Back to collectionYear-End Reckoning: AI Expansion, a Lawsuit, and a 93% Fall
At the year-end close, the narrator set out to write an account of Xai’s 2025 that held price, products, onchain readings, and people together. XAI closed at USD 0.0159, against USD 0.2248 at the start of the year, a 93% decline. The narrator’s judgment on the year was that the project had lost its earlier story and 93% of its price, while retaining network uptime, block production, and a lawsuit on the court docket.
A creative chronicle combining project history with imagined scenes. Story events are not verification of network activity.
At the year-end close, the narrator set out to write an account of Xai’s 2025 that held price, products, onchain readings, and people together. The community was still asking how proposals would be carried out. Whether keys could be sold and when esXAI could be redeemed remained immediate concerns.
XAI closed at USD 0.0159, against USD 0.2248 at the start of the year, a 93% decline. There was no FTX-style collapse, only a long wearing down: a slide in January, a break lower in February, a rush for the exits in April, a brief rebound in May, and a sharp downward wick in October. With Raijin’s launch, the chain moved into the background. Final Form announced that it was removing blockchain mechanics, taking the chain out of its own flagship game. Ex Populus sued Elon Musk’s xAI, putting a small company in court against a giant. The unanimously approved XIP-1 recovery plan covered additional issuance, buybacks, an expansion toward AI, and a push for a US exchange listing; it did not halt the year’s decline. Onchain, esXAI redemptions formed a long queue, and the heavily discounted 15-day option was the most sought after. The total staking pool shrank through the second half. One year-end estimate put circulating supply at nearly 90% of total supply, esXAI at less than 8% of it, and the amount still staked in pools at roughly 90 million tokens. Emissions crossed halving thresholds twice, on April 3 and June 24; slower supply growth did not change the mood. Keys had been soulbound and nontransferable since sales began, yet 'how do I sell my keys?' became the year’s most common question. It came especially often in December, and some people left over the answer. Today was also the final day to claim the Genesis Commemorative Badge airdrop tier, with no late claims. A-Zhen continued her work on Raijin, making what she called 'games players want to play.' Sisyphus had not been heard from since leaving in the early hours of October 10. The chain was still producing blocks; the Night Watchman’s laptop kept its Sentry node watching the network and participating in challenges, and he said he would continue next year.
The narrator’s judgment on the year was that the project had lost its earlier story and 93% of its price, while retaining network uptime, block production, and a lawsuit on the court docket. It was still operating, but on the margins. Entering 2026, there was no answer yet to whether Raijin could keep players, whether Final Form would reach Steam as intended, how the governance plan would be implemented, or how holders would handle redemption and keys they could not transfer.