In the crypto sphere, there are many startups, companies, projects, etc., who start with a roar but soon fizzle out. Sometimes due to lack of resources, sometimes due to the lack of mettle, and sometimes they burn out themselves as the crypto industry is highly competitive and challenging.
One Man Army:
In all the ups and downs, those with real stamina happen to see the horizon. One such example of a brilliant mind is the Pioneer in ZKPs, VRFs, and probabilistic encryption: “Silvio Micali.” He is also an MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science professor. He is all about hardcore cryptography research and use-case applications. With these tools, he has always tried his best to offer competitive solutions to issues related to scalability, safety, and decentralization.
ZKPs, VRFs, and Probabilistic Encryption; the backbone behind crypto privacy and anonymity:
Two years ago, in 2017, he launched Algorand to push the innovations in the field of cryptography and areas linked to the blockchain technology. The combination of his expertise in the field of in ZKPs, VRFs, and probabilistic encryption churn of groundbreaking solutions and applications in the field of security and privacy. That can be seen in various use cases of cryptos such as ZCash, Monero, ZCoin, and so on where these coins offer privacy and anonymity features.
Why is Algorand so special?
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There are many reasons why we are talking about the platform today. Be it its command in the cryptography sector, or its reign in the distributed consensus; the platform sets standards for the entire industry. Other unique features include-
- Pure Proof-of-Stake (PPoS)
It is a consensus model which is based on Pure Proof-of-Stake (PPoS) makes it stand out from the rest. It makes any scale of payment to get processed while keeping the security and the node participation rate intact. PPoS is an enhanced version of PoS (Proof of Stake.)
- Strong immunity against forking
Another point that makes Algorand stand out from the crowd is its strong immunity against forking. As commonly seen, public blockchains often split into two chains in situations of high level. These chains then have to compete with each other, which further divide the community into an unnecessary competition. In the process, the parent company also loses on many loyal users and faces a drop in the consistency, and spike around the security issues.
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Algorand, on the other hand, can stay free from such issues based on VRFs, internal voting, the structure of its nodes, etc. Here is an explanation from Algorand-
Even when the network is partitioned into multiple non-connected networks, Algorand’s blockchain does not fork and users’ balances remain secure. An adversary is never able to convince two honest users to accept two different blocks for the same round. All transactions that appear on the blockchain are always final.
Recent Use-cases
- Recently, AssetBlock, a real estate startup, released an Algorand blockchain-based platform where the clients can trade commercial real estate. As per sources, the investors will soon be allowed to use ALGO crypto in this scheme. Here too Algorand network was chosen based on its promise of security, scalability capacity, and quick transaction speed says the AssetBlock. The CEO Steve Kokinos said,
We have immediate finality. If you start to look at high-value assets like real estate, finality – having absolute certainty over who owns that asset – is very important. […] I think, at its core, the idea is to use tokenization and decentralized currencies to democratize finance. […] For a large number of people in the world, there are many different investment opportunities, financial services, and other products that aren’t really accessible.
- The Algorand blockchain unique features proved to be highly beneficial to Algo Capital in recent times. The investment firm managed to raise 200 million U.S. Dollars for “Algo VC Fund.” That attracted many investors such as- “NEO blockchain’s NGC Ventures, TechCrunch founder’s Arrington XRP Capital and tzero investor 11-11 Ventures.” Algo Capital stated that it is targeting to enhance blockchain adoption and to attract new users to the Algorand network.
