Alpenglow (aSOLX) Whitepaper v1.1

Solana‑compatible experimental mainnet (hard‑fork) • Parallel execution network • Low‑latency finality

This document extends v0.9 with formalized sections on system/threat models, protocol sketches, economic functions, governance processes, benchmarking, and a risk matrix. If there is any inconsistency with live parameters, on‑chain records and official announcements prevail.

Executive Summary
Background & Motivation
System Assumptions & Threat Model
Protocol Design (Votor Consensus & Rotor Propagation)
Execution & Runtime (Sealevel, Token‑2022)
Performance Goals & Benchmark Methodology
Token Economics (Supply, Allocation, Emissions)
Sale & Distribution (Public Sale, Airdrop, Compliance)
Governance
Security
Cross‑Chain & Ecosystem
Roadmap
Transparency & Status Page
Risk Factors & Disclosures
Glossary
Appendix (Params, Pseudocode, TBF)

1. Executive Summary

Alpenglow aims to remain fully compatible with the Solana ecosystem while pursuing ~100–150 ms p95 transaction finality via Votor (a fast‑finality path with fallback) and Rotor (one‑hop‑first dissemination with congestion control). Under adverse conditions (up to ~20% byzantine validators plus ~20% offline, engineering target), the chain is designed to preserve liveness. Target use‑cases include high‑frequency finance, real‑time gaming, and AI/DePIN/IoT micropayments.

2. Background & Motivation

Pace differentiation: Solana mainnet optimizes for steady‑state safety; Alpenglow pursues a parallel experimental path for measurable low‑latency improvements.
Compatibility & optionality: SDK/Anchor/SPL compatibility; no forced migration; applications choose to integrate as needed.
Evidence‑driven: publish weekly performance reports, open dashboards, audit artifacts, and formal analysis to justify trade‑offs.

3. System Assumptions & Threat Model

3.1 System & Network Model

Time/slots and leader rotation with partial synchrony. The network delay upper bound Δ drifts slowly under healthy conditions; messages may be delayed, dropped, reordered, or duplicated.
Cryptography: Ed25519 signatures; VRF/random beacon for leader selection and sampling; hash collision resistance.

3.2 Actors

Validators / Leaders / Delegators / Relayers & Observers.

3.3 Adversarial Capabilities

Up to ~20% byzantine validators plus up to ~20% temporary offline (engineering target).
Tactics: double‑signing, malicious voting, delay injection, partial partitions, spam/flooding, leader snatching, penalty‑free replay (mitigated).
Long‑range attacks and key leakage are considered; MEV manipulation and stake centralization risks are addressed economically.

3.4 Goals

Safety: vanishing probability of irreversible forks.
Liveness: progress to finality given bounded Δ and bounded adversary.

4. Protocol Design

4.1 Votor: Low‑Latency Finality (Design Sketch)

Idea: combine a fast‑path with single/double voting rounds and a slow‑path with timeouts/leader changes. Validators maintain a lock on the highest observed QC to prevent disordered rollbacks.

Objects

Block(b): candidate block.
Vote(v): validator’s vote for a block at a given round.
QC (Quorum Certificate): aggregated signature proving ≥ 2/3 voting power acceptance.
Lock: validator’s lock on the highest QC (monotonic).
Commit(b*): commit of b* and ancestors when QC adjacency and lock rules are satisfied.

Fast‑Path (illustrative)

Leader proposes b_t and broadcasts.
Validators vote v_t if not conflicting with their lock.
Aggregated QC_t (≥ 2/3) is broadcast by leader.
If QC_{t-1} and QC_t are adjacent and lock rules are met, commit Parent(b_t) (or b_{t-1}).
Otherwise or on timeout, the pacemaker elevates the round and the leader rotates (slow‑path).

Safety Intuition (Informal)

Let N be participants, B a byzantine subset, and G the honest subset. If |B|/|N| < 1/3 and lock monotonicity holds, two conflicting commit chains cannot both obtain admissible QC sequences. Formal proofs and state‑machine definitions will be released with audits.

4.2 Rotor: One‑Hop‑First Dissemination

Priority neighbor set of size K (low RTT / high reliability); fallback neighbors for redundancy.
One‑hop‑first fanout: Leader → priority neighbors → remaining neighbors; limit hierarchical fanout depth.
Backpressure & shaping: prioritize block > QC > vote > gossip; drop or downsample under queue pressure.
Adaptive K = f(BW, RTT, Loss, CPU) over observation windows.
Packet budgets cap bytes/frequency per message type to avoid avalanches.

Message complexity: traditional multi‑layer fanout ~ O(n log n); one‑hop‑first with stable topology approaches ~ O(n), reducing duplicates.

4.3 Execution & Runtime

Sealevel parallelism with account/ISR scheduling based on read‑write conflict graphs.
Resource model: Compute Units (CU).
Token‑2022 extensions: confidential transfers, freeze controls, compliance hooks (optional).
AI/data interfaces: standardized oracle hookups and off‑chain compute proofs (future versions).

5. Performance Goals & Benchmark Methodology

5.1 Metrics

Finality latency: p50/p95 (target p95 ≈ 100–150 ms).
Throughput: TPS, effective TPS (deduped), instructions per block.
Fork rate: conflicting branches per time window.
Resource utilization: CPU/memory/bandwidth/disk.
Robustness: graceful degradation under loss/jitter/partition/byzantine injections.

5.2 Testbed & Methods

Geodistributed topologies across AMER/EU/APAC/OCE; RTT tiers 10/50/100 ms.
Workloads: payments (small, frequent), DEX (match/clear mix), NFT (bursty), AI micropayments (steady drizzle).
Ablation: Rotor off vs. on; Votor fast vs. slow path.
Weekly open reports with raw data, scripts, and reproducible images.

6. Token Economics (aSOLX)

6.1 Basics

Utility: gas, staking/security, governance, ecosystem settlement.
Total supply: 10,000,000,000 (inferred from 20% staking emission totals; subject to TGE announcement).

6.2 Allocation & Vesting

Bucket	Share	Vesting / Lockup	Notes
Public Sale	8%	Per announcement; liquid by TGE rules	Self‑custody; contract delivery
DEX Liquidity	2%	LP lock ≥ 12 months	Initial pool & price discovery
Treasury/Reserve	10%	Multisig governed	R&D/marketing/partnerships
Strategic	10%	6‑month cliff + 24‑month linear
Team & Advisors	15%	12‑month cliff + 36‑month linear
Staking Rewards	20%	4‑year emissions	Network security & delegation
Ecosystem/Foundation	20%	≥ 12‑month linear	Developers & incubation
Community Airdrop	15%	Programmatic distribution	Anti‑Sybil & task‑linked

6.3 Staking Emission Function (4 years)

Total emissions R = 2,000,000,000 over four years with coefficients {0.35, 0.30, 0.20, 0.15}. Year‑t allocation: R_t = R × c_t; weekly split E_week = R_t / W_t; per‑block E_block = R_t / B_t.

6.4 Validator Reward Weights

Effective weight w_i = s_i^β · q_i, β ∈ (0,1], where s_i is stake and q_i is a quality factor (0–1) based on uptime, double‑sign penalties, and vote latency percentiles. Period reward: reward_i = E_period · w_i / Σ w_j.

6.5 Fee Adjustment (EIP‑1559‑like, Proposal)

BaseFee_{k+1} = BaseFee_k · exp[ α · (ρ_k − ρ*) ], where ρ* is target utilization and α tunes responsiveness. Excess fees may be burned to offset inflation.

6.6 Slashing & Penalties

Double‑signing: slash min(0.05 · s_i, s_i^{crit}); extend unbonding windows.
Offline: tiered penalties by windowed uptime.
Late voting: reduce q_i (lowers future rewards).

7. Sale & Distribution

7.1 Public Sale

Self‑custody wallets (Phantom/Solflare, etc.) send to the official sale address; contracts deliver aSOLX back to the sender.
Accepted assets: SOL/USDT/USDC (per announcement and contract).
Two coexisting price wordings (to be unified): A) unit price 0.01 USDT/USDC; min 0.5 SOL or 100 USDT/USDC. B) 1 SOL = 1,000 aSOLX; min 1 SOL; max 50 SOL. Final public wording must match the contract’s exchange ratio.
Warning: do not send from centralized exchanges directly to the sale address.

7.2 Community Airdrop S1 (Anti‑Sybil)

Daily check‑in: 10 aSOLX; referral: +20 aSOLX to both inviter and invitee.
Redemption threshold: ≥ 100 aSOLX; upon approval, T+1 settlement to the bound address.
Abuse controls: device fingerprinting, IP/ASN rate limits, behavioral anomaly scoring, and on‑chain clustering—one‑strike disqualification.

7.3 Compliance & Regions

Enable KYC/AML as required by partners/jurisdictions.
Publish restricted regions and refund/appeal procedures on the compliance page.

8. Governance (On‑chain)

8.1 Proposal & Voting

Stages: Deposit → Off‑chain discussion/temperature check → On‑chain voting (with timelock) → Execution.
Thresholds: minimum deposit D_min; quorum q and passing threshold θ (relative/absolute majority).
Voting power: VP_i = s_i^γ with γ ∈ [0.7, 1] to mitigate centralization.

8.2 Emergency Mechanics

Emergency Brake: if monitored metrics exceed bounds (fork rate, latency, offline rate) and the Security Council multisig confirms, throttle rate, enable read‑only mode, or freeze proposals.
Timelock: ≥ 48 h for major treasury moves or parameter increases.

9. Security

Audit pathway: contracts → client critical paths → network layer.
Formal methods: Votor locking/commit safety proofs; Rotor bounded‑delay and congestion analysis.
Bug bounty: tiered bounties (P0/P1/P2) requiring PoC and impact assessment.
Key management & custody: validators are advised to use HSM/threshold‑signing; multisig 3/5 or 4/7.

10. Cross‑Chain & Ecosystem

Bridges: integrate leading message/verification bridges (light‑client or guardian‑network backed). Governance caps daily limits and rates.
Oracles: dual‑home with median aggregation and outlier rejection.
AI/DePIN: micropayment settlement, data‑availability proofs, task marketplaces, and reputation systems.

11. Roadmap (Measurable Milestones)

2025‑07: Devnet “Sunrise”. SDK/Explorer/Faucet. Public p95 latency, TPS, and fork‑rate reporting.
2025‑08: Incentivized testnet “Dawn”. Votor‑P2, Rotor‑P1. Validator program & points; reservation‑only sale (no selling).
2025‑09: Public sale launch + Airdrop S1. Compliance & risk pages; weekly performance reports.
2025‑10: Mainnet Beta + TGE + initial DEX LP (lock ≥ 12 months). Governance live: multisig + timelock.
2025‑11: Ecosystem integrations (stables, oracles). Advance CEX listings and PoR engagements.
2025‑Q4: Rotor GA (v1.x). Target p95 ≈ 150 ms. Cross‑chain bridge MVP.
2026‑Q1: Global nodes & hackathons. Enterprise pilots (RWA/payments/IoT).

12. Transparency & Status Page

Publish treasury/lock addresses, vesting calendar, LP lock transactions, audits & PoR, weekly raw data and scripts.
Flag anomalies on the status page (fork rate, latency, offline rate).

13. Risk Factors & Disclosures

Market risk: price volatility and liquidity constraints.
Technical risk: implementation defects, unexpected network behavior, bridge security incidents.
Compliance risk: regulatory changes across jurisdictions.
Operational risk: validator concentration, governance apathy causing parameter imbalance.

Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. Participants must evaluate risks and comply with local laws.

14. Glossary (Selected)

QC: Quorum Certificate (≥ 2/3 voting power aggregated).
Lock: lock on the highest QC to avoid unsafe rollbacks.
Pacemaker: timeout & round‑advance mechanism.
CU: Compute Units, the metered unit of on‑chain computation.

15. Appendix

15.1 Parameter Sheet (Draft)

Target p95 finality: 100–150 ms.
Neighbor set size K: 4–8 (adaptive).
Fee responsiveness α: 1e‑3–1e‑2.
Staking weight β: 0.8–0.9; voting‑power exponent γ: 0.7–1.0.
Timelock: ≥ 48 h. Multisig: 3/5 or 4/7.

15.2 Votor Pseudocode (Snippet)

OnReceiveBlock(b_t):
  if not ConflictsWithLock(b_t):
    vote ← Sign(b_t, round = t)
    SendToLeader(vote)

OnQC(QC_t):
  if Adjacent(QC_{t-1}, QC_t) and LockedOn(QC_{t-1}):
    Commit(Parent(b_t))
  else:
    UpdateLock(QC_t)

15.3 TBF (To‑Be‑Finalized) List

Unify public sale pricing/threshold wording across contract, FAQ, and frontend.
Explicitly state total supply (10B) and publish verifiable on‑chain lock/cliff lists.
Publish audit and formal‑verification links.
Launch status page and weekly performance portal.
Compliance page: restricted regions, refund and appeal procedures.