Altcoins: Algorand (ALGO), What Is It? - A Deeper Look Into The Algorand Platform
Aa
Share
Summary:
- What is the Algorand Platform and how does it work?
- Advantages of the Algorand exchange.
- Algorand’s past, present and future price positions.
Read next: Altcoins: Decentraland (MANA), What Is It? A Deeper Look Into The Decentraland Platform
Algorand Platform
Algorand is a self-sustaining, decentralised, block-chain based network which supports many applications. The aforementioned systems are scalable, efficient and secure, all of which are critical for effective applications in the real world. In addition, Algorand supports computations that require reliable performance guarantees in order to create new forms of trust.
Algorand claims to be the world’s most “decentralised, scalable, and secure blockchain infrastructure”. The Algorand platform is sustainable and is powering economic models of the future through generative NFT art (and everything that comes in between) and decentralised finance (DeFi).
The Algorand platform is releasing scalability through the use of fusing TradFi and DeFi, and accelerating sustainability globally. Algorands mainnet went live in June 2019, and was able to process almost 1 million transactions per day as of December 2020.
Algorand defines their mission as: creating global trust through the use of decentralisation, using simple designs that helps drive platform adoption and a platform that rids all barriers to prosperity for all.
Algorand was created to improve efficiency and to speed up transactions, in response to the slower transaction times of Bitcoin and other blockchains. Algorand is designed with lower transaction fees and no mining, as it is based on a permissionless pure proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain protocol.
Algorand was the first ever permissionless proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol on the blockchain and its performance is nothing short of phenomenal. The platform is a smart contract platform that is similar to Ethereum, but has some key differences that make it more advantageous.
Smart contracts allow economic disruptions and the creation of new business models across different industries with efficient and automated transactions and applications, allowing for a trustless execution of an agreement.
ALGO is Algorands native token, it is also a cornerstone of its network structure. Another part of Algorand’s unique protocol design, the rewards that are paid to validators for producing blocks are paid to all ALGO holders, instead of only to the block producers. Thus, all ALGO coin holders can earn around 7.5% annual percentage yield from February 2021.
There is currently a circulating supply of 6.9 billion ALGO, with a maximum supply of 10 billion. The current market capitalisation is more than $2.8 billion.
Advantages of the Algorand platform
- Every token holder who has at least 1 ALGO token in their account can choose to participate, if they choose to participate they can be either randomly selected or selected to propose and add new blocks to the chain. The more one token holds, the more likely it is to be chosen to vote.
- If users wish to participate in a consensus, they only need to keep their ALGOs in their official wallets and declare their availability through a transaction, which is otherwise known as “Going Online”
- The proof-of-stake consensus used by Algorand and its advantages:
- makes it extremely safe due to the fact that a hacker is unable to see which block is beforehand, thus, making it impossible to trace and hack.
- It promotes decentralisation, due to it not needing any complex calculations, anyone is able to participate in the consensus process without needing any special equipment or high energy usage.
- The transaction takes around 5 seconds and has a fee of less than $0.001, it is both faster and cheaper than some other blockchains.
Past, present and future prices of Algorand (ALGO)
After the launch of the Algorand network, the price took off almost immediately, however, the spike in price was followed by a substantial fall. Since then the price took some time to rise again. The price rose substantially again towards the end of 2021 and peaked at the start of 2022, however, has since fallen consistently.
Over the past few months, the markets have been facing strong investor risk-off sentiment in the wake of the geopolitical tensions, Covid-19 lockdowns in China and supply chain issues. The cryptocurrency market has followed the trends of the greater market during these times, therefore the price of most cryptocurrencies have been falling, Algorand falls under this category.
According to some analysts the future price of ALGO could reach up to $5.2 by 2026 and almost $30 by 2031. However, it is important to remember that this future price prediction is based solely on data and does not take into account factors such as investor sentiment and the ever changing market conditions, both of which make it difficult to make accurate future price predictions.
ALGO Price Chart
Read next: Altcoins: Uniswap Protocol (UNI), What Is it? - A Deeper Look Into The Uniswap Protocol
Sources: finance.yahoo.com, gemini.com, algorand.com, coinmarketcap.com
