F.A.Q.

Many cryptocurrency wallets can connect to other nodes on the network through Tor, yet the other nodes can still be identified by their IP address as the user routes the traffic through several relays on the Tor network, including one entry and one exit node.

In Alias however, all nodes on the network are operating as Tor hidden services; they are not addressed by their IP address, but by their onion address which encodes a public key used for traffic encryption along with a way to find a route to that node. No exit nodes are involved, and at any point in time, the communication between two nodes is fully encrypted.

Alias comes bundled with the latest Tor software that has been included without any functional changes. It is not possible to connect to the Alias network without using Tor, as all nodes are only reachable via their hidden service address. No real IP addresses are known to any network participant except for their own, and it is infeasible for an attacker to analyse the network structure or censor the network.

Alias has inbuilt support for OBFS4, an obfuscation protocol that hides the nature of the traffic that goes through it. By incorporating OBFS4, it is possible to use Alias even in countries where access to the Tor network is censored, like China or Iran. In short, the integration of OBFS4 effectively ‘wraps’ the Tor traffic in another layer making it appear as normal internet traffic.

Privacy, security, and anonymity are a basic human right; these rights are being eroded by increasingly draconian laws that seek to criminalize privacy.

Furthermore, people all over the globe use centralized remittance (money transfer) services on a daily basis by sending billions of dollars across international borders. Remittance services such as banks, Western Union, PayPal, or other mainstream services are highly controlled and centralized. However, many people, especially immigrants in western countries, do not have a bank account or they lack the funds to pay the sometimes exorbitant fees.

Alias thus provides a secure, decentralized, low cost, and private option to send funds to anyone, anywhere in the world.

You can use exchanges to buy and sell Alias (ALIAS) for Bitcoin (BTC). Once you register an account on an exchange and deposit some Bitcoin, you can buy and sell Alias for a small brokerage fee.

After you have purchased ALIAS from one of the exchanges you should transfer the coins to your wallet. Sending coins to someone else directly from an exchange does NOT give you the same anonymity guarantees as using the standalone wallet.

(Additionally, exchanges can undermine your anonymity or even freeze your assets if you store them on the exchange; BISQ is a decentralized exchange that operates on the Tor network and consequently avoids these issues.)

One in six (1 in 6) block rewards will be designated DCBs and will be sent to the Alias team development fund wallet. This fund will ensure a future for Alias and will enable us to pay for certain services and to hire contractors and to pay Alias core team members in ALIAS to enable them to work full time on the project. We have some long term projects and concepts to implement as seen in our road map.  These developments depend on a source of steady funding. We believe this will give us the opportunity to produce better software and will create value for investors. We currently have some very skilled developers working for us and we want to keep it that way.

With the use of a block explorer, it is possible to view the transactions that have occurred on the public blockchain; this data can be used to compile a rich list. However, any such list for Alias is inaccurate, as Alias has both public and stealth addresses, and the stealth addresses are not visible on the public blockchain.

Now that the Proof-of-Anonymous-earn consensus has been activated since version 3 and the percentage of the network converted to ALIAS grows, the already inaccurate rich list information is quickly becoming more obsolete.

According to the public blockchain, a large number of coins appear to be held by only a few wallets; is this an issue?

Some people express concern that a large amount of Alias is concentrated in a few wallets and that the individuals who own the wallets may sell a large quantity of Alias at once, thus causing the price to drop drastically.

If this were to occur it would simply be a natural process of supply and demand, and under most conditions, the price would correct in a reasonable amount of time as buyers purchase the Alias for a cheaper price. Additionally, as the daily traded volume of Alias increases, the chance of a significant price drop due to a large amount of Alias for sale on the market decreases.

Furthermore, if it were to happen multiple times, the chance of it happening again would exponentially decrease as Alias would be distributed more evenly throughout the network, further reducing the risk of a sudden massive sell-off of Alias by any single individual.

It would also be unwise for any single individual to sell a large amount of Alias at once because they would not receive a desirable price. It would make sense for the individual to sell them over time.

Similarly, there are large holders of Bitcoin, and although the price has changed dramatically at times due to supply and demand and market corrections, it has increased steadily over time as most large holders know it would be unwise to sell all at once.

The Alias developers and community leaders aim to have it listed on more exchanges, and are in discussions with several exchanges; however the decision to list a coin is up to the exchange and is often based upon the volume that the coin generates in a given day.

Please do NOT spam the Alias communication channels by asking the question “When are you getting Alias listed on Poloniex/Bittrex etc.?”

Download the latest version of the Alias Desktop Wallet Client from the Downloads section.

The client has to install packages for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Raspberry Pi.

The Desktop Wallet must be fully synced to the Alias network; the sync process should begin automatically with an internet connection.

If you wish to send Alias to your wallet, navigate to the Receive screen to view your wallet addresses. You will have two addresses listed here: one is a public address and one is a stealth address (presently you can only withdraw funds from an exchange to a Public address) 

For added security, it is recommended that you encrypt your wallet with a passphrase. Navigate to the Encrypt Wallet feature and type in your desired passphrase; remember to store it in a safe place (not on your computer) 

To ensure that you do not lose your coins, navigate to the Backup Feature and save the backup file on multiple devices such as your PC, USB, external drive, etc.

Interest is a method to reward users in a decentralized fashion for supporting the Alias network. In order to earn, your wallet needs to be open, unlocked, and connected to the Internet.

ALIAS utilizes both Proof-of-Stake Version 3 (PoSv3) and Alias’s unique Proof-of-Anonymous-Stake (PoAS). interest rewards are fixed at 2 Alias for PUBLIC Staking and 3 Alias for PRIVATE Staking per block plus generated fees. This is a fair and secure way to maintain network consensus and to reward users who support the network by keeping their wallets open. PoSv3 and PoAS are both energy-efficient consensus mechanisms that do not utilize large energy-consuming mining hubs as is the case with Bitcoin and other Proof-of-Work coins.

Everyone has an equal chance of getting an interest reward based upon the amount of public ALIAS and/or private ALIAS they hold in their wallet.

To earn, your wallet needs to be open and connected to the Internet. You also need to unlock your wallet (at least forstaking rewards) if you have set up a passphrase. The quickest way to do this is to click on the lock icon in the upper-right corner of the wallet which will prompt you to enter your passphrase. Once you have entered your passphrase, the lock will turn orange. If you hover your mouse over the lock icon, you will see a popup that informs you that your wallet is encrypted and unlocked for earning rewards only.

The staking reward is probabilistic and can be estimated with the Alias interest Calculator. There is no minimum amount needed to earn.

Once you have received a reward, after 450 blocks the newly minted coins will contribute to your earn weight on the network, and in turn, increase your reward probability. (Note that not everyone is staking, so if only 50% of the total coins in existence are staking, you will forge blocks twice as often, and your total reward will increase accordingly.)

No, all you need to download is the wallet. It comes with Tor natively integrated and is intuitive and easy to use.

Without any changes, Alias will easily process 15-30 times the transaction rate of Bitcoin due to the faster block time. If we started to head in that direction, which we are very far from, then we would look at block efficiency improvements such as SegWit. We could potentially have a block size increase combined with improved pruning of the wallet, or more blocks. It’s actually quite simple and easily implemented.

The scaling problems that Bitcoin is experiencing are actually governance problems. Alias is much easier in that respect because of the much smaller team size. This means that as we continue to grow we’ll need to ensure that we can still make decisions in an efficient way. As long as we can, making changes to scale the number of transactions we can handle is easy. Of course, it’s premature to make such decisions now when our blocks are mostly empty.

1. Go to the debug console (Tools -> Debug, then the “Console” tab).
2. Type “rewindchain 1000” and hit Enter.
3. Wait for your wallet to sync.

That’s because it is displayed incorrectly, your coins are still there. It’s a visual glitch that has existed in this wallet since the beginning of the project. Future wallet versions will hopefully make these problems a thing of the past. You can still earn and send/receive coins, it will simply not be displayed. Sometimes restarting the wallet might help, and you can also check your balance on the block explorer here: Alias Blockchain Explorer

Please try restarting your wallet and it will be gone. This issue will be fixed in future wallet versions.