Feature Deep Dive: XELIS — Balance Proofs & Ownership Proofs

4 min read3 days ago

The XELIS project recently introduced “Balance Proofs” and “Ownership Proofs” as part of its network upgrade, adding a system for securely disclosing wallet balances in a selective, verifiable manner. These features allow users to temporarily share the value of an encrypted balance or prove ownership of a minimum amount of assets without compromising long-term privacy. The proofs are designed to become invalid when the balance changes, maintaining privacy while enabling controlled transparency.

Background: XELIS Before Balance Proofs

Prior to the addition of Balance and Ownership Proofs, XELIS operated with strict privacy measures, ensuring that all user balances and transaction data were fully encrypted and private. This encryption meant that no one, not even the development team, could verify wallet balances or trace transactions without the user’s explicit consent. While this absolute privacy was beneficial for security, it also limited balance verification for purposes like auditing or regulatory compliance. Stakeholders and regulatory bodies were unable to verify wallet balances, as all data remained entirely private. This lack of selective transparency presented challenges for users who needed to prove their balance without revealing sensitive information.

Balance Proofs in XELIS

Balance Proofs allow users to create a one-time proof of their exact balance, valid only for the current state of the wallet. The Balance Proof becomes invalid once any transaction is made, ensuring that shared information does not expose ongoing transaction data. Using Pedersen Commitments and Commitment Equality Proofs, Balance Proofs verify the balance without revealing any transaction details, leveraging zero-knowledge principles to confirm the balance’s validity.

The technical process behind Balance Proofs involves creating a new ciphertext with the entire balance in the wallet, ensuring cryptographic consistency. A commitment equality proof is then generated to show that this “zero” balance ciphertext indeed represents zero, without leaking other details. This proof structure maintains the privacy of the wallet while allowing for verifiable disclosures. Through the future Human Readable Proof format, which uses the Bech32 encoding like wallet addresses, users will be able to share them with third parties (applications or services included) securely and easily.

Ownership Proofs in XELIS

Ownership Proofs enable users to prove that they own at least a specified amount, named N, of a given asset, without disclosing the full balance. Users can configure N to any value above 0, providing flexibility for cases where they need to demonstrate minimum holdings rather than an exact balance. Ownership Proofs are particularly useful in scenarios where a user needs to show sufficient funds to engage in a transaction or meet a financial threshold without disclosing the entire balance.

Ownership Proofs use similar cryptographic principles as Balance Proofs, including Pedersen Commitments and zero-knowledge proof methods. The process ensures that only the necessary information (the fact that the user holds at least N units of an asset) is shared, while all other balance details remain encrypted and private. This is achieved through Commitment Equality Proofs, which verify that the balance is sufficient without revealing the total amount. Additionally, Ownership Proofs expire once the wallet’s balance is updated, maintaining data integrity and privacy by preventing reuse or unauthorized sharing of outdated information.

Potential Applications and Regulatory Implications

Balance Proofs: By introducing Balance Proofs, XELIS has opened the door to selective transparency. This feature can aid in addressing regulatory requirements, such as one-time audits or balance verifications, allowing institutions or regulatory bodies to confirm wallet balances without needing to give an access to the private key of the wallet or a continuous access to transaction histories. This aligns with compliance standards, including anti-money laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC), providing a controlled and privacy-preserving solution for temporary visibility.

Ownership Proofs: Ownership Proofs offer additional compliance capabilities by enabling users to demonstrate minimum holdings without revealing their full balance. This is ideal for scenarios where users must prove that they meet financial requirements or minimum holdings for eligibility in transactions, investments, or other financial interactions. For XELIS, this feature enhances the network’s utility by allowing verifiable, minimal disclosures that maintain high privacy levels, fulfilling potential regulatory demands while safeguarding user anonymity.

Conclusion

With Balance and Ownership Proofs, XELIS has introduced a robust framework for selective, verifiable balance disclosures. These features enable users and the development team to provide transparency while preserving privacy. By combining zero-knowledge proofs with flexible encoding methods, XELIS supports one-time verifications for regulatory needs and transaction eligibility. This balance of transparency and privacy strengthens XELIS’s commitment to user-focused privacy and compliance.

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