Let me introduce XNS, the eXile Name System.
XNS is a name system built directly on Monero. It has no separate blockchain, token, premine, treasury, validators or governance system. Monero is its history, clock and only source of truth.
The Internet gave people the ability to publish and operate their own services, but the names through which those services are reached are still rented from institutions. You may own the server and every byte on it, while a registrar or platform retains the power to suspend, redirect or seize the name attached to your work.
XNS is an attempt to enfree names.
An XNS name belongs to an Ed25519 public key. A claim is an ordinary Monero transaction sent to a protocol-defined burn wallet. The transaction amount determines the lifetime of the name, while tx_extra contains the name and owner public key directly.
The protocol wallet has a valid private view key, allowing its incoming transactions to be discovered, but its spend public key is the order-2 Edwards point (0, -1). There is no valid private spend key behind it. XMR sent there cannot be recovered by anyone.
One year costs 0.01 XMR, defined as 262800 Monero blocks.
An XNS indeXer scans the protocol wallet and deterministically reconstructs the registry from Monero. Its database is only a cache. It can be deleted and rebuilt from the chain. Anyone can run an indeXer, and applications are expected to let users choose which one they use.
XNS has no update or transfer operation. If a name is active, only another claim using the same owner key can renew it. A different owner cannot replace it. When the name expires, it becomes free again.
The absence of transfers is deliberate. Selling a cryptographic identity means selling a private key, but the buyer can never know that the seller did not retain a copy. Without trustworthy transfers, there is no trustworthy resale market, which removes the practical reason to collect names for resale.
XNS is now live on mainnet and stagenet. The protocol, implementation and documentation are public, and I would appreciate review from the community.
Website: https://xns.rocks
Documentation: https://xns.rocks/docs
Source code: https://github.com/exilens/xns
Web lookup: https://ui.indexer.xns.rocks
Bare indeXer API: https://indexer.xns.rocks
Donate: https://xns.rocks/donate
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