Algorand — here’s why crypto lovers are so bullish on this ‘Ethereum Killer’

The crypto project behind the
ALGO token may not be as well known as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano or Solana — at least in the Indian crypto ecosystem — but it’s one of the many projects to watch out for today. At the time of writing, the ALGO token was trading on
WazirX at ₹110, having moved between ₹132-140 during the recent crypto downturn, unlike larger currencies that recorded big drops. The token is ranked at number 40 on the exchange.

It is also one of the few projects that has its own investment arm, called Borderless Capital. The Miami-based venture capital firm announced a new $500 million fund on November 30 to invest in the Algo DeFi ecosystem.

What is Algorand?

Like every other public blockchain platform, Algorand is also a
decentralised network. However, this one aims to solve the ‘blockchain trilemma’, and tackles the three big problems that the ecosystem faces today — speed, scalability and security. It was launched in 2019 by Turing award winning computer scientist and MIT professor, Silvio Micali.

Micali created Algorand to be a payments focused network, not unlike Bitcoin, but with the ability to handle many more transactions — 1,200 transactions per second (TPS) — and it’s set to touch around 3,000 TPS after an upcoming update that adds ‘instant finality’ to the network. In comparison Bitcoin can handle just under 5 TPS, while Ethereum can handle approximately 13 TPS.

This is an important feature, since it helps achieve scalability, one of the biggest roadblocks in the crypto space today, and also why some peg ALGO to be among the ‘
Ethereum Killers’. Existing payments systems from Visa and Mastercard can process 1,700 and 5,000 transactions, respectively, and what comes in the way of scaling crypto apps is the fact that transactions can take a long time to process.

It also uses the ‘pure-proof-of-stake’ (PPoS)…