The Algorand platform was founded in 2017, by renown MIT Professor and Turing Award Winner Silvio Micali. Its native currency is the Algo, which serves as the cornerstone of the Algorand blockchain. It has recently seen an influx of capital into its decentralized economy with the surface of automated market making platform Tinyman, decentralized lending protocol Algofi, and asset bridge Algomint.
There are five major benefits to the algorand blockchain, which we will take a look at and discuss why these are advantages. The five benefits are: Speed, Scalability, Cost, Sustainability, and Security.
Speed
The algorand blockchain boasts a transaction time of roughly 4 seconds. In addition to this, the algorand blockchain never forks. This means that within just a few seconds, you can be certain that you have been paid and that the block that contains your transaction will be a permanent part of the chain1 .This is in stark contrast to Bitcoin and Ethereum, both of which have far longer transaction times and do not have the security of finality. This is expected to change with Ethereum 2.0.
Scalability
Currently, algorand has a tps (transactions per second) of 1,200. It’s expected that this number will grow to roughly 3,000 tps with the potential to surpass 45,000 tps with block pipelining2. In comparison, Ethereum’s current tps is between 25-30.
Cost
Each transaction on Algorand currently costs one MicroAlgo, or 0.001 algos. At Algorand’s current price of $1.51, this is a fraction of a cent. No matter the size or amount of transactions, each one will always cost one MicroAlgo. This means that it is extremely cheap to transact on Algorand, and there’s no fear of getting your coins trapped on a wallet faced with exorbitant gas fees to remove them.
Sustainability
It would not be a stretch to claim that Algorand is the greenest blockchain. It is currently entirely Carbon-Negative, and has pledged to remain so both now and in the future. It is one of the first Carbon-Negative layer 1 blockchains, and treats sustainability as a built-in priority rather than a future problem. It is already currently partnered with various sustainable innovators, and has a grant system to attract future green builders3.
Security
Algorand is secured by the Pure Proof-of-Stake protocol, which is unique in the sense that it places the security of the chain in the hands of the majority, rather than a small subset of validators. This means that the only way for the chain to be harmed is when bad actors with the majority of the money “misbehave” with it, but doing so would tank the price of the coin and devalue their own assets4.