A Closer Look at Alephium: Can It Become the New Alpha in the PoW Arena?
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A Closer Look at Alephium: Can It Become the New Alpha in the PoW Arena?
Among the current next-generation PoW mineable coins on the market, Alephium has the most significant super alpha potential.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Ningning
Today, when mentioning PoW-mined cryptocurrencies, younger newcomers often feel a strong sense of unfamiliarity. They know little about these relics from the Cambrian era of crypto assets, let alone have any concrete understanding of once-popular concepts like ASIC-resistant consensus algorithms or Master Nodes.
The high-speed train of the times races forward with a whoosh. After Ethereum's transition to PoS, PoS-based chains have become the default setting for Web3 infrastructure. Yet, there remains a small but resolute group of crypto fundamentalists who still believe that the only legitimate application of cryptography should be Coin/Currency—not the myriad other utilities that have since emerged.
In their view, only coins or currencies generated through the PoW consensus mechanism carry the "natural fragrance" of non-state money—something far superior to the interest emissions produced by PoS systems tainted with financial capitalism’s stench.
Sustained by this niche yet tightly-knit community, PoW-mined cryptocurrencies periodically produce a super alpha with hundred- or even thousand-fold gains.
Prior examples include Beam in 2019 and Kaspa in 2023. In contrast, 2024 has been relatively quiet.
Among today’s next-generation PoW-mined cryptocurrencies, Alephium stands out as the most promising candidate for the next super alpha.
In my opinion, there are four essential conditions for a PoW-mined cryptocurrency to become a super alpha:
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A compelling, large-scale narrative
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Full support from a miner-dominated ecosystem ("miner cartel")
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Self-consistent consensus mechanism and token economics
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Stable token issuance and sufficient liquidity
Let’s evaluate Alephium’s fundamentals using these criteria:
– On the front of grand narrative, Alephium combines both technological and commercial narratives.
Technological Narrative:
Alephium pioneered the Proof-of-Less-Work (PoLW) consensus mechanism, maintaining PoW-level security while reducing energy consumption by 87%.
Its BlockFlow sharding technology enables scalability—currently supporting 400 TPS, with potential to scale up to 10,000 TPS. With a UTXO-based smart contract system (sUTXO) similar to CKB and Fuel, it combines Bitcoin’s security with Ethereum’s programmability.
Unlike other PoW-mined coins, Alephium offers excellent programmability and actively incentivizes DApp developers, having already established an initial application ecosystem. Recently, the total TVL across Alephium’s ecosystem reached an all-time high of $24.22M, while Elexium—the DEX on Alephium—offers an APR of 43.79% in its stablecoin LP pool (USDTeth/USDCeth). For an ecosystem whose native token has a circulating market cap of just $150M, this is an impressive achievement.
Commercial Narrative:
Alephium’s PoLW mechanism naturally aligns with ESG principles. Its sUTXO model supports complex asset tokenization logic, and its high scalability meets the demands of large-scale RWA onboarding. These features make Alephium a natural fit as a distributed ledger infrastructure for ESG-linked RWA operations.
Recently, Alephium partnered with GIGATONS, a company based in Abu Dhabi’s ADGM financial free zone. GIGATONS has selected Alephium as the underlying blockchain for its GIGA Protocol, planning to tokenize $100 billion worth of ESG assets on Alephium over the next decade. The first joint project involves developing solar-powered Bitcoin mining facilities together with HEARST.
This solar-powered Bitcoin mining initiative combines renewable energy with cryptocurrency mining to generate verifiable on-chain carbon credits, aiming to reduce CO₂ emissions by 4,500 tons annually.
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On miner cartel support: Bitmain, the mining giant, has quietly entered Alephium mining and developed the Antminer AL1 ASIC miner. Alephium’s choice of the Blake3 consensus algorithm is inherently friendly to ASIC chip development. Moreover, Alephium has gained support from major mining pools such as Antpool and f2pool. Take the Antminer AL1 ASIC miner as an example: at current prices, with electricity costing $0.06/kWh, daily power cost is $5.05 while daily mining revenue reaches $25.52. Even after accounting for depreciation and operational costs, profitability remains substantial—comparable to Kaspa’s early 2023 levels.
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Regarding consensus mechanism and tokenomics, Alephium has applied a "disruptive innovation" to the classic PoW halving economic model by introducing the PoLW consensus. When network-wide hash rate exceeds 1 Eh/s, miners must burn 87.5% of their theoretical rewards to gain mining rights, effectively converting most external costs (hardware and electricity) into internal costs (burning $ALPH). This design maintains PoW’s security and decentralization while reducing energy consumption by approximately 87%, simultaneously creating scarcity for $ALPH. Additionally, Alephium implements mechanisms such as 100% transaction fee burning and locked storage rent for smart contracts, further enhancing $ALPH’s utility and value accrual.
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Currently, $ALPH is listed on exchanges including Gate.io and MEXC, and cross-chain bridges to Ethereum and BSC are already deployed. There is also a liquidity pool on Uniswap on Ethereum Mainnet, fully meeting miners’ needs to sell tokens for electricity and maintenance expenses. In terms of token issuance, network hash rate has remained stable between 20 PH/s and 30 PH/s over the past two months. Within the last year, due to the production and deployment of ASIC miners joining the pools, total network hash rate has grown approximately 1,000-fold.
In conclusion, in investing we should avoid rigidity, absolutism, and ego—always considering how to add a touch of diversity to our portfolio.
That’s all.
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