What Is Alephium (ALPH)?

Alephium is a layer-1 blockchain that combines the robustness of Proof-of-Work with the programmability of the latest smart-contract networks. ALPH is the native coin used for gas in transactions, mining rewards, and operations on the network. Scalability, decentralization, and security are achieved all without giving up on any of the three pillars, says Alephium, offering "the Web3 you were promised".

Unlike most new Proof-of-Stake systems, Alephium retains the battle-tested security of PoW through its novel Proof-of-Less-Work mechanism-a greener, more energy-efficient version that consumes as much as 87% less energy when placed under the same load as traditional mining systems. The network also introduces BlockFlow, a sharded architecture able to process over 20,000 transactions per second, with Alephium taking its place as one of the fastest PoW blockchains currently out there.

Usability, accessibility, developer-friendly tools, and smart-contract functionality with its own Ralph language are the areas of focus, along with wallet infrastructure for all. In short, Alephium is an ambitious evolution of the PoW model that is fast, highly scalable, secure, and sustainable.

Why Alephium Is Special

Alephium stands out within the crowded blockchain landscape because of the way it combines performance, security, scalability, and sustainability, a combination hardly ever reached by Proof-of-Work networks. Backed by a very technical team and an active community, Alephium introduces several key innovations that revise what a decentralized system can provide.

Fast

Alephium achieves block times of just 8 seconds, with the network throughput at 2 blocks per second, matching the speed of leading Proof-of-Stake blockchains, while retaining PoW-level security. Each one of its constituent 16 chains produces a block every 8 seconds, ensuring confirmation times are swift and transaction latency is low.

Scalable

Alephium's BlockFlow sharding technology allows the network to scale throughput to more than 20,000 transactions per second, adding no extra complexity for users and developers. Among its many parallel chains, Alephium provides a single-chain experience: all assets and contracts remain accessible and interoperable across shards.

Secure

Each layer is designed with security in mind. Alephium's stateful UTXO model and MEV-aware architecture safeguard users against common attack vectors such as reentrancy, double spending, and unlimited token approvals. Smart contracts have better protections compared to with other vms, maximizing their reliability while limiting their vulnerability to attacks.

Sustainable

Unlike traditional PoW systems, Alephium Proof-of-Less-Work reduces energy consumption by 87% when placed under the same conditions. It can therefore achieve green consensus without giving up decentralization. This efficiency puts Alephium as a sustainable alternative in these times focused on green technologies.

Programmable

Alephium combines the security of Bitcoin's UTXO with the smart contract flexibility of Ethereum: the stateful UTXO model opens up smart contracts with mutable state, a huge leap toward sophisticated DeFi, NFTs, and dApp ecosystems-all while continuing to safeguard user assets.

Developer-Friendly

It comes with an Alphred Virtual Machine specifically made for the platform and an expressive programming language called Ralph, tailor-made for Alephium's architecture. It offers developers an intuitive Typescript SDK, comprising an array of tools that make smart contract development, dApp deployment, and token integration seamless and efficient.

Alephium is not copying any of the existing models for its blockchain but rebuilds them, embedding the resilience of PoW with the scalability of Web3 to make sure the infrastructure for the next generation of decentralized applications will be ensured.

Alephium (ALPH) Tokenomics

The ALPH coin is designed to be used on the Alephium network as the primary medium of exchange, reward, and value transfer. Post-Danube upgrade, Alephium adopted a predictable tail emission model with no fixed maximum supply. Rather, new ALPH coins keep entering into circulation through mining emissions, while a portion of fees is burned to balance inflation.

Supply and Emissions

The coin supply can be expressed with the equation:

Total Supply = Circulating Supply + Reserved Supply + Locked ALPH

Mining emissions are unlimited, and there is a 500-minute lock period before the mined coins become liquid. All transaction fees get automatically burnt, thereby creating a partial deflationary effect.

Current coin allocation overview:

• Mining Emissions: Unlimited - 500 minutes lock period

• Burned: All transaction fees via Proof of Less Work mechanism

• Seed/Private Sales: 80 million ALPH, vesting quarterly over 2--4 years

• Ecosystem Allocation: 30 million ALPH, unlocked quarterly over 4 years

• Treasury Allocation: 30 million ALPH, vested quarterly over 3 years

This hybrid model of continuous emissions with burn ensures that runaway inflation cannot be prevented without steady network rewards. The effective inflation rate of ALPH is determined by the balance between new issuance and the amount of fees burned over time.

Economic Model

Alephium's Proof-of-Less-Work consensus maintains network rewards while decreasing future energy costs. Emissions are pivotal for maintaining decentralization, as miners who secure the network are compensated in ALPH. Transaction-fee burning introduces a self-balancing dynamic: the total liquid supply decreases as network usage increases.

The Alephium Coin (ALPH) is the utility and store-of-value asset within this ecosystem, thanks to aligned miner incentivization, community participation, and fee burns.

How to Get ALPH

The ALPH coin is provided via many channels. Users can acquire it either on centralized exchanges, decentralized exchanges, or even directly inside Alephium's wallets. It's designed to be convenient, private, and accessible whether through card payments, trading pairs, or peer-to-peer transfers.

On-Ramps

You can purchase ALPH directly in Alephium's mobile and desktop wallets using debit and credit cards, bank transfers, and even Apple Pay. This integration allows for instant access to the native coin, with no need to rely on third-party platforms. Availability may vary depending on your home country due to regional restrictions around payments.

Centralized Exchanges

There are several CEX listings of ALPH trading pairs which allow one to trade major cryptocurrencies, or even fiat currencies, for ALPH. They then custody your purchased coins until you decide to transfer them to your own wallet in self-custody. For the full list of active CEX listings, consult data aggregators such as CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko.

Decentralized Exchanges

For self-custody users, ALPH natively resides on decentralized platforms such as Elexium, Ayin, and Nightshade. Wrapped versions of ALPH can also be found on Uniswap and PancakeSwap via official Alephium bridges.

For this reason, it is always advisable to check the liquidity in advance with the understanding that some of the pools may have low volume. This is especially true with the more minor DEXs.

Bridged ALPH

Bridged ALPH enables interoperability between ecosystems. Through the Alephium Bridge, wrapped ALPH can be moved seamlessly by users between the Alephium and Ethereum and BNB networks, extending utility across a wide variety of different DeFi protocols and enabling participation in cross-chain ecosystems.

Transfers Among Peers

With the Alephium Wallet, users can directly swap ALPH with others. Just share your wallet address, and you will be able to safely send or receive tokens. The whole transaction is completed in seconds by means of Alephium's high-throughput network.

Listed here are only some of the ways to express the Alephium core values: open access, decentralization, and user sovereignty. In other words, all are welcome, and this ecosystem is easy for anyone to interact with.

Building on Alephium -- Developers, Tools, and Node Operation

By open-sourcing its ecosystem, Alephium empowers developers, miners, and community contributors to actively participate in the expansion of the decentralized infrastructure. The project provides a powerful set of tools, SDKs, and documentation that make the process of creating and maintaining decentralized applications straightforward and efficient.

Developer Environment

Alephium was designed with the developer in mind. Its programming language, Ralph, focuses mainly on security, simplicity, and scalability. Based on the stateful UTXO model, Ralph enables developers to create powerful, efficient smart contracts that are safeguarded against common exploits like reentrancy or over-approval bugs.

The secure ALPHred Virtual Machine of the network is running fast and deterministic, giving full control of transaction logic and gas usage to the developers. This makes the integration of new dApps, wallets, and financial tools easier with Alephium SDKs and API libraries.

Contributing to the Ecosystem

Alephium is fully open source in its development. One can explore the repositories, propose enhancements, or simply create their own. For teams developing decentralized applications, one can create pull requests on the Alephium repository in order to display their dApps on the public ecosystem showcase.

Developers can also apply for the Alephium Grant and Rewards Program or the Bug Bounty Program. Both focus on incentivizing innovation while encouraging security research. Participation details and guidelines can be found on the official GitHub and Discord channels.

Running Alephium Nodes

Running nodes is essential to maintain decentralization and thus support the stability of the network. Alephium's node software is, therefore, optimized for consumer-grade hardware, allowing participation even by individuals and small teams.

Running a node enables:

• Direct contribution to network security and consensus.

• The result is that developers of dApps have better reliability and lower latency.

• Support for transaction validation and mining pool operations.

Documentation provides details on setting up full nodes in several environments and includes numerous performance monitoring tools.

Mining on Alephium

Alephium enables both solo and pool mining. Its current status entails four groups of addresses and sixteen chains, with a pre-set targeted block time of eight seconds and a reward of 0.1915 ALPH per block. On average, 172,800 blocks are mined per day, and newly mined coins are locked for 500 minutes before they are transferable.

To support miners, a community channel is available to discuss any configuration and optimizations suggestions.

What Makes Alephium Sustainable and Secure

Alephium was born with the conviction that decentralization should never have to compromise on sustainability or security. Its core architecture and consensus mechanism were the result of years of extensive research into how Proof-of-Work networks could evolve to meet modern efficiency standards while remaining resilient against attacks.

Proof-of-Less-Work (PoLW)

The key to Alephium's sustainability rests in the Proof-of-Less-Work consensus algorithm. In contrast to the energy-consuming mining involved in Bitcoin, PoLW eventually reduces the consumption of electricity by up to 87 percent through better difficulty and reward in block generation. The design will guarantee that this network will remain decentralized while rewarding miners proportionally for the contribution of computational work without any excess energy being wasted.

Security by Design

The Alephium Stateful UTXO model combines Bitcoin's unspent-transaction-output system with Ethereum-like programmability. This structure isolates each contract's state, preventing many common vulnerabilities on account-based chains. It offers built-in protection against exploits like:

• Reentrancy attacks involve malicious contracts repeatedly draining funds.

• Unlimited Approvals: These expose token balances to potential misuse.

• Cross-chain inconsistencies due to unified shard-aware logic of Alephium.

MEV-aware architecture design minimizes the manipulation of miner extractable value within the network to ensure integrity in both transaction ordering and execution.

Environmental and Network Stability

Alephium uniquely combines PoLW and multi-chain sharding for both energy efficiency and high throughput, while avoiding central points of failure. Its light node design makes it possible for anyone to run a validator on consumer-grade hardware, further strengthening decentralization.

Alephium keeps an open, secure, and environmentally-friendly Proof of Work, publicly verifiable by anyone, which currently makes it one of a few scalable blockchains that are consistent with international goals about sustainability.