🗝️Key elements of the Alephium ecosystem

BlockFlow: Alephium's Sharding Algorithm

Alephium leverages an innovative sharding algorithm named BlockFlow, which is built on Bitcoin's UTXO model to enhance the protocol's scalability.

By partitioning the blockchain into multiple segments called "shards," Alephium allows each shard to independently process transactions while maintaining strong synchronization, significantly increasing the network's overall capacity.

The structure comprises 16 parallel blockchains, or "shards," which operate simultaneously to produce blocks concurrently while remaining coordinated. Additionally, Alephium is the only sharded blockchain to offer "single-step cross-shard," enabling transitions between shards in a single step. This feature ensures better security and a much smoother user experience.

The Stateful UTXO Model

Alephium introduces significant innovation with its stateful UTXO model, which enhances both the programmability and security of the blockchain.

This model combines the benefits of Bitcoin's traditional UTXO structure with the features of a state system similar to Ethereum, allowing for more advanced programmability.

In the traditional UTXO model, transactions are recorded and validated by verifying the "unspent outputs" or UTXOs. This mechanism ensures high security, as each UTXO can only be spent once, preventing double spending. However, this method has its limitations: implementing complex operations beyond simple value transfers is challenging.

On the other hand, Ethereum's account model manages a "state." This means that with every transaction on the blockchain, the state changes from one (S1) to another (S2). This principle allows for handling not just basic transactions but also more complex data such as smart contracts.

This state management enables developers to design decentralized applications (dApps) and smart contracts capable of executing complex operations.

Proof of Less Work (PoLW): Alephium's Consensus Model

Alephium's Proof of Less Work (PoLW) is an innovative consensus model that, while acknowledging the superiority of Proof of Work (PoW) for decentralization, addresses environmental concerns related to the energy consumption of PoW chains.

With Proof of Less Work (PoLW), Alephium can significantly reduce the amount of energy required to secure its blockchain by up to 87% at equivalent hashrate.

This eco-efficient system activates only when the network's hashrate exceeds 1 Exahash/s. Once this threshold is reached, miners must burn tokens in addition to expending energy to mine new ones.

This approach helps to reduce overall energy consumption while increasing the cost of mining, ensuring network security. Currently, the network's hashrate is around 750 TH/s, so the PoLW mechanism is not yet activated.

Alphred: Alephium's Virtual Machine

Alephium has developed its own dedicated virtual machine (VM) called Alphred.

This VM is designed to facilitate developers' work by providing a powerful and secure tool, allowing them to focus on developing decentralized applications (dApps).

Alphred is built on three key concepts:

1. Enhanced Security: Alphred improves blockchain security by incorporating stricter security controls in the processing of transactions and smart contracts. This minimizes the risk of bugs and malicious exploits.

2. Advanced Development Tools: Alphred offers developers advanced tools and programming languages that make it easier to write, test, and deploy code on the blockchain. This approach not only enhances the developer experience but also improves the overall quality of deployed applications.

3. Innovative Paradigms: Alphred introduces new paradigms into the blockchain ecosystem, such as trustless peer-to-peer (P2P) smart contract transactions. This means users can execute transactions directly with each other without needing an intermediary, thanks to the verification mechanisms integrated within the VM.