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Core Concepts

ALX represents application-defined digital artifacts as deterministic, composable Blocks. Every Block contains application content, deterministic identities, and declared parent relationships. Block content, identity, and parent relationships define Block creation, lineage, and verification. Optional infrastructure can add commitments and other cryptographic evidence.

Block​

A Block is the fundamental protocol object.

A Block packages JSON-serializable application content, normalized parent relationships, and deterministic identities into a single verifiable structure. Conforming implementations produce equivalent Blocks from equivalent protocol inputs.

Blocks can stand alone or reference other Blocks, allowing outputs to become inputs and context for subsequent work.

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Block Identity​

Every Block carries two deterministic identities:

  • contentHash identifies canonicalized content.
  • blockHash identifies canonicalized content together with the normalized declared parent set.

Equivalent protocol inputs produce equivalent identities. A content change produces a different contentHash. A change to the declared parent set produces a different blockHash.

The two-hash model distinguishes the identity of the content itself from the identity of that content within its declared lineage.

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Block Lineage​

Block lineage represents declared relationships between Blocks.

parentHashes declare a Block’s direct parent relationships. ALX normalizes the parent set and incorporates it into blockHash, binding the Block’s content to its declared lineage.

Connected Blocks form a directed derivation graph that applications and intelligent systems can traverse and verify when the required Block data is available. Derivation graphs keep prior sources, outputs, and intermediate work connected as new Blocks build on earlier work.

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Composable Context​

Blocks can become structured context for subsequent applications and intelligent systems.

An agent or application can retrieve prior Blocks, verify their identities, inspect declared relationships, and create new Blocks that reference earlier work. As parent relationships accumulate, derivation graphs provide machine-consumable context that can be traced, reused, and extended across multi-step workflows.

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Verification​

ALX defines deterministic rules for verifying Blocks and their declared relationships.

Block verification recomputes contentHash and blockHash from protocol data. Graph verification can inspect declared parent relationships and evaluate structural properties when the required Blocks are available.

Because the verification rules are public and deterministic, independent implementations can verify the same protocol data without relying on the application that originally created it.

External systems may add signatures, commitments, timestamps, attestations, or other cryptographic evidence without changing ALX’s core Block identity model.

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