Introducing Algorand: An All Encompassing Blockchain Technology.
As the world begins to drift away from bank transactions and third-party inclusions to individual wealth or economics, the next undeniable playing ground is the crypto-sphere. Individuals are in total control of their wealth creation, utilization, and overall management. For the newbies, the crypto-sphere houses what we call blockchain technology. A technology that is guided by decentralized transactions called “blocks.” Interestingly, blockchain technology in the past ten years has been on a geometric rise to infinity.
Experts predict that by 2050, the world has switched entirely from fiat to crypto with an estimate of over eight (8) billion people. Hence, the famous saying “crypto is the future.” However, when the coin is flipped, the rather unfortunate side suggests that millions of transactions or blocks are generated per second due to the high influx of users, leading to a system glitch, loss of obstructions, and consequent loss of wealth.
Also, blockchain technologies would have to go through a series of forking (or version improvements) to tackle predatory hacks, increase transaction speed, and maintain decentralization. This is where Algorand steps in to mitigate a more generous portion of the predicted challenges within the crypto-sphere/blockchain technology.
What is Algorand?
Algorand introduces the “permissionless” and “point-proof” technology, which supports the accumulation of proofs done via multiple transactions or commitments without necessarily going through series of validation/permission to perform a complete transaction computing. Before now, conventional blockchain technology such as Bitcoin would have to go through a series of permissions and a long proof for commitments stored on the blockchain. This long storage using Merkle trees usually require a large chunk of data. Still, Algorand provides alternative cryptographic storage that lessens both the network bandwidth and enables Fast computation of transactions.
Still, Confused? Well, Let’s Break It Down!
When a user transacts on the blockchain, say Ethereum blockchain, a block or commitment is generated, which carries such a transaction. This block or duty must be verified by a third party who checks to ensure that the transaction remains valid. After the checks, permission is given for the transaction to be complete and stored. This process takes quite a long time, and too much data is required to store twice as many transactions or commitments as the number of users joining the crypto-sphere daily. What Algorand does is to process numerous commitments in milliseconds and into a single validated storage.
How Secure is Algorand?
Firstly, asides from having the best tech experts in the blockchain industry, Algorand has also put in place open-source tactics where users can report vulnerabilities and loopholes to expect a quick response to issues raised without escalating Github.
What’s More
More exciting about Algorand is the PIXEL signature feature that transforms multiple signers, regardless of the number, into a simple multi-signature — also allowing signers to evolve their keys to increase security and avoid posterior corruption attacks on the blockchain. Secondly, Vault, which is a new Algorand-based cryptocurrency architecture that minimizes user storage and bootstrapping costs, is based on the proof-of-stake consensus protocol of Algorand and uses many approaches to achieve its objectives. Vault decouples recent transaction storage from account balance storage, which helps Vault remove the account’s old state. In a way that maintains concrete security assurances, Vault allows a sharding state through participants.
Finally, Vault introduces the idea of stamping certificates, which allows a new customer to catch up on a proof-of-stake system safely and efficiently without having to check every single block. Experiments with a prototype implementation of Vault’s data structures show that when downloading a ledger containing 500 million transactions, Vault’s architecture reduces the bandwidth cost of entering the network as a complete user by 99.7 per cent compared to Bitcoin and 90.5 per cent compared to Ethereum.
Technical Advantages of Algorand
Decentralization
By decentralization, we mean transferring control and decision-making from an organization or group to a distributed network. The Algorand blockchain is entirely decentralized because anyone can use the blockchain to transact and participate in block generation as control is distributed among all individual network participants, which means there is no powerful central authority of power; every participant can write a transaction in the future block.
Algorand blockchain has some merits in decentralization over other blockchains:
Fairness and Transparency:
Since control is distributed among all individual network participants, each network member has a copy of the same data in a distributed ledger. With this, there’s transparency fairness in dealings with members.
Accuracy
There is no worry for data manipulation or loss because every entity has access to a real-time shared view of the data already collected. Algorand is the first blockchain to provide immediate transaction finality. No forking, no uncertainty.
Security
Algorand blockchain prioritizes security, as it ensures full participation, protection, and speed within a decentralized network, for there’s no fault tolerance with any particular group of users for an attacker to target.
Permissionless
As I said earlier, the Algorand blockchain is entirely decentralized, allowing every participant to use the blockchain to transact and participate in block generation. Moreso, the Algorand blockchain runs a permissionless public blockchain that does not require permission to join and interact with the blockchain. Here, users do not need the approval of any trusted authority to join the network and participate in the protocol, as anyone can use the blockchain to transact and participate in block generation.
Algorand consensus mechanism uses permissionless and pure proof-of-stake, which ensures full participation, protection, and speed within a truly decentralized network.
Characteristics Of Algorand As Permissionless Blockchain:
- Public and Open to all: In Algorand blockchain, every participant can read every block and have the opportunity to write a transaction in a future block. Users do not need the approval of a trusted authority to use the Algorand blockchain; there is a single class of users and no gatekeepers.
- Low Cost to Participate: The Algorand platform requires minimal processing power and modest IT resources to join.
Open Source
The platform is founded on principles of transparency, inclusivity, and collaboration and maintained by a dedicated community with a shared vision of a decentralized, borderless future. The Algorand node repository is open-sourced and publicly available for anyone to audit, use, and build upon.
Network-Level Security: Partition Resilence
Algorand maintains security against attacks at both the consensus protocol level and the network level while protecting individual user’s accounts’ safety.
Protecting User’s Stake
To reduce exposure, online users do not use their spending keys (i.e., the access they use to sign transactions and spend their stake) to participate in consensus. Instead, a user must generate and register a secret participation key before going online.
Consensus- Level Security
Algorand’s consensus protocol is designed to prevent powerful adversaries from corrupting enough users to control block generation. Unlike other protocols, neither a few delegated users nor a standing committee is responsible for propagating blocks. Instead, users’ selection to participate in the certification of blocks is made randomly and secretly, without any communication.
Scalability
Scalability is the ability to process many transactions at the same time without deterioration or degradation of performance. Algorand’s consensus protocol can scale to millions of users and sustain a high transaction rate without incurring high costs to participating users.
Algorand Use Cases and Partnerships
1. InfoCert is a company that provides its client with the opportunity to digitalize their documents and make e-deliveries across countries. Being the largest in Europe, InfoCert has partnered with Algorand to create “Algorand Standard Asset” as a way to monetize document exchange between Info Cert and its client securely. This, however, will increase usability and broaden the market spectrum for InfoCert.
2. AIKON is a company that campaigns for mainstream adoption of blockchain technology. ORE ID, a product of Aikon, is responsible for account creation, signing transactions, and resource management, thus connecting businesses to their existing users. ORE ID is now leveraging the Algorand Platform to provide secure blockchain identity services to Algorand.
3. For the game lovers, RHOVIT is a platform that offers crypto mining through gamified content creation. Rhovit wants to switch its token to Algorand and create an extension for pure gaming to reward its users with tokens for playing games. So Rhovit is leveraging the ability of Algorand to scale up the platform and provide an environment for the gaming extension
What are you waiting for?
A stitch in time saves nine. The world is indeed drifting towards the unified adoption of blockchain technology. No doubt, in the nearest future, transactions will be done in milliseconds via cryptocurrencies, businesses will be born and breed under the crypto-sphere. As we see today, Algorand has made the switch from fiat to crypto more scalable and seamless.
Meet the Algorand Team
The Algorand team comprises highly acclaimed researchers, excellent business strategists, economists, cryptographers, traders, and well-experienced professionals willing to see Algorand through its road map. Therefore, there is no safer place to be than in the hands of experts who look out for its users’ best interest, working day and night to maintain efficiency, scalability, and minimal time stamp on commitments made on the Algorand platform.
Check it out: https://algorand.com/wallet
