# What purpose do XEL tokens serve?

Besides its own dedicated blockchain, the Elastic platform uses the native XEL token. XEL serves as a medium of exchange to reward miners with proportional bounties for providing computing power.

XEL tokens fuel the whole Elastic software engine. Without it you can’t buy Computational resources within the platform or get compensated for offering your CPU, GPU mining resources.

{% content-ref url="inflation" %}
[inflation](https://xel.gitbook.io/wiki/faq/xel_token/inflation)
{% endcontent-ref %}
