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Tokens

Tokens are first class citizens in Alephium. Just like the native token ALPH, all tokens on Alephium are managed by UTXOs, which is battle tested for its security in managing assets.

This design has a few advantages compared to other blockchains:

  • True ownership: Tokens are securely managed by UTXOs, which are directly owned by addresses. Since UTXOs are protected by users' private keys, even if there are bugs in the token contract, users' assets remain safe.
  • First-class support: Tokens are native assets on Alephium, therefore both fungible and non-fungible tokens can be easily discovered and displayed by wallets, explorers, and dApps without relying on third-party services.
  • Better UX and higher security: When smart contracts need to transfer tokens, no extra approval transactions are required since the approval is implicit in the UTXO model. Alephium leverages its unique Asset Permission System to ensure that tokens are handled securely by the smart contracts.
  • Cheaper transaction fees and higher throughput: Token transfer is very scalable because they can take full advantage of Alephium's sharding design.
  • Efficient transaction batching: Multiple fungible and non-fungible tokens can be involved in a single transaction.

Specifically to NFTs:

  • Scarcity: Each NFT requires the deployment of its own individual contract, which in turn requires a deposit of ALPH. This unique structure imposes a upper limit on the production of NFTs on Alephium.
  • Semi-fungible tokens: Each NFT has a corresponding issuing contract with the associated metadata. Usually the contract issues one token which makes the NFT unique. But it can also issue multiple tokens to make the token semi-fungible.

To make it easier to work with tokens in the Alephium ecosystem:

  • Standards are defined for both fungible tokens and non-fungible tokens.
  • Typescript SDK offers a set of utility functions to help dApps and wallets to interact with the tokens, such as guessing token types and extracting token metadata.
  • Token list is created as a platform for token issuers to submit token metadata for proper display in wallets, explorers, and other ecosystem interfaces.

You can learn more about the Fungible Token and Non-fungible Token standards, and learn how to create your first fungible token and NFT.