form a deflationary dual-token system. The two can be exchanged for each other, and the exchange ratio changes with time.
In this system, XAI, as a governance token and Gas token, supports the operation of the network; while esXAI, as a reward token, attracts node operators through the pledge mechanism and provides infrastructure for the ecosystem.
XAI Token Distribution
The total supply of XAI is 2.5 billion, and the initial distribution is as follows:
Team and early contributors: 20% of tokens will be gradually unlocked over 42 months.
Investors: 22.41% of tokens will be unlocked in 30 months.
Ecosystem: 2% of the tokens will be unlocked immediately for market making, and 5.5% will be unlocked within 42 months for ecological construction.
Point rewards: 50.1% are issued in the form of esXAI, and the proportion of rewards exchanged for XAI changes with the unlocking time.
Game ecology
Next, let’s talk about the most important part of the game public chain—the game ecology. According to the official website, there are currently five games in preparation, the first of which will be the card battle game "Final Form". This game combines card, roguelite and combat elements to provide players with an immersive experience. Players can participate in alliances and win rewards by evolving cards.
"Final Form" was developed by Ex Populus Studio, which is composed of several former developers from major game companies. Ex Populus is also an official game developer of XAI and is responsible for providing services to the ecosystem.
In addition, XAI has also reached strategic cooperation with multiple industry leaders, including Tencent, Animoca Brands, etc. These partners have brought rich game resources and channel support to XAI. It is foreseeable that a number of outstanding works will emerge from the XAI ecosystem in the future, creating a game world with depth and breadth from multiple dimensions.
strategic positioning
The launch of XAI also shows a glimpse of the fierce competition between Arbitrum and Optimism. Faced with Optimism’s active expansion of the OP Stack Layer 2 market, Arbitrum chose to vertically enter the third-layer blockchain in the gaming field. This highly customized strategy not only significantly improves performance, but also better meets the needs of game users.
As a strategic move of Arbitrum, XAI has injected strong growth momentum into it and is expected to open up new growth space. Rather than competing head-on with Optimism, Arbitrum chose vertical integration, avoiding the red ocean and going straight into the blue ocean, which demonstrates the team's market insight and determination.
Author's opinion
As the Cancun upgrade day gets closer, many tokens in the ETH Rollup ecosystem have also begun to rise, and $Arb, once jokingly called a stable currency, has also quietly doubled. As the "son" of Arbitrum, XAI's value has increased even more with the support of Binance.
XAI is becoming a new star in the field of blockchain games with the technological innovation, economic mechanism design and application expansion of Arbitrum L3. Its valuation can be compared with that of Myria or even Gala of the same type. Although a good background may not necessarily lead to good products, it will test how the team can attract more high-quality game studios to develop games on XAI.
If the game ecosystem is successfully built, XAI's user base and commercial value will increase exponentially. This will also verify Arbitrum’s competitiveness in the Layer 2 market, and gamers will benefit from a more convenient and smooth gaming experience.