Althea

Justin Kilpatrick

Posts by Justin Kilpatrick.

78 posts

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

2 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

4 min read

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

6 min read

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

3 min read

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

3 min read

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

Gravity Bridge - V2

Althea is excited to announce the completion and test of the first transaction of a Cosmos based token (ALTG) to test ethereum (Goerli) using the second iteration of Althea Gravity, the Cosmos <> Ethereum bridge!

3 min read
Althea Blockchain

Althea Testnet #1 Launched!

Today we launched Althea Testnet #1 with more than twenty validators! A big thank you to everyone who participated and took the time to setup a node. We're looking forward to a bright future for the Althea blockchain when it's launched late next month.

2 min read

Announcing the Cosmos Gravity Bridge

We're proud to announce the Ethereum-Cosmos bridge, Gravity, which we will to bring to the Cosmos Hub with a governance proposal later this year.

2 min read
Peggy

Peggy Dev update #3

Crossing the bridge: Ethereum -> Cosmos on Rinkeby! This Saturday we hosted Peggy BrokenNet #1. Over the course of our rapid 4 hour test we 1. Successfully deployed a 10 validator Cosmos blockchain with the Althea-Peggy Cosmos module 2. Successfully deployed the Peggy Ethereum contract [https://rinkeby.etherscan.io/address/0x529222Ffa78B5D4d04eaA9D8037c11aAF2Fa2254] to Rinkeby 3. Successfully bridged ERC20 tokens [https://rinkeby.etherscan.io/tx/0x69fc04de904cf29c2301e134ca1

2 min read
Peggy

Contributing to Althea Peggy

Good projects are built on good tooling. In the case of the Peggy Cosmos <-> Ethereum bridge developer tooling is a particularly complex problem. If you want to test Peggy end to end you need to build and deploy a full software stack for two different blockchains. For the experienced this represents hours of setup work, for the inexperienced this is an unassailable barrier to contribution. For this reason we've invested a large amount of work in test tooling for Peggy including an all up inte

2 min read
Blockchain

Peggy dev update #1:

75% of the cost of your transfer across the bridge is a simple state update in an ERC20 contract. We manage to fit all the hashing and verifications for 125 signatures into 25% of the cost!

3 min read
Blockchain

Solid foundations for Peggy

this investment will support our work in deploying more decentralized internet networks and the work of interoperability with Ethereum and Cosmos by developing the Peggy bridge.

4 min read
Mesh Networks

Going Where Others Cannot

Althea's core premise is our "neighbour to neighbour, pay-per-forward" model. A model that revolutionizes how internet service is owned, provided and paid for. Why did we reinvent the wheel? What can Althea do that traditional ISPs cannot?

4 min read
Blockchain

Althea Development Update #84: Operator tools, Peggy developments, and EIP-55 support

A new relay is born, our networks grew 34% between March and April We've been extraordinarily busy working on COVID rapid response [https://blog.althea.net/rapid-connectivity-response/] and the Peggy [https://blog.althea.net/defi-enabled-ethereum-bridge-for-cosmos/] Ethereum to Cosmos bridge. Operator tools We've been building operator focus tools to help Althea scale. The latest versions of the Althea firmware [https://github.com/althea-net/althea-firmware/releases] are tightly integrated with

2 min read