FAQ

Thalweg is a settlement fabric that links Alluvium to other chains and protocols, so assets and data can move between them without a custodian sitting in the middle. Alluvium stays the base for verifying and finalising every transfer, while zero-knowledge proofs keep the crossing itself fast and provable.

Every crossing is accompanied by a proof that the originating state was valid, and that proof is checked on Alluvium before funds are released. No committee signs off on transfers and no multisig holds custody. The proving circuits were audited by Oxbow Assurance in March, and the report is published in full alongside the source.

A crossing costs 0.04% of the transferred amount plus the base fee of whichever chain you settle on. Proof generation is batched, so the cost per transfer falls as a batch fills — during busy hours the effective rate lands closer to 0.017%.

Riffle, Spillway, Tarn, and Meander are live today, with two more networks in public testnet. Any chain that can verify a succinct proof on-chain can be added without changes to Alluvium itself, which is why the list keeps growing without a hard fork.

Anyone. Wallets and applications integrate the SDK directly, and teams building their own chain can run a prover node from day one. There is no allowlist, no application form, and no minimum transfer size.

Most crossings finalise in 11 to 14 minutes, which is dominated by waiting for confirmations on the settling chain rather than by proving. Transfers under the batch threshold are proved on their own and typically land in just over four minutes.

The Weir Bridge is the transfer path that needs no wrapped representation of an asset on the far side. Instead of minting a claim against a custodian, it proves the lock and the release as one statement, so what arrives is the asset itself rather than an IOU for it.