About Shekyl

A private, secure, decentralised digital currency designed for durable monetary policy and practical everyday use.

What Is Shekyl?

Privacy

Shekyl uses cryptographic privacy mechanisms so users can send and receive funds without exposing complete financial histories by default.

Security

Every transaction is cryptographically secured through a distributed peer-to-peer consensus network. Individual wallets use a 25-word mnemonic seed for backup.

Untraceability

By leveraging ring-signature-family privacy techniques, Shekyl makes transaction graph analysis materially harder for adversaries.

Decentralization

Anyone can run Shekyl software, validate chain integrity, and participate using broadly accessible hardware.

Historical Basis for the “Shekyl” Name

The name Shekyl deliberately invokes one of the oldest monetary concepts in recorded human history. The shekel (spelled variously as shekel, sheqel, šiqlu, siqlu, or tekel across languages and eras) predates coined money by thousands of years, making it a uniquely fitting name for a next-generation cryptocurrency that aims to be both technically sound and culturally enduring.

Origins: Mesopotamia, ~3000 BCE

The Mesopotamian shekel is considered the first known form of currency, emerging nearly 5,000 years ago. It originated as a standard measure for trade and economic transactions, typically associated with the value of silver, and represented a means of facilitating commerce among various cultures, reflecting the economic sophistication of ancient Mesopotamia.

Crucially, the shekel was not initially a coin but a specified weight — first of barley, later of silver. The term “shekel” originally meant simply “weight.” This distinction — a unit of measured value rather than a physical token — mirrors how modern cryptocurrency denominations work: defined mathematically, not physically.

Sometime before 2500 BCE, a shekel of silver became the standard currency in Mesopotamia. Tablets listed the price of timber and grains in shekels of silver. One month of labor was worth 1 shekel; a liter of barley sold for 3/100ths of a shekel.

Etymology and Linguistic Roots

The word has deep Semitic roots spanning multiple ancient languages. The word shekel is based on the triliteral Proto-Semitic root ṯql, cognate to the Akkadian šiqlu or siqlu, a unit of weight equivalent to the Sumerian gin2. Use of the word was first attested in approximately 2150 BCE under the reign of Naram-Sin of Akkad, and later in approximately 1700 BCE in the Code of Hammurabi.

The term derives from the Hebrew root sh-q-l, meaning “to weigh” or “to consider,” a nod to its origins as a unit of weight in the ancient Near East. This root generates a whole family of related Hebrew words: the Hebrew reflex of the root šql is found in the words for “to weigh” (shaqal), “weight” (mishqal), and “consideration” (shiqqul).

The Aramaic cognate is equally significant: the Aramaic tekel, used during the feast of Belshazzar according to the Book of Daniel and defined as “weighed,” shares a common root with the word shekel and may additionally attest to its original usage as a weight. This is the famous phrase mene, mene, tekel, upharsin — “numbered, numbered, weighed, divided” — inscribed on the wall by a mysterious hand, which passed into English as the idiom “the writing on the wall.”

In short, the root šql / ṯql runs through Akkadian, Sumerian, Ugaritic, Phoenician, Hebrew, and Aramaic — a linguistic thread connecting the earliest literate civilizations.

Civilizations That Used the Shekel

The shekel was not the currency of a single people. It circulated across the ancient world:

Sumer and Akkad

Mesopotamia, ~2150 BCE onward

In Mesopotamia, the shekel facilitated trade within and beyond the city-states of Sumer. Its first attested use as a defined weight standard dates to the reign of Naram-Sin of the Akkadian Empire.

Babylon

~1700 BCE

The Code of Hammurabi set the value of unskilled labor at approximately ten shekels per year of work. Babylonian accounting records show denominations from single-shekel pieces up to five-shekel coins, with the maneh (60 shekels) as a larger unit.

Philistia

~5th century BCE

The first area in Palestine to transition from a bullion to a coin monetary exchange system was Philistia in the 5th century BCE, with minting of silver coins in Ascalon, Isdud, and Gaza under Achaemenid rule.

The Achaemenid (Persian) Empire

539–333 BCE

The Persian Empire standardized the weight systems, incorporating the shekel into their extensive economic network. Records within the Achaemenid Empire give wage ranges from a minimum of two shekels per month for unskilled labor, to as high as seven to ten shekels per month in some records.

Phoenicia and Tyre

~300 BCE onward

The Phoenician coastal city of Tyre became a particularly important coin producer because the silver in its shekels was exceptionally pure, and so they became the coin of choice for paying the half-shekel Temple tribute obligatory for Jewish men.

Carthage

~4th century BCE onward

The Punic or Carthaginian shekel was typically around 7.2 grams in silver and 7.5 grams in gold. It was apparently first developed in Sicily during the mid-4th century BCE and was associated with the payment of Carthage’s mercenary armies.

Hasmonean Judea and the Jewish Revolts

2nd century BCE – 2nd century CE

The First Jewish Revolt coins featured the Omer cup, symbolizing Temple rituals, and pomegranates, representing fertility and divine favor. Bar Kokhba coins depicted the Temple facade, invoking national aspirations. The First Jewish Revolt of 65–70 CE transformed the shekel into a potent symbol of political defiance, with rebels minting shekels, half-shekels, and quarter-shekels in Jerusalem during the war.

Hellenistic and Roman periods

4th century BCE – 5th century CE

In the Hellenistic period, following Alexander the Great’s conquests, the shekel continued to be minted, often featuring Greek deities and symbols alongside traditional ones. The Roman Empire’s expansion into the Levant introduced Roman currency, but the shekel persisted, especially in Jewish communities, symbolizing resistance and identity.

Revival as a Modern Currency

Its revival as a currency in the 20th century provides an odd coda for a term that came into existence 5,000 years ago, but it reflects the shekel’s multilayered history: beginning as a practical solution to help standardize accounting, it developed into a symbolic representation of historic continuity. When the State of Israel introduced the New Israeli Shekel in 1985 as part of an economic stabilization program, it was a deliberate act of cultural reclamation — linking a modern financial instrument to the oldest monetary tradition in written history.

In 2018, a number of developers and researchers began to explore the idea of a new cryptocurrency that would be based on the shekel. They wanted to create a currency that would be private, secure, and decentralized. They wanted to create a currency that would be easy to use and understand. They wanted to create a currency that would be sustainable and long-term. This was originally implmented using the Cryptonight proof-of-work algorithm. Now in 2026, we are rebooting the chain using the RandomX proof-of-work algorithm. This is a new chapter for the shekel, and we are excited to see where it goes.

Why “Shekyl”

The name Shekyl is a phonetic respelling that acknowledges this ancient legacy while marking a new chapter. Just as the shekel began as a unit of measured, verifiable weight — requiring no central authority beyond the scale itself — Shekyl is designed around verifiable, mathematically defined supply.

The parallel is intentional: the original shekel was trustworthy because its value was derivable from first principles (the weight of silver). Shekyl aims to be trustworthy for the same reason — its monetary policy is derivable from its open-source code.

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