Althea

What is Althea

As the number of connected individuals and devices expands, the “last mile” a continues to be the greatest challenge both in the connected and developing worlds, representing a disproportionate portion of the cost and difficulty of connecting the world.

Althea is meant to operate on the last mile, from a source of internet connectivity to the end user, and creates a distributed ISP. The last mile is currently an inefficient market and many areas only have one ISP. Althea aims to replace centralized ISPs with a competitive market of individuals and businesses providing participating in one decentralized network.

Althea’s goal is for any person to be able to install a piece of equipment, participate in the decentralized ISP, and receive payment for the service.

• Switching costs within the system are reduced, as nodes switch between connectivity providers to find a route with the best combination of reliability,bandwidth, and low cost.
• Advertising and marketing costs for the connectivity providers are eliminated, as the only advertisements in this system are the automatic advertisements of price and route quality between nodes. This makes things easy for new entrants.
• Contract and billing costs are eliminated by payment channels. Payment channels allow one to make micropayments with very low overhead.

The Althea blockchain is secured by a distributed network of token holders and validators that process transactions. By contrast, centralized payment solutions require permissioned coordination, and are often restricted by bespoke regulation or restrictions.

Althea’s telecom blockchain will also open DeFi functionality to telecom carriers and users with Gravity, the Ethereum to Cosmos Bridge, where they can seamlessly leverage the liquidity of their networks for additional investment strategies. Because Althea is built using the Cosmos SDK and with Gravity functionality, carriers can also interoperate easily with other Cosmos blockchains using IBC (inter blockchain communication).