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 across the U.S. to build, operate, and expand networks in ways that preserve local sovereignty and management autonomy, resulting in more resilient operations and sustainable growth for all participants.
Evolution of Liquid Infrastructure
Liquid Infrastructure is defined by three key characteristics: on-chain, programmatic, and transparent. Revenue sharing occurs almost instantly as income flows into the LISC (Liquid Infrastructure Smart Contract) on Althea L1, directly from customers paying for services. This creates a seamless coordination mechanism among stakeholders, mitigating counterparty risk and enabling operational flexibility.
These on-chain fundamentals also support the evolution of LIT (Liquid Infrastructure Tokens) as usage scales. Future developments could include the creation of on-chain markets for buying, selling, and lending LIT, such as auction modules or decentralized lending pools, enhancing liquidity and capital efficiency.
As a native Althea L1 primitive, Liquid Infrastructure is open to development teams building applications and user interfaces. It can be adapted to a wide range of use cases, including data centers, large-scale infrastructure projects, metered billing in energy grids, fleet coordination, and vending network management.
Each LIT is specific to a given deployment and fully transferable, unlocking the potential for secondary markets and asset exchanges. Historically, telecom and fixed assets have been discounted due to illiquidity, and evolving Liquid Infrastructure into a framework that includes on-chain auctions and marketplaces could transform the sector and drive new growth.
DeFi Meets Real-World Assets (RWA)
The programmable nature of LIT on Althea L1 introduces new DeFi applications, such as lending, applied for the first time to telecom and infrastructure assets. Just as RWA assets like Treasury notes are used in on-chain lending protocols, LIT can bring telecom revenues into the DeFi ecosystem. This removes the manual friction of traditional infrastructure financing, expanding growth and improving capital efficiency.
Althea L1, purpose-built for telecom and utilities, provides the ideal platform for this convergence of DeFi and infrastructure finance. It integrates machine-to-machine settlement directly into its architecture and prioritizes utility-grade transactions, avoiding the congestion and high fees typical of general-purpose blockchains.
Additionally, the iFi DEX (Infrastructure Finance Decentralized Exchange) introduces seamless stablecoin swaps and native integration with the Althea ecosystem. With these purpose-built tools, we can envision a future where DeFi’s flexibility and liquidity solve systemic inefficiencies in infrastructure finance, building a stronger foundation for the emerging machine economy.
Next Steps
The upcoming Cardinal Update marks the next milestone in Althea L1’s evolution. This update introduces:
- Enhanced UX and governance capabilities for the iFi DEX
- Improved support for machine-to-machine payments
- Foundational upgrades for future DeFi applications built on Liquid Infrastructure