Alkanes Smart-contract assets on Bitcoin

What are alkanes?

Alkanes is a metaprotocol that brings programmable, smart-contract assets to Bitcoin. Contracts are WASM programs that hold and move alkane assets; they are invoked with protostone messages (cellpack calldata) embedded in the OP_RETURN of an ordinary Bitcoin transaction, with the assets you spend attached as inputs.

Every asset and contract is addressed by an alkane id in block:tx form — for example DIESEL is 2:0. The same id scheme identifies tokens, NFTs (orbitals), AMM pools and the router.

Core concepts

  • Tokens — fungible alkane assets with a contract-defined supply and mint logic.
  • Orbitals — NFT-style assets, typically grouped under a collection (orbital root).
  • Pools & AMM — constant-product pools that hold two assets and let anyone swap or provide liquidity.
  • Router — the single entry point that deploys pools and routes swaps and liquidity operations.

In this section

AMM

How the constant-product AMM works, and every contract function explained.

Metashrew

The indexer that derives alkanes state from Bitcoin — how it runs, syncs and recovers.

Protocol docs

The full Alkanes protocol reference on alkanes.build — contracts, protostones and the runtime.