The Alterna Blockchain

Network Overview and Key Metrics

Alterna is the decentralized EVM-compatible public blockchain that powers the Alterna platform and ecosystem. It is fully compatible with Ethereum meaning that any smart contract that can be deployed on the latter can also run on top of Alterna.

The Alterna blockchain uses a variant of delegated Proof of Stake (dPoS) for achieving consensus. The consensus is secured by a significant number of independent validators, only one of which is run by the Alterna core team.

Validators are also responsible for the most important type of governance on Alterna, namely, adopting the network protocol changes via Alterna Improvement Proposals (FIPs).

The native token of the network is called ALTN. New ALTN tokens are issued with every added block and are also use to pay for gas, just like ETH on Ethereum.

The Alterna blockchain is designed to ensure fast block confirmation times and a low cost of transactions. The average block interval on Alterna is around 3 seconds, and it currently costs much less than $0.01 to get a transaction confirmed.

In its present capacity, the Alterna blockchain is capable of processing around 120 native token transfers and 60 ASP20 token transfers per second. The faster processing of native token transfers is due to the fact that they do not involve computations run on the network's virtual machine.