Overview

Alephium's stateful UTXO model combines the advantages of the UTXO and account models. It supports mutable states for smart contracts, like those found in Ethereum, while leveraging the security benefits of the immutable UTXO model for assets, like those found in Bitcoin.

Alephium is also a sharded blockchain, right now there are 4 groups and 16 chains running on Mainnet.

This architecture and design is quite unique in the space and has implications to Alephium's programming model, token design, asset transfer and management approach, and more.