Alephium’s game-changing technology and vision of a decentralized world

Alephium is a layer 1 blockchain, live from November 2021, which avoids common industry conflicts, with simultaneous scalability and transparency, strong security and decentralization.

It distinguishes itself with a strong technological proposal: a unique sharding algorithm called Blockflow, its energy efficiency thanks to Proof-of-Less-Work, a unique state UTXO model and more will be explained in detail below!

But the technology is not the only one. With a collection of wallets, a strong community and a dedicated ecosystem of dApps (including DEX, NFT marketplace, games and more), Bridge to Ethereum has a very strong focus on user experience, with over 6000 blockchain assets. & Millions of TVL.

A hackathon with around 100 participants is currently underway, and the next network update is coming in Q1, reducing the block time to 16 seconds and introducing gasless transactions!

And now, let's dive into the details.

Security and Transparency: Conditional UTXO

Alephium is programmable and secure. Alephium introduced the UTXO model, which offers layer-1 scalability and a level of programming similar to the token model implemented on ETH, while being more secure.

The classical UTXO (Unpaid Transaction Output) model is widely used to track accounting in the Bitcoin blockchain. It is also available in Bitcoin Cash, Zcash, Litecoin and more.

In UTXO, there are no accounts or balances at the protocol layer, only transactions. Coins are stored as a ledger of unused transactions output (UTXO) and new transactions consume existing UTXOs to produce new UTXOs. This model is conceptually easy to understand, scales well and is very clear. It has a few downsides: it's stateless and not descriptive enough for developers, meaning it's hard to build complex programs on it.

The account model is more intuitive and closer to a classic database. It records the increase/decrease of balance of addresses as transactions occur. This framework is more accessible and easier to control for developers, enabling a more “descriptive” system: developers can easily build dApps. The account model also has limitations: parallel execution is difficult, MEV is a constant drag, and often lacks sufficient security checks to maintain it at the smart contract level.

Alephium combines the security of the UTXO model with the transparency of the tag model. It achieves this by using both… but for different things! UTXOs are used for assets/tokens and account models for modern contracts and states.

SUTXO is a major improvement for token management in particular, as it allows developers to interact with an improved tokenization model. Finally, the sUTXO model provides a solid foundation for building smart contracts, guaranteeing secure asset management.

Scalability and sharing: BlockFlow algorithm

Alephium is scaled through sharding: the territory is divided into groups, and the transactions are carried out in parallel on several blockchains. Its sharding algorithm is called Blockflow, and it allows huge UX improvements over single-step cross-group transactions.

Sharding enhances the elasticity of blockchain networks by splitting data across multiple locations, or “shards,” to increase transmission capacity. This allows Alephium to handle more transactions per second (400 as of today and more than 10k growing). For reference, Bitcoin can handle 7 transactions per second.

In account-based chains, accounts are divided into chains. Because of this, cross-chain transactions require complex mechanisms such as bridging or beacon chains and are generally not single-step or uniformly secured, adding complexity to users and providing developers with a secure experience.

In contrast, in Alephium, Blockflow sets Blockflow apart from traditional sharding algorithms as it provides a more efficient and better developer and user experience due to single-level cross-group transactions.

Energy efficiency: Alephium's PoLW consensus approach

Thanks to the low work guarantee, Alephium consumes less energy. It combines physical labor and coin economics to balance the work required to dynamically mine new blocks. Given the same network conditions, Alephium uses only ⅛ as much as Bitcoin.

This works by allowing miners to convert part of their external spending into internal network coins after a certain period of time.

This keeps the mechanics necessary to increase mining costs while not increasing energy consumption. Therefore, Alefium allows to reduce the energy consumption without compromising safety.

Alephium offers a special tool for devs: its own VM: a combination of Alfred (VM), Ralph (programming language) and APS (value licensing system) with built-in controls and checks, special performance, and special features (such as flash loan resistance) thanks to the UTXO model. .

In addition to increasing resiliency on MEV with its MEV-savvy design, Alephium's VM addresses the industry's most common attacks and security pitfalls, such as re-entry attacks, unlimited authorization, double dipping, flash loans and more.

Ralph's smart contract programming language focuses on three goals: security, simplicity, and efficiency. Built to be extremely intuitive and easy to use, even for beginners, Ralph uses built-in VM features and is designed to be safe by design.

Alephium's Asset Authorization System (APS) provides a secure and more flexible solution to eliminate Ethereum token authentication risks. Controlling the flow of assets, APS provides enhanced security and greater control over transactions.

As blockchain technology continues to evolve, innovations such as APS will pave the way for secure and robust decentralized applications. Developers and users will benefit from this improved approach to managing and protecting digital assets on Alephium.

Alephium growth ecology

Following the first network update in the spring, an increase in connectivity in the summer, a bridge to Ethereum in the fall, and new listings at the end of the year, Alephium has blossomed into a vibrant ecosystem and attracted many. Attention and new users.

Alephium bridge TVL over time

Source:

Alephium has put a lot of focus on UX, and has released a full range of wallets: a desktop wallet (Mac, Windows, Linux), a browser extension (Chrome and Firefox), as well as Android and iOS mobile wallets. This has greatly helped people to get into the ecosystem!

Thanks to the bridge, a lot of TVL has moved to the Alephium ecosystem, and vice versa, more than 6'000 Ethereum addresses now have ALPH bundled on Ethereum. Uniswap is now one of the biggest trading places for tokens.

It became very easy for new developers to discover how powerful it is to build decentralized applications there. With the help of Alephium's documentation, dApps proof-of-concepts and workshops, many dApps have been developed in the last few months.

Ayin is the first decentralized exchange (DEX) on Alephium, Deadrare is the first NFT marketplace and gaming apps like ALPH.bet allow users to experiment with on-chain betting and lotteries of ALPH and other tokens! You can find all these in Alph.land, the repository of all things. And many more are coming up with the hackathon.

Finally, Blockflow Alliance DAO is the first decentralized autonomous organization on Alephium. It is committed to increasing adoption and usage, expanding the community, nurturing development and promoting the Alephium ecosystem.

And now what? Hackathon and Network Update!

The ecosystem is growing organically, but Alephium has introduced a few initiatives to encourage participation. The ambassador program for the wider community has recently completed its finalization phase and is showing high participation (over 350 applicants!). The hackathon and networking update are next!

The developer community is invited to participate in Alephium's inaugural Hackathon, which provides a platform for innovators/developers to test their concepts for a chance to win $50,000. ALPH Awards.

More than 1000 developers are participating, and a list of projects in progress is available on Discord, where you can follow the hackathon project live! It is also continuously working to list ALPH on more centralized and decentralized exchanges.

On the other hand, the main contributors are working on the next update of the network, called Rhone. It includes features such as block time reduction, which reduces the time it takes to issue a new block from 64 seconds to 16 seconds, or support for programmable gasless transactions, which makes it easier for new users to onboard. You can follow all these developments on Alephium's Twitter. Alephium is also working on integration into hardware wallets!

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