My guess is Coinbase is running on fractional reserves and doesn't wanna lose out on it's governance rewards so they are artificially delaying withdrawals of ALGO. I don't know about you guys but after I get my ALGO's withdrawn I'm finding an alternative to CoinBase. They have officially lost my business which is a shame because I've used them since getting into crypto.

They did this exact same thing before the 1st governance period in September and people lost out on signing up. This is no different than what Robinhood did with GME stock. It just shows that CEX's need regulation desperately and we're currently at the mercy of Coinbase assholes.

There have also been other strange things between Coinbase and Algorand. For the longest time they had Algorand listed as an ERC-20 token. Additionally they commonly do not post updated/correct news for Algorand. A few days ago they listed Securitizes Tokenization of Down Jones Index Funds as happening on Ethereum instead of Algorand, since then they've taken it down from Ethereum but haven't posted it to Algorand news.

This all smells a bit fishy. I have been having this feeling for a while that coinbase is deliberately trying to undermine Algorand.

Does anyone know of a good alternative to Coinbase and Binance in the US?

EDIT 1: They canceled my withdrawal after over 24 hours pending and said "Blockchain transaction was compensated". I'm wondering if I should try to withdraw again or convert to another coin and transfer off.

EDIT 2: Tried withdrawing again and it canceled almost immediately and said the same thing "Blockchain transaction was compensated." I'm pretty sure they still took my .002 ALGO transaction fee though. CB is fucking us over royally.

EDIT 3: Tried withdrawing once more, instant withdrawal cancel with same reason as before. I'm done trying to withdraw tonight. Will try again tomorrow in the AM and update the post.

EDIT 4: I was finally able to withdraw my ALGO's today. Look's like Coinbase most likely saw this post and bought more ALGO. The amount of ALGO in Coinbase 2 doubled and magically withdrawals were reenabled. Which means this was 100% a liquidity issue, and not a technical issue. Thank you everyone for contributing, I'm proud to be a part of this community. The elites get scared when all us little guys work together, never forget how powerful we are when we work collectively. This is the exact reason why we are all here, so huge monolithic entities can't dictate and control our lives without any recourse.

EDIT 5: MAKE COINBASE SQUIRM. Withdraw everything. Coinbase 1 is down to 351 ALGO and Coinbase 2 is down to <1 Million ALGO. Let's clean them out. Hopefully they will learn not to do this again.

EDIT 6: I've been reading some people are still having problems withdrawing.

Many of us invested in Algorand. I also bought some. In 2020/2021, the entire subreddit was insanely bullish on Algorand. It was also mentioned all over social media and on many news websites.

But to say that Algorand has been a terrible performer would be an understatement. Some facts:

• Algo is almost 96% down from the November 2021 high

• Algo is down over 96% from all time high June 2019

• Algo is down about 99% against Bitcoin since June 2019 and keeps making new lows

• Algo is down 97% against Ethereum since January 2020 and keeps making new lows

• Algo is the second worst performing top 50 altcoin in the past 90 days. Bitcoin is up 28.5%, while Algo is down 34.2%.

So what can we learn from this to ensure that we do not repeat the same mistakes?

I'll share mine and then am looking forward to yours.

1. I will never again buy a cryptocurrency with poor tokenomics. Algo had over 500% inflation in 2021 while the staking rewards were nowhere near that. That is SO MUCH extra selling pressure. I now refuse to buy a project where staking does not cover inflation.

2. I will avoid cryptocurrencies that go for expensive yet meaningless partnerships. Algo got a Fifa World Cup partnership that was worth nothing. FTX and CDC did something similar by getting naming rights on stadiums (Miami Heat Basketball Team, Staples Center). This is paid for with users' money. So essentially current investors are the cash cow to draw in more idiots.

3. I will avoid projects that are heavily shilled here. Algo, LRC, ONE, LUNA, CRO, VET, CKB, Neo, and the list goes on. The inverse graveyard is heavily populated.* Quite a lot of this shilling was not natural.

*... but now everyone is bearish on Algo. What if it inverses to the bull side? 😂

The latest upgrades:

• Smart contract compatibility with contract to contract calls.  This allows complex dApps to be built that can efficiently and trustlessly interact with other smart contract based dApps to extend functionality and usability.  Additional details and background on this tech can be found . 

• Post-quantum secure Falcon Keys, Algorand’s first major milestone on its path towards trustless cross-chain interoperability.  These keys will, in the near future, be used to generate State Proofs, a new blockchain infrastructure that will allow Algorand to be trustlessly accessed in low-power environments like mobile phones, smart watches, and on other blockchains. For more background on State Proofs, please see an overview . 

Developers are now able to build complex dapps for the Algorand ecosystem with smart contract-to-contract calling and network participants can take their first step towards trustless cross-chain interoperability with quantum-secure keys for the upcoming State Proof technology. These network upgrades come on the heels of a $20 million incentive program from the Algorand Foundation focused on developer tooling and, putting Algorand at the forefront of blockchain interoperability and post-quantum security while providing features for even more advanced decentralized applications. 

These features add to Algorand’s already advanced tech, high performance and robust developer resources. Smart contracts on Algorand can be written in Python or Reach, making it accessible for developers of all skillsets. 

Algorand has experienced zero downtime since launch, helping it become the blockchain of choice for hundreds of organizations launching DeFi protocols, NFTs, payment solutions, regulated digital assets, and more. The network supports applications that can scale to billions of participants, all on a high-speed, carbon-negative, secure and stable blockchain. 

I think we can all agree that tps numbers can be hard to compare between chains. Some chains can pin 10000s of native token transfers, but things get weird when you start to compare smart contracts.

I posted about in the Algorand subreddit for determining throughput of different blockchains in the fairest way possible. That is using an AMM “uniswap-style” swap as the benchmark.

The authors of the medium article linked in my original post tested the smart contract throughput of some of the top smart contract platforms empirically, and they found that these chains to have the following AMM-swap tps limits:

• Solana Mainnet Orca - 273 swaps

• BSC pancakeswap - 195 swaps

• Polygon quickswap - 95 swaps

• Axax Trader Joe - 176 swaps

• Celo Ubeswap - 50 swaps

• Ethereum uniswap v2 - 18 swaps

Now Algorand can handle 1625 AMM swaps per second on Tinyman.

For reference that is:

• 6.0x more than Solana

• 8.3x more than Binance

• 9.2x more than Avalanche

• 17x more than Polygon

• 32.5x more than Celo

• 90.3x more than Ethereum

Algorand's new upgrade reduced block times from ~4.5s to , and there has already been on the mainnet which translates to approximately 6500 tps.

Thanks to the insight of , based on the opcode budget limit for each transaction, it was determined that a tinyman swap requires 4 transactions, which means that Algorand’ TPS divided by 4 is approximately equal to its ability for smart contracts per second. (6500/4) = 1625 swaps per second.

And a special thanks to for actually empirically checking and confirming the transaction count to be 4 standard transactions for each tinyman swap.

Edit: added words

It's September 2021: the Algorand price just hit $2.38, Algonauts are everywhere, and the CryptoCurrency sub is best described as a living shill for the Algorand blockchain.

The Excitement is enticing and contagious as Algorand locks in one partnership after another, but behind the scenes... A Series of Unfortunate Events are Begining to Unwind, and what was once a promising blockchain to laugh and make jokes about - is quietly becoming a disaster for investors.

This post is not a technical breakdown of Algorand nor is this post meant to fud the future of Algorand. This post is about the absolute disaster that continues to unravel for investors of the Algorand Blockchain.

------------------------------

I. A Brief Introduction to Algorand:

If someone told you about Algorand they probably also told you "a cryptography pioneer, Turing award winner and MIT professor". Algorand launched in 2019 and hails itself as a (PPOS). The most notable difference from traditional Proof of Stake (POS), is that the creator of the next block is selected randomly irrespective of their total stake. As the name implies this approach is touted by Algorand supporters as a more fair and decentralized version of POS.

------------------------------

II. The Beginning of an Inflationary Nightmare for Investors:

Like most crypto projects Algorand absolutely blew up in 2021, it started the year under $.40 and it ended the yearover 4x around ~$1.65. However unlike most crypto projects that peaked in early November Algorand peaked in September.

What sounds like an interesting side note, holds a much darker truth for investors - , as the circulating supply jumped from 1.19B to 6.37B - and from 6.37B to 7.14B. If you line up the graph for the increase in circulating supply to price, you can see the September 2021 peak lined up with a large surge in the circulating supply and a steady drop in price since.

------------------------------

III. A Controversial Change in Leadership

In the prior CEO of the Algorand Foundation was quietly ousted from the company, and replaced with the Staci Warden. The replacement has been incredibly controversial inside the Algorand Community as the new Foundation CEO thought one of the major priorities for the Algorand Foundation was to focus on PR.

Additionally for acting childish and immature in her public statements - with statements that are meant to create "baseless hype" which leads to Algorand believers holding even larger underwater bags. If you have ever heard of Staci before it's probably for her, .

This one word tweet, lead people to believe big things were imminent for Algorand Investors with a potential Nike Partnership. Instead it was later revealed that Staci had hired a former Nike Executive as the Chief Marketing Officer for Algorand.

------------------------------

IV. A Disaster in "Marketing" - Part 1: An Introduction

If you are familiar with Algorand Tokenomics you probably know, Algorand has a max supply of 10B and the beginning Centralization of Tokens with the Algorand team was one of the worst things about Algorand.

As you can see, Algorand itself was one of the initial largest holder of Algorand. When a Crypto organization needs to raise funds - they do that by selling their tokens, and that's exactly what the Algorand Foundation did. To the Foundations credit, they make bi-annual Transparency Reports that detail how much they sold and sometimes what those funds were used for. Below is a breakdown of the sales from October 2020 - September 2022 time period. Links to Transparency Reports information was gathered from: , , , .

In the Past two years the Algorand Foundation has sold 228M Algo and Paid their Board of Directors another 3.65M Algo. Important: these numbers do not include Algo given out for for ecosystem development - That includes another ~400M Algo over two years, some of which may have also been sold.

A Disaster in "Marketing" - Part 2: Partnerships

The past few years have been huge for Partnerships with Algorand, it seemed like every week the Algorand Foundation was announcing a new partnership. But most of these were just glorified real-world Sponsorships that Algorand paid for, that came with an Agreement to do do something on the Algorand blockchain, like FIFAs NFT flop.

Announced in May 2022, . Immediately after the announcement the price of Algorand spiked 20%, but what investors had hoped would be game changing for the Algorand network - ended up as just another disappointment. In September 2022, FIFA launched an NFT project on the Algorand Blockchain - with over 205,000 mints, at a cost of $5 each and low resale interest: the project just ended up being a further $1M cash grab for FIFA.

Additionally there was not an ad or Algorand TV Spot during the world cup, something Algorand supporters had hoped to see.

A Disaster in "Marketing" - Part 3: Advertisements

Under the guidance of the new Foundation CEO Staci and a pivot to focus on PR - Algorand the "Greenest Blockchain", . They rented the time square billboards for one hour to black them out. Then they intermittently flashed them Green with the Algorand logo and text about how Algo energy consumption compares to BTC.

Of course the money for this publicity stunt, had to come from somewhere, and that money came from dumping Algo on Investors. From April - September 2022. on "Marketing and other forms of ecosystem promotion" which was raised by selling Algorand. In the prior six months, in the same category.

------------------------------

V. MyAlgo Hack and TinyMan Hack

In late February MyAlgo was hacked and some of the largest holders on in Crypto drained. A week later smaller holders on MyAlgo also started to see their crypto drained in what at the time seemed like Bots draining wallets.

the Preliminary Findings on the Hack tomorrow, Mar. 20th 2023.

In January 2022 TinyMan was hacked and $3M was drained from Algorand ASAs (tokens).

------------------------------

With all of these problems and the continuous sell pressure from the Algorand Foundation - Algo's price has continued to drop over the bear market. One Algorand was selling for nearly ~$2.40 in Sep. 2021, and is now selling for $.22. If Algorand tech can turn around the nightmare that is occurring for Algorand investors is another question.... but one thing is certain - A series of Unfortunate Events has made Investing in Algorand an absolute nightmare.

TLDR: What was once a loved project shilled endlessly by this sub has quickly and quietly turned into a nightmare for anyone still left in the project.

Edit: Since some people think analyzing the failures of Algorand over the past 18 month is "hating Algo and Fud", please read the post again. The inevitable comments about "This sub hates Algo now, I Guess that Means It's Time to Buy" misses the entire point of this post.

I think we can all agree that tps numbers can be hard to compare between chains. Some chains can pin 10000s of native token transfers, but things get weird when you start to compare smart contracts.

Last year, I posted about in the Algorand subreddits for determining throughput of different blockchains in the fairest way possible. That is using an AMM “uniswap-style” swap as the benchmark.

The authors of the medium article linked in my original post tested the smart contract throughput of some of the top smart contract platforms empirically, and they found that these chains to have the following AMM-swap tps limits:

• Solana Mainnet Orca - 273 swaps

• BSC pancakeswap - 195 swaps

• Polygon quickswap - 95 swaps

• Avax Trader Joe - 176 swaps

• Celo Ubeswap - 50 swaps

• Ethereum uniswap v2 - 18 swaps

Immediately after the 6k tps upgrade, I made a post about Algorand's ability to perform these AMM-style swaps which was estimated using the assumption that an AMM swap would require four txns per swap. This estimation came out to about 1625 swaps per second. At the time this was very impressive because the next fastest chain was Solana capped at being able to do 273 swaps per second.

People foreshadowed in the comments on one of my previous posts saying that it could definitely be done in less than four transactions, but I wanted to be conservative at the time.

Today, I saw on twitter that one of the developers from Vestige actually and proved that Algorand can do 2881 AMM-style swaps per second. You can see the on-chain evidence in .

• 10.5x more than Solana Mainnet Orca - 273 swaps

• 15x more than BSC pancakeswap - 195 swaps

• 30x more than Polygon quickswap - 95 swaps

• 16x more than Avax Trader Joe - 176 swaps

• 57x more than Celo Ubeswap - 50 swaps

• 160x more than Ethereum uniswap v2 - 18 swaps

• 3.5x more than all of them combined - 807 swaps

If anybody can do this experiment for other popular Layer 1s like Tezos, NEAR, or Elrond or the Layer 2s on ETH, I would love to include them here.

Please be respectful in the comments :)

Solving the Blockchain Trilemma

Algorand (ALGO) is a blockchain network (i.e. like ETH, ADA, SOL) that attempts to solve the "blockchain trilemma" - the ability of a network to be simultaneously scalable, secure and decentralised. ALGO's transactions per second (TPS) is 1k, with a 4s finality. Transactions cost 0.001 ALGO and the network already offers L1 smart contracts. However, the network will be upgraded in Q3-Q4 2021 to 45k/s TPS and 2.5s finality, ranking it toward the top for speed and scalability . ALGO is currently experiencing ~1m transactions per day, placing it close to ETH in usage.

Main Conclusion: ALGO is, along with other projects, building and pioneering "Blockchain 3.0".

Academic Rigor

Algorand was founded by the Turing-award-winning, MIT professor Silvio Micali - and is backed by an excellent team with solid peer-reviewed academic prowess and publication record . Silvio Micali conceived of and pioneered zero-knowledge proofs (among many other concepts) - a key and integral part of many cryptocurrencies. ALGO's respectable and trustworthy team boosts ALGO's chances of mass adoption, especially in the financial/institutional sectors - which appears to be ALGO's key target demographic.

Main Conclusion: ALGO's reliability, technology and ability to form partnerships is bolstered by the prestige and talent of its team.

Pure Proof-of-Stake

Algorand uses pure proof-of-stake (PPoS) as a consensus mechanism, which employs algorithmic randomness and an improved form of Byzantine agreement to achieve decentralisation + security. PPoS differs from regular, delegated PoS (dPoS) in a number of ways, including:

• No pooled validators (i.e. holders do not pledge their coins to a minority of super-validators). Theoretically, this minimises the drive toward centralisation that dPoS suffers from.

• ALGO node running is permissionless (i.e. anybody with >1 ALGO can run a node, be a validator and participate in consensus).

• PPoS is extremely lightweight (an ALGO node can be run on a low energy, $50 Raspberry Pi 4 - no expensive hardware or upfront cost is required).

A key feature of PPoS is the use of a randomised, weighted lottery that selects validators - known as VRF. This prevents any malicious actor(s) from attacking the network since the identities of the currently selected validators (who must be corrupted in order to carry out an attack) are not known until the block is already finalised. At 1-4k validators, PPoS is paradoxically superior to dPoS in terms of decentralisation - even if the latter had 50,000+ nodes. This is because validators under the dPoS system are long-lived and known. By contrast, ALGO's random selections vary on both a round and subround basis - that is, block proposers, voters, vote certifiers all vary, across all steps of creating a block - making it incredibly secure and decentralised.

Main Conclusion: ALGO is fast, scalable, secure while remaining decentralised.

Staking Rewards & Governance

ALGO currently offers liquid and seamless staking with an APY of ~5.75% - you simply hold ALGO in a non-custodial wallet and there is no lock-up period. On Oct 1st 2021, governance is launching and this will gradually replace staking. In exchange for voting on proposals, you will be rewarded with 7.5-33% APY (depending on the number of participants). For the initial 3 months, this APY will be in addition to the passive 5.75%, meaning you could theoretically earn up to ~38.75% APY. Governance will not only allow ALGO holders to vote on changes to the network, consensus mechanism or tokenomics - but also select projects to receive developer grants (see below).

Main Conclusion: ALGO offers highly competitive staking APYs and will further decentralise by handing voting power to holders.

Carbon Negative

PPoS is extremely lightweight - consuming ~0.000008 kWh per transaction . That's ~70,000x less energy than ADA, and 116250000x less energy than BTC.

The energy that is used by ALGO is 100%+ offset via carbon credits. An on-chain sustainability oracle analyses the energy utilised by each node and a partnership with ClimateTrade (and others) then channels this funding into reforestation, peat management and wind-energy projects .

Main Conclusion: ALGO is eco-friendly, and the world's first carbon-negative blockchain network.

Developer Friendly & Ecosystem

Algorand is extremely accessible to developers . Most importantly, it supports development in Python, C++, GO, Java, Javascript and RUST - removing the need for developers to retrain or learn new languages. ALGO's smart contract language, TEAL, is incredibly intuitive and can be accessed via Python (PyTEAL). As of TEAL 4.0, the language is now fully Turing-complete. In addition, Algorand offers comprehensive, detailed documentation and tutorials (for free) - see Source 1.

Moreover, ~$200-250m is available to support developers and 50+ grants have already been issued . In total, ~600-650 companies are currently developing on ALGO and intend to deploy DApps/ALGO-based services .

Yieldly, ALGO's first DeFi app launched, ~2-3 months ago and has enjoyed a high TVL since. A number of high profile projects, including ALGO's first DEX are launching shortly this year. Tokenized, real-estate projects (e.g. ) are also currently operating successfully on ALGO.

Main Conclusion: ALGO has the ability to instantly attract developers, and is poised for an explosion in its ecosystem.

Real World Use

A key feature of Algorand is that it is forkless - it is mathematically impossible for ALGO to fork . This is extremely important for real-world usage. Businesses accepting ALGO will not only experience rapid finality but can trust that the transaction is not on a forked branch of the blockchain that can be lost. This is even more important for NFTs. Thus far, ALGO has seen major adoption, recently including:

• 70M South Americans (potentially 200M soon) using ALGO to issue + store COVID-19 passports

• BNext adopting ALGO for its $100b/year Spain<->Latin American remittance service

• MAPay adopting ALGO to power $800m/year in healthcare payments for Bermuda

• SIAE, one of the largest and oldest digital rights management companies in the world, launched 4.5m NFTs onto ALGO - representing the work of 10,000 artists and which will involve $100m/year in royalties .

• ALGO was recently featured in a World Economic Forum (WEF) report on cryptocurrency - listed as a recommended "VIP" blockchain that solves issues with BTC/ETH and proof-of-stake . This document will be seen by institutions, banks and economists worldwide.

The list goes on and on

Main Conclusion: ALGO is already being deployed for large-scale and institutional solutions.

Tokenomics

ALGO has a maximum supply of 10,000,000,000 (10b) coins, and ~57% of the supply has been released so far. The schedule for coin release is detailed here: . In addition to this, ALGO operates an 'accelerated vesting' algorithm: if the 30-day moving average (30MA) reaches a new ATH, the rate at which new ALGO is introduced into circulation is accelerated. The combined effect of this is a significant rate of annual inflation - and artifical suppression of price i.e. ALGO is not a short-term investment. Inflation will ease over time for 2 reasons:

• Accelerated vesting is estimated to end in ~mid-2023

• Coin release slows over time (see the above source), and we are already ~18-24mo ahead of schedule - so it's very unlikely that it will take until 2030 to finish the process.

Eventually, suppression of the price will cease. Until then, ALGO exploit this stability to build large-scale partnerships since less volatility is often viewed favourably.

Main Conclusion: ALGO's tokenomics are less than ideal, and the project is to be seen as a long-term investment only.

Relay Nodes & Initial Distribution

ALGO relies on a set of ~100-120 relay nodes to maintain high-speed transactions. Relay nodes are distinct from participation nodes (which participate + drive PPoS consensus) - they simply direct traffic (i.e. an ISP). In order to reward early backers (i.e. relay node runners), a large amount of ALGO was allocated to them. This raises concerns of centralisation. Algorand have acknowledged this, and are now opening up relay node running to the community . This will, however, require more expensive hardware. The details are listed in the above source.

Moreover, the Algorand Foundation also own a significant portion of ALGO. However, the foundation is non-profit and this ALGO is used to fund R&D directly and issue developer grants. Because of this, the % the foundation own is diminishing over time.

Main Conclusion: ALGO appear to have favoured developing a stable blockchain and securing major partnerships first, before moving toward decentralisation second.

Final Conclusion: For a chain that launched only ~2y ago (June 2019), it has accomplished a great deal and its future, to me, seems extremely bright - however - only consider it if you're prepared to hold.

I ran into this coin earlier this year. Bought small amount and hold it. I didn't DCA further after finding out more coins will be released on the market over several years.

I also experiment with DeFi first time using Algorand chain. Funny cos I honestly thought my first DeFi experience would be on Cardano's chain. I'm too poor to use ETH chain.

I must say, I'm very impressed by how smooth and cheap the experience was. I haven't researched much on what's been going on with Algorand but I was surprised to see its dedicated ASA subreddit has 18k members. Memecoins and scam coins are booming in that sub. Almost every day there's an airdrop, either scam or not.

Usually, if I'm not mistake, this the sign the chain has good traction. Even when there are many scam coins running on it. I imagine like in Pancakeswap era.

Is Algorand's future that bright? Could it reach Top 5 one day? Are you all start swapping and allocating more ALGOS or experimenting with their ASAs? What ASA you most excited about?

I haven't seen any ASA hitting major exchanges so I'm curious if it'll be a thing one day?

Algorand just took another fall off the cliff with the rest of the crypto market, and broke it's all time low. The prior All Time Low was, $.1029 which occured during the March 13th 2020 Covid Crypto Crash.

In March 2020, the Algorand Circulating Supply was around ~700M. With a current circulating supply of over 7.2B, the supply has increased over 10X as the price has currently reached a new All Time Low. As every holder in Algorand is now at a loss.

Anyone thinking that Algorand has another 20x bull market up it's sleeve, should know a crypto with a supply that has increased over 10X is going to be harder to make big moves up. As the increase in supply will make it more difficult to have upwards momentum during a bull market.

Taking a look at what other crypto assets were doing on the March 13th 2020 Covid Crypto Crash.

BTC dropped to a low around: ~$4k

ETH dropped to a low around: ~$97

ADA dropped to a low around: ~$.02

Algo was at a low of around ~$.102

-------------------------------------------

Algorand now has a new low of ~$.0958 as all Algo holders are now underwater.

Good morning CC community. I just want to share this important news to everyone interested in blockchain tech and Algorand in particular.

On January 17th 2024, Algorand will release a whitepaper that outlines arguably the most important upgrade to its consensus protocol since its inception.

This historical upgrade includes the implementation of a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) gossip communication protocol and consensus incentivization. Though the technical implementation and detailed information is still not fully disclosed yet (we will have to wait until 17 Jan 2024), this P2P gossip communication protocol is expected to allow nodes in the network to communicate and share information directly with each other. This fully eliminates the dependence on Relay Nodes, the main source of network centralization criticized by blockchain advocates, thereby enhancing the network’s decentralization, resilience, and fault tolerance.

This historical upgrade will also introduce Algorand consensus incentivization, a mechanism designed to further encourage participation in the Algorand consensus process. By rewarding nodes for their contribution to the network’s security and stability, Algorand aims to foster a more robust and fully decentralized permissionless network. It's worth mentioning that it is extremely easy, low-cost, and no risk (no penalty, slashing, token locked up, etc.) to setup and run an Algorand participation node (you can literally do it with a Raspberry Pi at home).

It's an exciting time ahead for not only those in Algorand community but also in crypto space in general to see how these upgrades spark new innovation and advancement in blockchain technology.

It'll be great if you can also share what your fav blockchains are up to in 2024 in the comments.
Look forward to hearing from you all. Thank you!

Blockchain ecosystems are like cities: each one provides value that draws people to visit — ranging from business opportunities, community, entertainment, infrastructure, local governance, to plain personal preference. As the industry matures, people will have more reasons to visit different ecosystems, driving more value into cross-chain applications.

In order to access your source blockchain in new ecosystems, you need a reliable way to verify its “state” (a snapshot of account balances and transactions) in the new environment. This trustless infrastructure is currently missing from the market, so people have turned to trusted intermediaries, like centralized bridges and validator networks, to handle their assets. Layer-1 blockchains share a responsibility to reduce this trust threshold in order to protect on-chain value.

Algorand State Proofs (ASPs) are a new interoperability standard that extends trustless interactions beyond a blockchain’s native ecosystem. Through (efficient software that tracks blockchain state), they provide a simple, trustless interface to build powerful applications conditioned by multiple blockchains’ events. State Proofs can be implemented on all Proof of Stake chains, and will accelerate our collective path towards true decentralization.

Algorand State Proofs fortify cross-chain applications with Post-Quantum security. By using advanced cryptography, ASPs can withstand attacks by powerful quantum computers that try to alter the reported state of the blockchain, providing a robust, portable source of truth about on-chain data.

From trustless bridges that move assets across blockchains to decentralized oracles that export valuable on-chain data, people will be able to leverage Algorand’s fast, cheap, and reliable protocol in new ecosystems without trust in an intermediary–they only need to trust the security of the underlying blockchain itself.

Interoperability Problem

2021 was an exciting year for the blockchain industry, with a 1,200% growth¹ in the Total Value Locked (TVL) in global DeFi smart contracts, the rise of NFTs, and a diversification across many Layer-1 chains. The promise of a thriving, decentralized blockchain ecosystem is nearly here — yet, most dApps are constrained by the very platform they are built upon.

• Blockchain communities are looking for reliable ways to use their favorite dApps without paying expensive gas fees, dealing with network outages, or trusting intermediaries with their valued assets.

• Developers want to build on fast and inexpensive blockchains like Algorand, and want immediate access to an expanded user base and liquidity scattered across several ecosystems.

• Investors seek exciting opportunities on multiple platforms without switching chains or turning to more centralized alternatives.

• People want to send basic transactions across blockchains in a trustless manner.

Developers, creators, and investors are looking for interoperability solutions that break them out of their walled gardens. ASPs remove these boundaries and open the doors to cross-chain applications and liquidity.

Bridging Solution

To solve these interoperability problems, many companies have built bridges that move assets across blockchains. These “bridged” assets can be freely used in the target chain’s ecosystem: lent out as collateral for a loan, traded for another asset, or simply held in a wallet.

While bridges show promise, most solutions require people to trust the bridge operator or a set of delegates to store and move their assets in a secure, timely manner. With over $32 billion worth of assets already held in cross-chain bridges (up from $670 million at the start of 2021)², the industry has created a new, centralized attack surface with a large target.

We have an opportunity to eliminate trust from the interoperability equation, creating a new breed of trustless bridges and cross-chain applications that don’t compromise on cost, reliability, or security.

Algorand State Proofs

Introducing Algorand State Proofs: new blockchain infrastructure that connects Algorand to the broader world. ASPs are an that attest to the state of the Algorand blockchain. They let anyone track Algorand transactions, balances, and application data in low-power environments like a phone, smartwatch, and even inside a blockchain smart contract, without compromising on security — each ASP is produced by the same decentralized network that reaches on new blocks.

Due to their lightweight, portable nature, ASPs can be used to update Algorand light clients in other ecosystems. To lower costs in fee-constrained environments like Ethereum, Algorand will also produce even more compact zk-SNARK proofs that can be used to keep light clients up to date.

Applications like bridges, oracles, and wallets can query these light clients to cryptographically verify Algorand state in a simple, trustless manner. For example, say Alice wants to send Bob 10 AliceCoins from Algorand to Ethereum. AliceCoins are extremely valuable, so they want to make sure the tokens arrive quickly, safely, and without permission from or trust in an intermediary. Alice can send these tokens directly to Bob’s Ethereum wallet via a trustless bridge whose code-base is open to the public.

Behind the scenes, Alice would “lock” the tokens in the trustless bridge’s , which prevents her from creating duplicate tokens out of thin air. The bridge’s Ethereum smart contract would simply ask the Algorand light client (kept up-to-date by State Proofs) if Alice did, in fact, lock the tokens. Once verified, the bridge would mint and release an equivalent amount on Ethereum to Bob’s chosen wallet.

Similarly, the bridge can trustlessly mint and release bridged Ethereum assets into the Algorand ecosystem using Ethereum light clients. Bridge operators can create Algorand smart contracts that ask these light clients to validate Ethereum transactions (e.g. depositing ETH in an Ethereum smart contract) via Algorand’s . These light client pairs complete the import/export flow for bi-directional bridging.

The Big Picture

Algorand State Proofs fortify cross-chain applications with Post-Quantum security. By using advanced cryptography, ASPs can withstand attacks by powerful quantum computers that try to alter the reported state of the blockchain, providing a robust, portable source of truth about on-chain data.

From trustless bridges that move assets across blockchains to decentralized oracles that export valuable on-chain data, people will be able to leverage Algorand’s fast, cheap, and reliable protocol in new ecosystems without trust in an intermediary–they only need to trust the of the underlying blockchain itself.

Roadmap

Algorand State Proofs will be available soon, with our first milestone going live this month (March 2022). After next week’s consensus upgrade, the Algorand network will start registering the Post-Quantum secure voting keys used to generate ASPs.

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It would seem Algorand is currently bucking the trend and seeing some green in an otherwise red few days.

With that, it also jumped up to number 18 having held the number 21 spot a week ago. Today alone its overtaken Uniswap and Litecoin.

It seems to be performing well during this latest crash/dip/correction or whatever you want to call it.

It's left me feeling even more bullish on this project and got me thinking those that hold it are keeping a level head, where other investors seem to be losing theirs.

I've never understood the need or desire to sell when there's a dip, but looks like the Algonaughts are all on the same page.

Happy hunting, hope you've been enjoying these pre Christmas sales. Interested to know what you've been buying these past few days?

Please don’t shoot this down as ‘anti-eth’ or ‘complaining about gas fees’. I’m just curious what keeps other people here holding Eth? I am basically holding mine until fees drop and I can exit or the roll ups save me.

The other chains are more readily scalable, generally quicker and cheaper. Yes they aren’t as ‘big’ but, let’s be honest, for most of our purposes that is pretty irrelevant.

A lot of us invested in Algorand. I also bought some a few years ago. Back in those days, all of us were very bullish and positive. Algorand was all over Reddit and other social media websites and news websites. Algorand got some strong partners over the years.

Fast forward to 2023, and Algorand is a little under $0.11. Yet it used to trade at $3.15 in 2019 and $2.30 in 2021. Relative to Bitcoin, Algorand is even down 99% since 2019.

Actually, from the start of 2023:

So while Bitcoin is up 85% and Ethereum up 57%, Algorand is down 40%. This means that $1000 invested in these three cryptocurrencies would give you $1850 (Bitcoin), $1570 (Ethereum), or $600 (Algorand). That is an INSANE difference.

For perspective, XRP is 40% up, Litecoin 36% up, Polkadot 18% up, ADA 16% up, and Solana 120% up. Almost every other alt is outperforming Algorand since the start of the year.

What happened? Where did this go wrong? Cant believe how bad Algorand is performing.

Algorand Foundation has to be one of the worst run I've seen. I can't even begin to understand why they do these unless they're purposely trying to lose the money and dumping to friends/family/business partners.

They trusted and did deals with Three Arrows Capitol. Anyone in crypto knows not to deal with 3AC, something to the tune of 50 million US and tanking the price of Algo

Algorand Foundation lost another 35 million trying to yield a bit on a really unknown platform Hodlnaut

Staci Warden the CEO of the Algorand Foundation decided to toy with the emotions of Dozens of ALGO holders by tweeting the very cryptic message "NIKE".

World Cup deal that did nothing & lost more money

Borderless Capital. It was being presented as an independent investor, but if you look at their history they used to be called AlgoCapital or something. They never mention it anymore it was was displayed on their own Medium page etc.

I remember the big MyAlgo hack and them saying it was contractors who built it but I think the relationship was much closer than that. Sus at every corner. Why is there an Algo Inc and an Algo Foundation and why is one headquartered in Singapore? Years ago they said Algo Inc said they weren't going to participant in super yield but at the last minute a big wallet from the Algo Foundation jumped in and reduced everyone's %.

Algo fees are set by Algo holders. 1 Algo = 1 governance vote, meaning the whales control the vote. Whales who's entire purpose for existing is to make money from speculation fees. Who are they? Are they qualified? What's their agenda? Giant question mark.

This means that in order for the fee structure to change, a vote has to be put to these whales, the people directly incentivized to keep them high. And even if you could get them to lower the fees, this is reactionary, slow and means that an overnight pump of the coin price can still raise the fees the same amount.

How can mission critical applications be built on any network where the decisions are made by anonymous token holders? Makes zero sense, and that's aside from the floating fee structure of Algorand which also makes no sense for any serious enterprise solution.

Enterprise adoption needs predictable fees, not fees that could fluctuate daily. If you're an enterprise looking to adopt DLT tech which are you going to choose? Predictable easy to budget for costs or those that fluctuate?

The mistake that these other layer 1 DLT projects have made is in thinking they will be "the one coin to rule them all" and that everyone will be ok with fees denominated in their network coin, because everyone will be using the network and the coin so it won't matter.

There will be half a dozen layer 1's working in interoperability with each other and other satellite and support networks, & the correct approach will be denominating fees in USD

First off, it’s important to have an understanding of tokenomics and what the criteria for good tokenomics would be;

Tokenomics provide a way to assess how a token will be used and possibly provide insights into the potential success of a particular cryptocurrency.

The factors that underpin the makings of a well-developed token are the following:

1. Useful within the ecosystem

2. Resistant to inflation

3. Has the potential and ability to scale

4. High in value

5. Present on exchanges

There’s a common myth that Algorand has bad tokenomics, which seems to have spread pretty much unchallenged within the space due to what is now historical information.

But if we look at each point in turn we can prove that this is not the case.

Point 1. Useful within the ecosystem:

The Algorand token ALGO is used throughout the ecosystem to fund all transactions on the Algorand blockchain. It is vital to and is the root of all transactions, whether that be a payment, the creation of a smart contract, staking, defi, NFT, application- anything- all occurs via Algorands ALGO token. Point 1 then is ✅

Point 2. Resistant to inflation:

This is where most people originally obtained the opinion that Algorand was inflationary. A couple of years ago, there was much less supply in circulation and it is fair to say that inflation was high at that time. But that was a couple of years ago. There will only ever be 10bn Algorand in circulation and as I write this there is already 7.8bn in circulation. So 78% of Algo is already out. So the maximum inflation for this token is now only 22% FOREVER.

If you compare this to some other big projects you can see how good this is.

XRP has 53% in circulation out of 100bn, so that’s 4.3x the total supply of ALGO still yet to hit the market. 43 BILLION tokens! And yet I’ve never heard anyone say XRP has bad tokenomics.

SOL has an unlimited supply. So potentially unlimited inflation.

HBAR has 64% of its 50bn tokens released. Meaning it still has 18bn tokens to go! 1.8x the total supply of ALGO. Its current annual inflation rate is 44%!

Check the stats out for yourselves, you’d be surprised when you compare them.

Point 2 ✅

Point 3. Has the potential and ability to scale:

Algorand as a network is just getting started. They’ve spend the bear market building. Back in November 2021 ALGO had around 1500tps, this is now 10,000tps.

It’s now quantum secure.

Its finality time is up from 3.8 seconds to 3.3 seconds which is pretty unmatched in the industry.

It’s got deals with FIFA, the Bank of Italy, Limewire and lots more besides.

All within the bear market.

It’s just received a $50m investment from DWF labs which will easily fund the foundation until well after this bear market ends

Its founder is Silvio Micali. The OG of crypto. Probably the second most important person in crypto industry history next to Satoshi Nakamoto. Without Silvio’s work there couldn’t have been Bitcoin.

Here’s what Charles Hoskinson had to say about Silvio, Algorand and their team

And he’s also right about market adoption, this hasn’t started for Algorand yet in anywhere near the amount that it will. John Alan Woods, who is undeniably one of the best CTOs in crypto, has recently released ALGOKIT, which gives developers the best user experience in crypto. The Algorand foundation runs training courses for new developers in India, which is one of the biggest markets in the crypto space and is likely to be one of the main hubs for development in the future.

So does Algorand have the potential to scale in future- god yes ✅

Point 4. High in value:

Algorand is one of the top 50 cryptocurrencies in the world with a market cap of $860,000,000 so point 4 ✅

Should it be higher. Yes it should (see point 3)

Why isn’t it higher?

Two things have damaged Algorands price recently. A third party web wallet was hacked. This wasn’t anything to do with the Algo protocol, but it was one of the main wallets used by Algo holders.

At the end of the day though it wasn’t Algorand that was at fault, the blockchain was and is just as secure as ever.

The second thing that damaged the price was Gary Gensler. In the Bittrex case, Gensler accused ALGO of being a security. This was just before he went round naming other tokens like SOL, MATIC and ADA as securities and it certainly had the biggest impact on ALGOs price. People feared that it would be delisted by exchanges and the price would tank.

But we now know from the Ripple case that it depends on how the token was sold as to if it counts as a security, and that tokens sold via exchanges don’t fit that definition. So what do we know about ALGOs sales outside of exchanges? We know that the Algorand Foundation is based in Singapore, and held an ICO in Singapore which excluded US participants So in other words, the exchange sales are fine, non securities, and no exchange will delist ALGO- and the ICO sales were held in a way to specifically stay outside of the jurisdiction of the SEC. So there’s no court case for ALGO pending folks.

This price has been suppressed and some of us believe that it’s been suppressed for a reason.

Point 5. Present on exchanges:

ALGO is available to trade on all major centralised and decentralised exchanges. ✅

The market options for ALGO are just as big as for any other major cryptocurrency.

It’s also being used to bridge to other cryptocurrencies. During the recent PEPE boom, you could avoid huge gas fees by buying PEPE on Algo- which has virtually no gas fees. So you basically got $50 more worth of PEPE just by using Algo to buy it.

In summary, ALGO has brilliant tokenomics. When you see people saying that they don’t, they’re either working off old, now incorrect information, or they just don’t want to hear the truth.

Don’t listen to the fud (which will soon be available below).

Algorand has had a particularly hard bear market. First mass inflation lowered the relative value of all other Algo in circulation, the Algo Foundation selling on holders to promote "marketing", leadership changes within Algorand, and tons of controversy within the Foundation itself. Then concerns about being labelled a security by the SEC. With everything that has happened, Algorand just hit a new bear market low at $.1595. The prior low was $.1607 which occurred during the fall out of the FTX collapse.

While many Crypto assets like BTC +72%, ETH +55%, ADA +45% have made gains since then the FTX Collapse, Algorand just found a new bottom.

If Algo is destined to slowly bleed out, or if it can reach a new ATH in the next bull is up for debate. For now Algorand is continuing it's drop into apparent irrelevancy.

Decipher, Algorand's major conference, is currently underway. There, Gary Malouf, Head of Engineering at Algorand, and Rotem Hemo, Director of Product Management at Algorand, just announced that state proofs will come to Algorand in early 2022. With stateproofs, Algorand will be the first blockchain to provide a post-quantum security solution. On the roadmap are post-quantum secure catchup (integrating state proofs in to the catch-up process), zk-SNARK proofs (efficient and cheap verification of state proofs) and light clients (tools to help entities use state proofs). So your transactions will live forever on the blockchain.

Other exciting news in my opinion were:

• Francis Suarez, 43rd Mayor of Miami, has agreed to receive every other paycheck in Algo

• Hivemind, a $1.5 billion venture to institutionalize crypto investing, has selected Algorand as a strategic partner

• Moreover, bank-issued stablecoins ("Digital Deposit Receipts") will come to Algorand and Ethereum. VCAD was minted yesterday on the Algorand mainnet. US Dollar version will follow.

• AXA XL, the U.S. subsidiary of AXA S.A., the world's third-largest insurer, is working with Algorand on an art insurance platform (money for your art)

• One of the world's leading manufacturers/retailers will introduce a first-of-its-kind Buy Now, Pay Later platform on Algorand

• 1&1 is working on a digital-asset exchange and commerce engine that will create fungibility across cryptocurrencies, loyalty points, rewards, and fiat currencies

Algorand was one of the most hyped projects here during the 2020/2021 bull market. It had an amazing rise from $0.096 in May 2020 to about $3 in November 2021. We were all like:

Since then, however, Algorand has rolled over and performed much worse than most other alts. Let me summarize:

(1) Algorand just set a new bear market low

The price right now is $0.1548. This is 95% down from the November 2021 high and a price we have not seen since March 2020. A lot of other alts have not continued to make new lows but Algorand is one of the few projects that has done so. Other alts are also down a lot less.

(2) Algorand is the second worst performing asset over the past 90 days

While Bitcoin is up 8.8% in 90 days, Algorand is down 42.5%. Only Filecoin has performed worse over a 90 day period, but Filecoin is a terrible project with almost 100% inflation every year and it was marked as a security by the SEC.

(3) Algorand/Bitcoin keeps making new lows

Algorand is 98% down relative to Bitcoin since its highest point. 98%! And 90% relative to the November 2021 peak. Its just nonstop bleeding.

(4) The market cap just made a new bear market low

Even the market cap of Algo also just set a new bear market low. So even if you factor in the inflation of the token since all time high, the project is bleeding money.

So....

• What is wrong with Algorand? Why is it performing this bad relative to other alts?

• What does the future of Algorand hold? Is this a good moment to buy then and why (not)?

• Perhaps, given that everyone here is bearish on Algo now, it is time for it to pump and inverse us?

The following is taken directly from John Wood, CTO of Algorand Foundation. What do you think? Do you think this will help onboard the next millions of developers to blockchain technology?

"This Monday we'll release a developer preview of Python on Algorand.

It's taken over a year to build, with a multidisciplinary team of god-tier engineers - I'm proud of their work.

Python's simplicity brings inclusivity and drastically lowers engineering costs. Now anyone can build apps on Algorand using one of the most popular and powerful languages on Earth.

On a personal note, I think this is a watershed moment for Algorand. It was always great tech, now it's accessible.

Enjoy the preview, Production public release in February 2024 as part of AlgoKit 2.0."

Gary Gensler, the chairman of the SEC, promoted Algorand in one of his speeches at MIT on April 2019. He said:

Governance is tough. You could create uber or lift on top of a blockchain technology today - well, maybe in 5 years you could, it would have the performance. Silvio Micali's Algorand, who is a turing award winner at MIT that I work with. Silvio has got a great technology that you can create uber on top of it".

There's likely more of these comments.

Now, Gary Gensler said that Binance US sells unregistered securities, including Algorand. So Gary Gensler said positive things about a security to a large crowd, a security owned by his former coworker that he worked with.

Jeremy Hogan -the attorney famous for covering the SEC vs. Ripple case- quoted the law that was used to sue Kim Kardashian over the EthereumMax scam. This law is very relevant here:

So if Gensler was paid directly OR indirectly for this speech by a relevant party, he would definitely be able to get sued for shilling a security.

It would be poetic justice if he shot himself in the foot here and gets a taste of his own medicine.

Cardano has the biggest market capitalization when compared to other "Ethereum killers" even though it does not have working smart contracts yet. On the other hand, projects like Algorand, Cosmos, VeChain, Polkadot (considering Kusama), etc, have similar level of technology, have working dapps on the system, have great partnerships, have great names associated with them, such as, Gavin Wood (co-founder of eth, founder of Dot) and Silvio Micali (Turing award winner MIT professor, founder of Algo).

Here is the market cap as of April 30, 2021,

Cardano: 42.9 billion

Polkadot: 33.7 billion

VeChain: 12.9 billion

Cosmos: 4.7 billion

Algorand: 4.1 billion

How come these projects have smaller market capitalization than Cardano?

Let me explain: People believe in the "WHY" of the protocol. Most of us here believe in the vision. Banking the unbanked, decentralization, integrity and robustness through peer reviewed development. These are the things that we believe in. We don't think of Cardano as "eth killer", we want it to be a system on which nation states run. Most of us don't wake up and stare at the ada charts all day, we listen to Africa special. Some of you might believe in the "WHY" so strongly that you are developing on Cardano.

Other "eth killers" talk about "what" they are doing. But human as emotional creatures often do not give a damn about it. They will talk about making the protocol more interoperable, releasing a new version or something else they are working on but not "why" they are working on it. To replace Ethereum? To help Ethereum? To make money? To advance blockchain technology? There aren't strong enough "why's" to make people invest in your protocol.

This is the reason ADA doesn't dip as much compared to other protocols. Because some of us are waiting on the sidelines to accumulate more or do not panic sell because we have it staked. The reason we have it staked and accumulate more is because "WE BELIEVE IN THE VISION". We believe in the "WHY". We want people from third world countries to have identity and financial freedom. We want them to live a better life.

The value lies in the community and partnerships. Anybody can copy open source code into their protocols in minutes but no one can copy the government partnership. This is why the Africa deal is so special. This is why the 363K members in the sub are special. Each one of you are part of the reason cardano has value. All four of the above listed cryptos have combined 210k members. We are significantly bigger than all of them combined. There will always be more people who believe in the "WHY" than those whose care about the "WHAT".

I am not here to shitpost against other projects but just to give my views on why Cardano is more valuable. I actually do have small investments in some of these other projects.