xDai is a USD stable blockchain and an ethereum based side chain. The Proof of concept used in xDai blockchain is Proof of staked authority. Since it is a ethereum based side chain and EVM(Ethereum virtual machine) compatible , all smart contracts that work on Ethereum blockchain would work on xDai blockchain. 

xDai chain also uses dual-token model. It uses xDai for transactions and gas fees whereas there is another token STAKE used for staking authority since it is PoS(Proof of stake) model.  

xDai is pegged to US dollar which means 1 xDai = 1 US Dollar.   The price of 1 STAKE is $8.89 at the time of writing this blog.

The difference between other cryptocurrencies which pegged to dollar like Tether, USDC to xDai is the former are tokens which are on Ethereum blockchain whereas xDai has its own blockchain.

More ever, the transaction fees are very cheaper compared to ethereum due to its staking model and much faster. As xDai is pegged to US dollar there won't be any crypto speculations such as volatility, FUD which makes this network neutral. 

It also has bridges like OmniBridge to move tokens Between Binance smart chain and xDai chain or Ethereum blockchain and xDai chain. There is also xDai bridge to convert Dai tokens to xDai. Dai was developed by same makers of xDai but Dai was a token deployed on Ethereum mainnet through smart contract. It was also a stable token just like Tether pegged to US Dollar.

Before proceeding further, We need to create a metamask wallet. If you do not have one, create it by following this  blog.

After you created, the wallet will look like below.

Click on the Ethereum mainnet at the top right corner and expand it. At the bottom, click on Custom RPC. Now you should see a screen just like below one.

Now, enter the below details for mainnet and Hit Save.

xDai Mainnet Settings

• Network Name: xDai Mainnet

• New RPC URL: https://rpc.xdaichain.com/

• Chain ID: 100

• Symbol: xDai

• Block Explorer URL: https://blockscout.com/poa/xdai

xDai Testing & Testnet

As mentioned before, xDai is EVM Compatible blockchain. Any smartcontract that works on Ethereum works on xDai chain. There is no xDai Testnet for testing purposes. Can use any ethereum testnet or POA Sokol testnet. 

• Network Name: POA Sokol Testnet

• New RPC URL: https://sokol.poa.network

• ChainID: 77

• Symbol: SPOA

• Block Explorer URL: https://blockscout.com/poa/sokol

• ERC20 testnet faucet - https://www.xdaichain.com/for-developers/developer-resources/erc20-test-token-faucet

More Resources

• AnyBlock Analytics Explorer - https://www.xdaichain.com/for-validators/posdao-whitepaper
• Block Explorer - https://blockscout.com/xdai/mainnet
• AnyBlock Analytics Explorer  - https://explorer.anyblock.tools/ethereum/poa/xdai/
• Developer docs - https://www.xdaichain.com/for-developers/developer-resources
• Etherscan - https://etherscan.io/token/0x0Ae055097C6d159879521C384F1D2123D1f195e6
• Github Repo - https://github.com/xdaichain
• Twitter - https://twitter.com/xdaichain

Gitcoin kudos on xDai Network

On gitcoin.co , we could earn NFTs (ERC-721 tokens) called kudos upon completing the quests which is reading about new cryptocurrency blogs and answering the quiz - https://gitcoin.co/quests.  Those ERC-721 tokens are on xDai network due to high transaction fees on Ethereum mainnet. However, the marketplace for selling those earned kudos is yet to be discovered. Please let me know in the comments if you happen to know how to sell these kudos earned here. 

Thanks for reading.