Blockchain technology has gained substantial attention over the last few years as its use cases continue to emerge. Various institutions and business organisations are interested in integrating this technology in their operations to benefit from its efficiency, cost effectiveness and improved performance. The crypto community insiders even consider this breakthrough to be the panacea for humanity’s problem whether financial, political, or environmental.
But, the technology’s limitations have been laid bare in the past couple of years as more people, projects and organisations experiment with the existing blockchains. These shortcomings often referred to as the blockchain trilemma have made the adoption of the technology across various sectors difficult. This is because the consensus mechanism used by various blockchain cannot provide the necessary security, scalability and decentralisation to support its adoption across various mainstream institutions.
However, this should not be a problem any longer as Algorand has developed a highly innovative blockchain that effectively tackles the trilemma and introduces new inventions that greatly extend the technology’s applicability across multiple sectors.
Algorand blockchain
Algorand has built and developed the world’s first open, permissionless, pure proof-of-stake blockchain protocol that, without forking, provides the necessary security, scalability, and decentralization needed for today’s economy. The protocol enables interested parties to create decentralised layer 1 applications directly on Algorand through the power of smart contracts. This grants them the same speed, scale, finality and security as the Algorand blockchain itself.
The Algorand blockchain has a sophisticated and robust network architecture that is ideally designed to extend its application across multiple sectors like finance, governance, ecommerce, and gaming among many others.
Among these use cases, advancing finance is the immediate focus of Algorand’s award-winning Algorand team. They are keen to use this ground-breaking blockchain to facilitate frictionless finance for both legacy and decentralised financial businesses. Algorand blockchain is specifically designed to support the creation of financial instruments and other tools that make capital more accessible across the globe.
The team recently affirmed their dedication to enabling frictionless finance with the launch of Algorand 2.0. This upgrade further advanced the protocol’s technology and introduced these new features to pave the way for the development of sophisticated applications:
- Smart contracts – Comprehensive smart contract capabilities enable DeFi solutions and dApps that can scale to billions of users, tens of millions of daily transactions, with negligible transaction fees
- ASA – Algorand Standard Assets are standard blockchain assets with customizable options, directly in Layer-1
- Atomic transfers – Secure transfers and immediate transaction settlement for multiparty transactions built in Layer-1
These new inventions will, individually or combined, expand Algorand’s applicability in different economic sectors that will further push the technology towards mass adoption.
Algorand partnerships
Algorand’s breakthrough creation has blown a breath of fresh air into the crypto space that has reignited the flames of disruption, shining a light on the technology’s limitless possibilities. Crypto insiders and outsiders have all taken note of these developments, spurring an interest in this new blockchain. This has spiralled into some high-level partnerships with the likes of Tether, USDC and the Marshall Island government.
Tether (USDT) became the first stablecoin to go live on Algorand following the platform’s partnership with the blockchain company on Feb. 10, 2020. The launch brought new capabilities to Tether users in the form of instant confirmations, micro payments and automatic wallet support.
On Sept. 9 2020, blockchain consortium, Centre announced that Algorand will begin supporting their stablecoin, USDC, through their newly formed partnership. This made Algorand only the second blockchain to support USDC, after Ethereum, and it is with good reason. It enables users to transfer the stablecoin faster and cheaply at over 1,000 TPS and 1/20th of a cent.
The blockchain entered into perhaps one of its greatest partnerships on March 2, 2020 following an announcement that the Marshall Island government had chosen Algorand as the platform on which they would develop their CBDC named SOV. SFB Technologies, the company contracted by the Marshallese government to create the SOV cited Algorand’s speed, scalability and security as the reasons behind their choice.
Besides these, Algorand has an impressive list of high-profile partnerships that include IDEX, World Chess, Society of Authors and Publishers (SIAE), the International Blockchain Monetary Reserve (IBMR), AssetBlock, and CERN among others.
ALGO price performance
Algorand’s recent developments have had a similarly positive impact on the market. ALGO, the blockchain’s native token, has performed remarkably well over the past few months reaching a new high of $0.62 in over a year.
ALGO is currently trading at around $0.55, a 18% weekly growth.
ALGO’s price is currently on an upward momentum having hovered around the $0.2 level for a long time, since Oct. 2019. The token experienced a brief price surge in Aug. 2020 that was quickly corrected back to the $0.2 region. This setback provided the foundation for the current rally that began towards the end of 2020. This is properly indicated by an approximate price increase of 130% over the past 90 days, 67% in the last 30 days and 18% a week-to-date.
Put into context, ALGO is on a sustained bull run as its price has risen by about 136% year-to-date.
To sustain this momentum, ALGO needs to stay above the critical support level of $0.5. A decline below this level could signify a trend reversal while a surge beyond $0.6 is an encouraging bullish sign. Therefore, traders should watch out for its key resistance levels at $0.40, $0.60, $0.65, and $0.70.
Looking forward, the market is exhibiting generally positive sentiments about Algorand as they await to see the direction that this blockchain takes. As the protocol’s use cases continue to grow and with new partnerships on the horizon, ALGO has the potential to break out past its current resistance levels and even set a new all-time-high price.
