Algorand

Algorand is a cryptocurrency protocol providing proof-of-stake on a blockchain. Algorand's native cryptocurrency is called ALGO. Algorand was founded in 2017 by Silvio Micali, a professor at MIT. The Algorand test network was launched to the public in April 2019, and the main network was launched in June 2019. Algorand has a negligible energy consumption per transaction. Algorand is composed of the company Algorand, a private corporation based in Boston, and the nonprofit Algorand Foundation Ltd., incorporated in Singapore. Algorand Foundation Ltd. manages award funding, cryptographic research, on-chain governance, and decentralization of the Algorand network including nodes. The core development of the Algorand protocol is overseen by Algorand Inc.. Algorand Foundation Ltd. is led by CEO Staci Warden. Algorand Foundation Ltd. issues quarterly votes for the stakers of ALGO to vote on. These proposals often revolve around the implementation of DeFi within the Algorand community. Algorand is intended to solve the "blockchain trilemma": the claim that any blockchain system can have at most two of three desirable properties: decentralization, scalability, and security. A system with all three could run on nodes which each have only moderate consumer-grade resources (i.e., does not need a datacenter or large cluster of virtual machines), has transaction processing which scales with the total network resources (rather than the resources available per-node), and could not be subverted by attackers who individually possess a large fraction of the network's total resources. Algorand uses a Byzantine agreement protocol that leverages proof of stake. As long as a supermajority of the stake is in non-malicious hands, the protocol can tolerate malicious users, achieving consensus without a central authority. Consensus on Algorand requires three steps to propose, confirm and write the block to the blockchain. The steps are propose, soft vote and certify vote. The first phase (the block proposal phase) uses proof of stake principles.