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ALKANES is a metaprotocol providing an asset class derived from runes, which function as composable smart contracts akin to other incarnations of decentralized finance. Alkanes is implemented as a protorunes-compatible subprotocol with protocol messages small enough to fit in OP_RETURN, yet still expressive enough to cover the use cases of blockchain. The metaprotocol is not intended to map to an EVM layer, but rather benefit from the data structures of Bitcoin itself.

Alkanes uses the wasmi crate from paritytech, a WASM interpreter with a wasmtime API that can itself be built to WASM. The wasmi crate is exported with bindings suitable to be used from AssemblyScript and the protorunes core modules.

From wasmi, we have an acceptable model for the compute cost of smart contract interactions called fuel, for which we keep the nomenclature for naming schemes, as it is the critical piece of technology that makes smart contracts possible with a WASM VM.

Alkanes is built entirely to WASM itself, along with its WASM VM, in order to have a perfectly reproducible statically linked binary whose digest can be verified and, when run in a METASHREW compatible VM, produces a deterministic index when the chaindata of a BTC compatible network is replayed.

This, we believe, is a new paradigm and standard for interoperable metaprotocols on Bitcoin compatible networks, and will create new opportunities and application models for permissionless systems.