Althea

Althea

Transforming Connectivity

Althea: 2025 in Review

As we step into 2026, we want to take a moment to reflect on 2025, a pivotal year for Althea’s infrastructure and ecosystem. The past year brought volatility and pressure to both the telecom and blockchain industries, but within the Althea ecosystem, deliberate, long-term work reached a defining milestone. Althea L1 was unlocked, and the Althea protocol is now ready to expand scalable and sovereign infrastructure on the L1 blockchain. Transforming the intrinsic systems of funding and operating

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Evolution of Liquid Infrastructure

Liquid Infrastructure: Aligning Capital, Operators, and Users Funding, building, and operating infrastructure, especially in telecom, has long been brittle and broken, leading to unhappy users and operators struggling under unsustainable economics. Liquid Infrastructure was developed as a set of tools that enable programmatic revenue sharing among stakeholders, aligning incentives between users and operators to create more sustainable systems. Already, Liquid Infrastructure is being deployed a

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Althea Update: Cardinal

The upcoming Althea L1 Cardinal Update is a minor feature upgrade for the Althea L1 blockchain with improvements for the dex and machine to machine payment flow. Auto Swapping and Stablecoin Fees: DeFi for Machines This new feature provides a stablecoin fee only path for unwrapping tokens from the EVM. Tokens bridged into Althea L1 are automatically wrapped into the EVM for DeFi ease of use. For embedded devices with wallets using the Althea L1 that swap on the micro-payments layer, this upgra

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Financing the Next Frontier: Liquid Infrastructure Fuels Broadband Expansion in Arizona

Althea’s Liquid Infrastructure is redefining how broadband, cellular and infrastructure networks are funded by turning physical assets into blockchain-backed, revenue-generating digital instruments. Rather than relying on slow-moving grants or rigid bank loans, Liquid Infrastructure combines tokenized real-world assets (RWA), programmable finance, and instant revenue distribution to create a transparent, automated ecosystem for financing connectivity at scale. Kamui Finance, a pioneer instituti

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Introducing The Althean Archetypes: A Limited NFT Collection Celebrating Our Community

The Althea ecosystem has grown from a bold vision of decentralized infrastructure into a thriving global community of builders, validators, network operators, and believers. Today, we're proud to introduce The Althean Archetypes - a limited collection of 18 unique NFTs that celebrate the diverse roles and contributions that make our community extraordinary. Ready to claim yours? Apply here  Celebrating Every Kind of Althean From the developers coding our iFi DEX to the technicians climbing t

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Dev Update: Althea L1 Unlock!

As September 8th 2025 Althea L1 governance has voted to enable transfers. This makes ALTHEA token transferable and allows for EVM transactions (which require ALTHEA) to pay gas. With the chain now unlocked it's time to deploy the technology that we've been working on, including the iFi DEX and new firmware for the Althea telecom routing and billing protocol and integrate Liquid Infrastructure to Althea L1, enabling revenue on chain. The iFi DEX The iFi DEX is the foundation of DeFi on Althe

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Resilient and Sovereign Infrastructure Is the Next Frontier for Fintech

While much of fintech focuses on applications—payments, wallets, digital banking—a deeper shift is happening beneath the surface. The next frontier isn't in app design or user onboarding. It's in the infrastructure itself. Telecom systems—fiber, radios, routers—have long been treated as utilities. They move data, but they’ve had no agency, no embedded logic, and no role in finance. That’s no longer sustainable. If fintech is to reach its full potential—truly global, decentralized, and programma

4 min read

Althea L1—iFi DEX Testnet Launches April 15th

The iFi DEX testnet opens April 15th, marking a key step in Althea L1's development of infrastructure finance on-chain. What Sets iFi DEX Apart Althea L1 is focused on Infrastructure Finance (iFi), a new category of blockchain applications that combines concepts from DeFi (Decentralized Finance), Physical Infrastructure, and RWA (on-chain Real World Assets).   Like most innovations, iFi builds on what came before it. One key foundational piece is a decentralized exchange (DEX) — essential fo

2 min read

The Machine to Machine payment ecosystem on Althea L1

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) payments use digital wallets to facilitate real-time, trustless, and programmable financial transactions between devices and represent one of the most compelling and natural use cases for blockchain technology—enabling exciting new economic models for smart infrastructure, IoT interoperability and a tremendous diversity of potential on-demand services. Despite this untapped potential, the industry as a whole has thus far made surprisingly little progress in developing r

5 min read

Liquidity Fusion in the iFi DEX

Althea L1 iFi DEX combines three different types of liquidity models into a single liquidity pool, making it much more efficient and flexible compared to traditional DEXs that usually would require multiple separate pools or a swap aggregator to deliver the same swap quality. We call this synthesis of liquidity types and functionality Liquidity Fusion. Three Types of Liquidity 1. Ambient Liquidity (Uniswap V2 Style) What is it? This is the "always available" liquidity that spreads across th

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Appliance Exits for Althea

The Althea Whitepaper 2.0 introduced several enhancements to the original Althea protocol, expanding its capabilities while maintaining its core design principles: * Althea L1: A layer 1 protocol designed for machine-to-machine payments * Liquid Infrastructure: A native feature of Althea L1 that bridges the gap between RWA and DeFi * Improved appliance exit architecture Though the core feature set has grown and new functionalities added, the foundational design of the Althea Protocol has re

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Universal Permit TX Support on Althea L1

One of the core design goals of Althea L1 is to support machine-to-machine payments, in stablecoins, with high reliability and low operational difficulty. Every component of the chain has been evaluated with this goal in mind, including the iFi DEX and the EVM entry and exit points. A key challenge in this design is preventing both users and automated systems from being stranded without ALTHEA tokens to pay gas. No one wants a smart electric car charger that requires "dust" (tiny amounts of gas

3 min read

Expanding iFi DEX: Open Rewards on Althea L1

While the iFi DEX was initially forked from Ambient, we have made two major advancements. The first is integrating events for an ultra-fast backend and long-term operational stability. The second is introducing a first-of-its-kind open rewards system. What Do You Mean by “Open Rewards”? Many DEXes incorporate rewards mechanisms to incentivize liquidity providers and bootstrap liquidity. What makes the iFi DEX rewards system unique is its open interface for third-party reward contracts. Inste

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Governance Integration for iFi DEX

The iFi DEX offers an unprecedented level of configurability—including features like modifying the fee tiers of an active pool, a capability not possible in a Uniswap v3-based DEX. Beyond configurability, the iFi DEX is also upgradeable, allowing for functionality expansions and bug fixes. Typically, such admin functions are managed by multisigs controlled by a handful of voters. For the iFi DEX, we’ve taken a different approach. We’ve built a native governance bridge that makes all admin

2 min read

Introducing the iFi DEX

If you have already read the previous blog posts on Althea L1’s design and scalability, you’ve likely noticed a recurring theme: Althea L1 is built for practical, robust problem-solving, with a focus on meeting real-world customer needs today. Althea L1 is focused on Infrastructure Finance (iFi), a new category of blockchain applications that combines concepts from DeFi (Decentralized Finance), Physical Infrastructure, and RWA (on-chain Real World Assets). Like most innovations, iFi builds on

5 min read

Throughput Scaling on Althea L1

In my last blog I talked about Althea L1 and the Althea Protocol . In this post we will discuss transaction throughput, focusing on Althea L1's real capacity requirements needed to facilitate iFi (Infrastructure Finance) at scale. This topic is covered more concisely in the Althea whitepaper, but I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about the Althea L1 scaling philosophy and detail how it provides similar scaling performance as ZKP (zero knowledge proof) rollup based solutions while also be

9 min read

Althea L1, A Focused Chain

The best technology makes something completely new possible. It represents a radical departure from existing paradigms to create a new way of thinking. Introducing Althea L1 Althea L1 is a groundbreaking blockchain designed to support Infrastructure Finance (iFi) a new category of blockchain applications that combines concepts from DeFi (Decentralized Finance), DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure), and RWA (on-chain Real World Assets) to deliver an end-to-end, on-chain application. Th

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Unlocking the Future of Connectivity: How Althea is Transforming Telecom with Globalstar, Global Telecom, and Alliance

In a move set to transform the telecom industry, Hawk Networks, the lead contributor to the Althea ecosystem and powered by the Althea platform, has partnered with Globalstar, Global Telecom, and Alliance to create a revolutionary connectivity solution. This collaboration leverages Globalstar’s Band 53, Althea’s KeyLTE/5G, and the modular flexibility of the Althea platform to unlock previously inaccessible spectrum resources. The result is a groundbreaking opportunity for organizations of all si

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Althea Unlock Connectivity Grant Winners: Four our Future

Hawk Networks is pleased to announce  Four Our Future Indigenous Economics Ltd is the winner of the 2022 Unlock Connectivity Grant.  FOF will be building and supporting indigenous connectivity capacity building in Canada using KeyLTE, a revolutionary solution combining the world’s first home router embedded EPC (LTE core/Evolved Packet Core) with Althea’s innovative routing and billing platform. Althea is a holistic system for building networks with a unique set of “broadband legos” to build n

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Infrastructure

Althea Platform

Althea is a platform for distributed payments in a cooperative or multi-entity network. It combines a micro-transaction framework for programmatic and near real-time payments between peers. Althea network offers a powerful vision for the future by removing the friction of legacy structures and unlocking access to finance and connectivity for all. It is a solution for the inflexible payment methods and many capital inefficiencies that prohibit infrastructure investment. The internet is the esse

5 min read

Unlock Connectivity Grant 2022

Application window is open 8/1/2022 through 10/01/2022 @ 5pm PDT Application link: https://forms.gle/9mmyuAWgaNjvL1Rm9 Who can apply: New and existing network operators including municipalities, cooperatives, tribal, non-profit, and other organizational structures that operate a network. Award: up to $15,000 of LTE Equipment to build an Althea KeyLTE deployment.  Design and planning support for the build would be included with impact on your proposed grant budget. Impact: Provide a unique

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Case Study - TreeLink in California

The Althea technology and platform is a powerful set of composable tools for building networks in even the most challenging environments. Components like a flexible billing system, automatic revenue share system, smart routing and monitoring are like “broadband legos” for building networks virtually anywhere. In 2020, that’s exactly what Thomas Spellman needed for his rural community in Nevada County, nestled in the Northern California mountains. Nevada City is a small town of roughly 3,500 peo

4 min read
Althea Blockchain

End of Year Recap 2021

Along the journey we have pushed the boundaries of interoperability and shared infrastructure and boldly established new networks where legacy telco could not. I am excited to share with you the new frontiers we explored in 2021 and an ambitious roadmap to 2022.

9 min read