Alternun: Tokenizing Gold In Place

Alternun set out to solve one of the more interesting problems I have worked on: tokenizing gold reserves that remain in the ground, rather than extracting them first. The model only works if the on-chain representation maps honestly onto a physical, verifiable reserve, which makes the design questions unusually strict and the cost of a hand-waved answer unusually high.

I joined as an advisor and served as CTO for a period, compensated in equity. The work spanned the range a small protocol team actually needs from a senior technologist. I reviewed and edited the whitepaper so that the technical claims would survive scrutiny from both engineers and investors. I advised on the technical architecture, including how the asset backing should be represented, verified, and enforced on-chain. And I handled the practical questions that decide whether a roadmap is real: technology selection, delivery timelines, cost estimates, and introductions to the partners the team needed to execute.

Advisory work of this kind is judged by the decisions it prevents as much as the ones it produces. The value I brought was a working knowledge of what EVM systems can honestly promise, and the willingness to say so before a commitment reached the whitepaper.