Algorand’s Borderless Economy

~ Platform, Blockchain as a service, Digital currency, Networking.

One of the projects that have made tremendous progress within a short time in the cryptocurrency space is Algorand. The crypto community is taking a remarkable interest in the project which many believe is among the most exciting blockchain projects being developed. The Algorand project has the backing of a team of PhDs, professors, and Venture capitalists who are focused on re-imagining the distributed ledger technology to make it infinitely scalable.

Algorand is different from most crypto projects that are mainly backed by entrepreneurs because the team behind the project is primarily made up of researchers and scientists. It was founded by MIT professor, Silvio Micali and as a result of its connection to MIT, most members of the team are based in Boston. Apart from the core Algorand team, the Algorand Foundation is also leading the Algorand platform’s development. The Foundation is a governance and research organization.

About Algorand

The focus of Algorand is on creating a borderless economy via its permissionless and decentralized public blockchain. What Algorand wants to achieve is to create a blockchain ecosystem that enables all those interested to get involved and succeed. The core principles behind the platform are the principles of:

· Direct usage
· Adoption
· Instant transactions
· Simplicity
· Performance

Algorand blockchain was specifically structured to allow developers to create new types of applications powered by cryptocurrency. Already, Algorand has been used in copyright, real estate, microfinance and several others
The project is attempting to tackle one of the greatest challenges in blockchain technology by designing a scalable platform that would remain decentralized. The team behind Algorand understands that there will not be mass adoption of the crypto without a scalable solution.

Of course, Ethereum and Bitcoin are good examples of the challenges of scalability as they haven’t been able to gain mass adoption mainly because they are not fast enough for the modern economy. But one of the concepts in blockchain technology is the scalability Trilemma or blockchain trilemma. What this means is that for a blockchain platform to achieve any of the following goals — decentralization, scalability, and security, they need to achieve one at the expense of the other.

Well, all three features are essential to the success of any blockchain network and Algorand believes it can solve the Blockchain Trilemma. Also, the platform will cut down on the computational cost of transactions to provide the world with a decentralized platform that’s secure scalable with low transaction fees.

An Overview of Algorand Network

Algorand utilizes a protocol that is designed for speed and developers have theoretically attained optimal efficiency by finalizing blocks within a round of voting. With this record, every single block will be finalized instantly and this will in turn dramatically increase the transaction per second (TPS) the network can handle. Already, Algorand’s mainnet has launched with the ability to process 1,000 TPS with a latency that’s less than five seconds.

Algorand scales to billions of transactions easily with a point-of-sale speed that’s at the same level as global payment and financial networks. Also, the cost structure of developers building and transacting on the Algorand platform is reduced as they can enjoy negligible transaction fees.

A blockchain platform that is fast but not secure is useless and that’s why the Algorand architecture has been designed to withstand lengthy network partitions and also recover quickly. This helps to take care of several potential real-world attack vectors. In case you’re not sure what a network partition means, it has to do with an attack at the network level which ends up making it hard or totally impossible for users to interact on the network.

There is always a possibility of a network attack regardless of how a blockchain is designed. The Byzantine Agreement is adopted by Algorand but it has been optimized for massive scale and high performance. Algorand presently has investments from several Venture capital funds ranging from tech-focused investors to crypto-specific funds.

The native token of the Algorand platform is ALGO and back in June 2019, they held a Dutch Auction ICO and successfully raised more than $60 million after they sold 25 million tokens at the rate of $2,40 each. Unfortunately, the price dropped as those who were involved in the ICO and are still holding on to the token have lost some money since the price is below a dollar.

What Makes Algorand Unique?

As earlier mentioned, the Algorand mainnet went life back in June 2019 and since then the network has been able to handle an average of one million transactions per day. The current performance levels of Algorand (which are scalable and constant) up to 86 million transactions daily include:

· Guaranteed Finality on all transactions
· 1,000 transactions per second
· Block finalization time of 4.5 seconds
· Block size: 5,000 transactions per block

The Algorand blockchain is working toward achieving a significant improvement in capacity, speed, and scale in 2021 by leveraging an innovative pipelining approach. This would enable the platform to achieve 46,000 TPS in 2021.

A look at CoinMarketcap shows that as of December 2020, ALGO is ranked number 54 based on market capitalization. It’s easy to buy ALGO since it is listed on several exchanges such as Bilaxy, Bit-Z, CoinEx, Binance, Coinbase Pro, Huobi Global and Hotbit. There is a healthy volume across these exchanges and the ALGO/BTC markets on Binance are deep. Traders can easily execute large block orders with a little slippage.

Undoubtedly, Algorand has successfully improved the blockchain landscape via its technological developments. With its team of well-respected cryptography professionals from MIT as well as the support from marketing professionals and a world-class team of researchers, Algorand has the potential to become one of the prominent blockchain projects. Already, the team has within a short time of its creation, delivered amazing results, especially with its mainnet which allowed them to create strong partnerships.

If you’re searching for a project that has good potential, then you should consider ALGO. Always remember to do your own research and have it at the back of your mind that the crypto market is extremely volatile. This article is in no way a suggestion to buy or invest in any crypto; instead, it’s purely for information purposes. Find out more about other exciting blockchain projects by reading “The Digital World of Crypto Riches.” The book is a summary of over a hundred crypto projects, their achievements, challenges, and use cases.

~ The official website of Algorand is https://www.algorand.foundation/