Algorand (ALGO) Blockchain Activates Major Upgrade: What We Know
Algorand (ALGO), a veteran blockchain project, announces the activation of a crucial network software upgrade. It allows the blockchain to process transactions faster and equips Algorand-focused developers with a number of brand-new instruments.
Advanced tooling, speed, unmatched performance: Algorand's upgrade highlights
Yesterday, on June 22, 2023, the team of the proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain Algorand (ALGO) announced the activation of a major tech upgrade.
- The latest Algorand (ALGO) blockchain upgrade (technical release name go-algorand 3.16) is focused on improving performance, finality time and developer friendliness of the blockchain.
- For the first time ever, Algorand (ALGO) managed to reduce block latency to 3.3 seconds and accomplish instant block finality.
- In total, this marks an over 10% improvement of network performance with zero decentralization and security tradeoffs.
- The new upgrade also introduced a number of new developer tools for engineering, testing and research.
- The community appreciates the progress of Algorand; its ALGO token is 30% up in the last two weeks.
Potentially, the new upgrade can be a game changer for the entire ecosystem of decentralized applications (dApps) that leverage Algorand (ALGO) as a tech basis.
What is Algorand (ALGO)?
Introduced in 2017 by MIT professor Silvio Micali, Algorand (ALGO) is a programmable proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain. It means that it acts as a platform for smart contracts and, therefore, is capable of hosting decentralized applications (dApps) of various types.
Algorand's (ALGO) progress is backed by Algorand Foundation Ltd., a Singapore-based non-profit, and Algorand Corporation, a for-profit entity registered in Boston, U.S. Besides Silvio Micali, CPO Paul Riegle and CFO Matthew Commons are known as key figureheads of the Algorand (ALGO) project.
Algorand (ALGO) launched its first public testnet iteration in April 2019. In June 2019, mainnet operations of the blockchain kicked off.
As per DappRadar statistics, Algorand (ALGO) is a technical platform for 31 decentralized applications: DeFi protocols, NFT marketplaces, on-chain games, gambling protocols, Web3 social media and so on. The platform's codebase is written in TEAL, Reach, Java, PyTeal, Python, Go, Rust, i.e., the most popular programming languages.
What makes Algorand (ALGO) special?
Thanks to balanced and battle-tested tech design, Algorand (ALGO) is popular amid developers from various regions across the globe. Algorand (ALGO) is one of rare blockchains that has onboarded both largest stablecoins by market capitalization, U.S. Dollar Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC).
Also, Algorand (ALGO) is a participant and partner of many central bank digital currency (CBDC) initiatives proposed by various countries.
Alex DovbnyaNamely, Italy and Australia have their CBDC experiments hosted by the Algorand (ALGO) blockchain.
As covered by U.Today previously, Algorand (ALGO) is the first blockchain that became fully carbon-neutral, offsetting all its carbon emissions.
What is ALGO?
Algorand's cryptocurrency ALGO is a core native utility and governance asset of the platform. Its maximum supply is capped at 10,000,000,000 coins, while 7,635,716,196 ALGO have already been released to circulation.
In terms of protocol design, ALGO tokens are used to reward stakers for their contribution to network stability and integrity.
With a market capitalization of $960 million, Algorand's ALGO is the 44th largest cryptocurrency by net market cap. It is available on all major centralized exchanges as well as on Algorand's native DEXes Tinyman and 4swap.
Algorand (ALGO) upgrade: Comprehensive guide
The recently activated upgrade (go-algorand 3.16) marks a significant milestone of Algorand's progress toward solving the blockchain trilemma in a novel manner.
Algorand (ALGO) upgrade: Basics
As per an official announcement shared by representatives of Algorand Foundation on social media channels and the developers portal, the major technology upgrade was activated on Algorand on June 22, 2023.
1/ Major Protocol Upgrade unleashes 3.3 second transaction finality on #Algorand and incorporates key new features for streamlining application development 👉 https://t.co/3LylJ7XWnt pic.twitter.com/v64yrnmI17
— Algorand (@Algorand) June 22, 2023
The upgrade reduced block finality time for end users by over 10%: This metric reached 3.3 seconds for the first time in the history of the blockchain.
Also, the blockchain ecosystem received new-gen developer tools: Simulate, a powerful simulator for smart contracts, and Conduit, a tool for flexible and eased data access.
Paul Riegle, chief product officer at Algorand, stressed the importance of the new developer tools for all Web3 engineers:
We are hyper focused on Algorand providing the best tech for developers to engage with and end users to experience. Through these new capabilities, builders can get higher quality dApps to market faster through customized data sets and faster and more efficient testing
Finally, developers received a clutch of powerful tech tools, including the likes of group resource sharing for application calls, devmode timestamp control for testing dApps and new Algod endpoints for transaction group state updates.
Algorand (ALGO) upgrade: Speed and block finality
The reduction of block finality time was the backbone element of the aforementioned upgrade. Simply put, it makes transactions faster for end users. This, in turn, results in better user experience and makes Algorand-based dApps more attractive for Web3-focused customers.
To accomplish this goal, the Algorand (ALGO) developers employed a number of technical advantages, including the likes of opportunistic compression of proposal messages, an Elastic rate limiter and congestion manager to effectively handle network congestion caused by noisy peers and a networking identity challenge to prevent duplicate peer connections.
As a result, the new blockchain software guarantees optimized disk, CPU and node memory usage to decrease the time required for adding transactions to the blockchain.
Algorand (ALGO) upgrade: Tooling
Besides transaction logic optimizations, the Algorand team included a number of developer-facing improvements into the upgrade. For instance, developers are now able to control the block timestamp when in devmode.
The launch of Simulate, a cutting-edge simulator of transactions, comes with two big enhancements. Developers can now work with an increased amount of logging allowed for smart contracts and an enlarged opcode budget allowed for smart contracts.
Besides that, Algod, Algorand's node software, becomes able to return data to the ledger as a result of individual transaction groups. All these advances are poised to make Algorand (ALGO) more developer-friendly as competition in the segment of programmable blockchains accelerates.
Algorand (ALGO) upgrade: How can I benefit from it?
The new upgrade to the Algorand (ALGO) blockchain unlocks a variety of opportunities for traders, developers and entrepreneurs to leverage ALGO resources.
- For traders. The successful release of the go-algorand 3.16 upgrade excited the community of Algorand (ALGO), so that the interest in the ALGO token increased. In the last 14 days, its price spiked from $0.1 to over $0.132, printing more than 30% growth.
- For developers. As Algorand (ALGO) now has more developer-friendly engineering and testing resources, working with its codebase becomes easier. It can be chosen by newbie devs as a way to try the disruptive power of the blockchain.
- For dApps users. With the increased block verification time and almost zero latency, all applications on the Algorand (ALGO) blockchain now work faster than ever.
- For businesses and projects. As Algorand (ALGO) becomes more competitive in terms of usability, performance and developer experience, more and more products will choose it as the platform for blockchain transformation.
Contributors to the novel Algorand (ALGO) upgrade highlighted that it is designed to commemorate the fourth anniversary of mainnet operations of their product.
Wrapping up
The Algorand (ALGO) upgrade go-algorand 3.16 was activated in mainnet on June 22, 2023. It reduced the block finality time for end users by over 10% to 3.3 seconds. It also introduced an array of new tools for developers designed to ease the engineering and testing processes on Algorand (ALGO).
Arman Shirinyan
Alex Dovbnya
Dan Burgin