Building with Althea L1
Althea L1 is the purpose built blockchain for connectivity and infrastructure.
Form follows function, Althea L1 serves as the foundation of Althea’s machine-to-machine payment layer and enables building telecom, infrastructure and other real-world applications that depend on reliability, interoperability, and instant payment finality.
In a previous blog post, we explored Althea’s history and how we’ve been uniquely focused on working with users to develop new solutions and cooperative ways to build internet infrastructure.
Part of what makes Althea L1 unique is that it has been designed application first. To enhance and extend the ability of Althea’s advanced routing and billing software, as well as enable many new infrastructure applications like it.
The next evolution of Althea, the Layer 1 launch, will create new opportunities to build software that solves real-world problems. Similar to how the Linux operating system is the underlying platform for Android, embedded devices, and computers and servers everywhere, Althea is the agnostic underpinning of infrastructure and connectivity, working across hardware, terrains, and territories.
Building with Althea: Foundations
One of Althea’s first use-cases, which has already been successfully deployed, networks machines like routers via a dynamic routing protocol. The connected machines remit payments for bandwidth usage and service programmatically via stable coin micro-transactions. This removes the friction and risk in current telecom systems, which rely on inflexible payment terms and contracts. Althea technology lowers costs, generates more bandwidth, and enables the more efficient engineering of connectivity infrastructure.
For example, Althea’s collaboration with Tree Link, a rural California ISP, brings Althea-enabled broadband to over 170 farms and houses in an area other telecoms, like AT&T could not provide service. The devices currently run on the Gnosis chain (xDai) but will migrate to Althea L1, where the revenue generated can be tokenized with Liquid Infrastructure.
- You can read more about Althea’s many successful and ongoing deployments on our website:
- Hack on our current routing protocols on Github:
Althea also connects to Gravity Bridge, a decentralized and affordable Ethereum bridge. Gravity Bridge allows Althea’s machine-to-machine microtransactions to be made with Ethereum stable coins, like USDC and USDT, and provides easy on/off ramping to fiat currencies, so that users don’t have to understand technical blockchain specifications in order to interact with Althea technologies and applications.
Read more about Gravity Bridge here.
Building with Althea: Today
But Althea’s applications do not end with connectivity infrastructure. We can imagine how these same metered billing and machine-to-machine micropayment systems could be applied to other civil infrastructure like water or energy, enabling:
- Decentralized energy grids
- Local currency rewards
- Registries for telecom
- Cryptographically-secure location services
It’s not just about what you can build with Althea — it’s also how. We see Althea opening up new ways to identify capital for building infrastructure and new opportunities for cooperative ownership. Ultimately, Althea can provide the foundational L1 settlement layer for any human, machine, and infrastructure interaction.
Althea’s Hybrid EVM is the perfect tool for building infrastructure applications and protocols; developers can program new smart contracts in Solidity or re-deploy existing smart contracts in new ways. And because Althea’s EVM leverages the Cosmos SDK, builders still have instant finality and transaction/gas fees that work for a variety of everyday users and are not subject to variable fees during high traffic times like other Layer 1’s that are built for financial or speculative use-cases.
Read more about our Hybrid EVM
Althea also can borrow from successful implementations of Contract-Secured Revenue (CSR) on Optimism and Canto, which enable smart contract developers to receive long-lasting rewards for their work and innovation. CSR will not only allow Althea to attract developers, but also to sustain ongoing maintenance and support for applications that are built on-chain.
Read more about Contract-Secure Revenue at Canto:
It’s time for Althea
The blockchain experiment with programmable money began with the launch of Ethereum in 2018, which brought several boom/bust innovation cycles to financial applications. And in 2022, we saw the market retract in response to the failure of several large and well-capitalized corporate blockchain projects and exchanges. Now, as the industry broadens its scope, there is an emerging focus on sustainable revenue and the tokenization of physical assets and infrastructure.The next tech cycle will look beyond DeFi to iFi: Infrastructure Finance.
Althea provides the settlement layer and the necessary scale for this next evolution in blockchain technology, integrating the digital and physical worlds.
