Aleph: Fundamental Analysis

February 23, 2021

With the increase in the popularity of Decentralized applications, largely thanks to the growth of DeFi, a number of flaws have also been flagged that are believed to prevent its mass adoption. To curb these issues, a number of projects have been introduced.

One such platform is Aleph.im which identifies the flaws and provides solutions to alleviate them.

What is Aleph?

Aleph.im is a cross-technology network that is focused on bridging blockchains together and solving the issues of their related infrastructures like storage, security, and computing servers. The network also aims to decentralize the last mile of DeFi, by allowing dapps and DeFi applications to become completely decentralized.

Being a self-funded project, Aleph.im aims to decentralize and revolutionize the ecosystem by building a layer 2 network solution. The 2 layer network infrastructure is especially focused on data storage and computing power for dApps to make the ecosystem whole. The team behind Aleph.im has been working with several clients to explore different use cases for the technology and unlock a whole new potential.

How Does Aleph Work?

At Aleph.im, transactions and messages that are signed on supported blockchains can be instantly accepted on the network. These transaction messages do not come from a specific device. Rather, they can come from anywhere including IoT devices, dApps, and more. Once the network receives the messages, it processes them.

The Aleph network uses a second layer to interconnect between multiple blockchains. This whole new dimension to the dapp ecosystem is creating a bridge between all the chains enabling a lot more than cheaper and feeless interactions. Aleph offers its user the ability to write content in bulk onto the blockchain. This enables fee-less commits and is done by agents committing messages. The agents do the job by spending the native chain asset, however; they receive aleph.im network token in return.

For now, Aleph only supports Ethereum, NULS, Binance Chain, and Neo.

What Does Aleph Offer?

Aleph.im aims to offer solutions to the challenges faced by Blockchain technology. The network tends to break the centralized data silos of the internet by building a cross-blockchain layer 2 network solution. Let's have a look at what it has to offer:

Cross-chain technology:

Aleph supports multiple blockchains and bridges them together. It is compatible with various Blockchains including NULS, NEO, Ethereum, Binance Chain, and more. The network offers fast single cross-technology and cross-chain solutions to provide a solution to Blockchain issues. Incentivized storage: The Aleph network also stores and distributes data from devices, users, and applications. This data is distributed between nodes and the IPFS protocol.

Scalability:

The platform provides a solution to the ever-increasing problem of scalability in the Blockchain ecosystem. This is done by replicating the data in a number of nodes needed for availability which in turn enhances scalability.

Security:

Among many other benefits, Aleph.im takes the security of its users quite seriously. All the data on the network is secured and saved efficiently. The data is replicated with hashes and signatures referenced in all the underlying chains.

Aleph Tokenomics

Let's get into the details of Aleph tokenomics.

The ALEPH Token:

ALEPH is the native token of the Aleph.im ecosystem. The reported 24h daily trading volume for ALEPH amounts to 1,023,626 USD.

Besides other utilities, it is mainly used to reward activity on the network. Initially, the Aleph utility token's issuance will be made as an NRC-20 token and will be swapped for the native asset at a later date.

However, the switch between NRC-20 and native Aleph token may be available in both directions later on.

ALEPH utilities:

ALEPH tokens are used for instant payments to pay for data storage, computing, and otherservices on the network.

These tokens can also be used as incentives for nodes to provide storage of application data, computing power, and availability of API.

ALEPH tokens are also used to reward signed messages.

How to earn ALEPH?

If you want to earn ALEPH tokens, there are a few ways to do it:

  • You can earn ALEPH tokens by running and staking on the nodes.

  • If you stake NULS on pocm.nuls.io, you will get ALEPH tokens. As of now, ~15k ALEPH tokens per day are being shared between all stakers.

  • Aleph.im also incentivizes liquidity providers on the Uniswap pools with its native token. According to the official sources, approximately 15,000 ALEPH will be distributed daily and shared proportionally among the liquidity providers.

ALEPH tokens supply:

The total supply of ALEPH is 500,000,000. Out of the total supply, 89% is locked and the remaining is circulating supply.

Circulating supply:

Out of the total supply of the ALEPH tokens, 53,594,119 are circulating, distributed in the following manner:

  • The Business Development Pool has 120M ALEPH tokens.

  • The Innovation Pool (50M) unlocks 0.9 million per month, starting July 2021.

  • The Company Pool (150M) unlocks 2.5M per month, starting September 2020.

  • The Marketing Pool (60M) unlocks 1M per month, starting in January 2021.

  • The Incentive Pool (100M), 45 million have been placed into circulation via POCM and node rewards.

  • The remaining ALEPH tokens in the Incentive pool will be split between running Aleph.im nodes, liquidity providers, and POCM.

Locked supply:

As mentioned above, the locked supply is 89% and NULS Foundation Pool (20M) is locked until at least January 2022.

ALEPH token distribution:

The ALEPH token is distributed as follow,

  • 30% of the total token supply will be distributed to the Company pool.

  • 24% will be kept for the Business Development Pool.

  • 20% to the Incentive pool.

  • 10% will be reserved for the Innovation pool.

  • 12% for the Marketing pool.

  • The remaining 4% will be distributed to the NULS Foundation Pool.

Aleph Token Staking

To stake ALEPH tokens, you need a minimum of 10K tokens. The total amount of ALEPH tokens present in your wallet are used to stake. Moreover, if you want to stake your ALEPH tokens on numerous nodes, split your ALEPH holdings between different accounts. Once you have split your holdings you will be able to stake from each respective account.

Aleph.im nodes:

At Aleph.im, the nodes incentives and staking occur in three different phases:

  • First, the stakes are materialized via aleph.im messages. These messages are already signed by Ethereum addresses that hold ERC-20 ALEPH tokens.

  • In the second phase of node incentives and staking, a non -fungible token (NFT) is issued to the node hosts via a smart contract.

  • Finally, the aleph.im network itself will manage the nodes and staking.

The Takeaway:

In our opinion, Aleph.im is a project to keep an eye on because of its potential. The project has the potential to be one of the top contender networks in the Blockchain market. The team behind the network is delivering to its promises and if the progress goes on as stated in the road map, an increase in growth can be anticipated.

The project already has working applications in place which is a very good sign.