Algorand & It’s Enterprise Solutions.
What is Algorand?
Algorand is described as a self-sustaining, decentralized blockchain that is known for supporting a wide range of applications.
The Algorand mainnet went live in June 2019, and the blockchain is capable of handling almost 1 million transactions per day.
Algorand has a max supply of 10,000,000,000 ALGO and currently, 66% of the supply is in circulation, and Algorand’s Ticker is ALGO
So, That’s some basics on ALGO. Let’s deep dive into 8 use cases based on Enterprise solutions.
1. Ushering the future of Finance.
Algorand has introduced its DeFi Concept as Future of Finance aka FutureFi.
As we all know, cross-border payments are growing rapidly throughout the day. In addition, many of the features of these types of solutions are quickly adopted to satisfy the increasing demand for faster and highly secure payment infrastructures.
Nowadays, blockchain technology can bring a lot of benefits such as not needing to trust a third party such as a bank to verify transactions and lower transaction fees.
Here are some of the major characteristics related to payment operations that can be improved using distributed ledger technology(DLT).
Security
A blockchain represents a decentralized network of nodes or servers.
In public blockchain networks, these nodes are available throughout the globe so anyone can participate in validating transactions.
so blockchain networks can survive possible attacks or any other improper malicious acts as well.
this helps to ensure trust and safety because blockchains usually use cryptographic algorithms like SHA256 which reverse engineering is impossible as of nowadays technology.
Transaction Speed and fees
Traditional finance systems used nowadays are not scalable nor efficient these days as crypto assets have become challenging for those systems, especially in cross-border payments.
as an example,
While the SWIFT network takes a fee of about $15 and 2–3 days for the deposit to arrive, Algorand takes almost a fee of 0.001 AlGO which is worth 0.00093 USD as of 29/3/2021 11:09 (GMT +5.30) and less than 45 seconds for the payment.
Here’s a photo of the blockchain confirmation for this transfer.
I am not sharing any transaction IDs etc to maintain anonymity.
In this case, the sender has sent 0.991 ALGO, which is 0.92 USD as of press time.
So in this case,
(0.001/0.991)*100%=0.1% of the transaction was used for the payment.
This proves how much scalable and efficient are blockchain payments when considering cross-border payments.
Flexibility
While the traditional finance systems sometimes cannot accept micropayments, blockchains allow companies and entities to receive Micropayments, large transactions, and programmable transactions that can be conducted across the globe.
2. Algorands features for the payment Infrastructure
In this case, we will be discussing Algorand’s Proof Of Stake (POS) blockchain’s contribution to enterprise solutions.
This PoS was developed by MIT Professor, Silvio Micali.
Here are the main features which are provided by Algorand’s PoS blockchain.
Decentralization
Algorand is currently the only network that solves the Blockchain Trilemma.
This means that Algorand can provide true decentralization, security along scalability.
Security
Algorand is an unforkable blockchain that has no single point of failure, so a 51% attack is almost impossible.
Scalability
the protocol can scale nicely without compromising block speed and final output.
Low-cost
the standard transaction cost on Algorand is about 0.001 ALGO per transaction, which makes a big difference for payment systems, while Ethereum’s transaction fee is at least 37 GWEI on press time which is 2.45 USD, according to the Ethereum Gas Tracker.
Developer-friendly
Developing in Algorand is much easier with very nice documentation and tutorials which you can find here.
Developers can get exposure to a massive set of tools and features which includes smart contracts, a wide range of assets including atomic transfers.
Algorand should be your best choice to develop a payment infrastructure as its smart contracts can be configured in many ways.
3. Algorand Partners with Circle
To Provide algorand users with a USD stablecoin, Algorand has partnered with Circle- a fintech payment solution that enables businesses and organizations to leverage the power of stablecoins along with compliance.
4. Algorand Partners with Bleumi Pay
Businesses and developers who are looking for different types of payment processing gateways on the algorand network are welcome to look into existing use cases, as the network has already been adopted in the payment industry.
One of the best examples will be Bleumi Pay.
Bleumi is a non-custodial crypto payment solution that is developed mainly targeting E-Commerce.
Thanks to this partnership, Bleumi Pay supports ALGO, Algorand Standard Assets (ASA), including USDC, as well as any future Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) which is expected to be implemented on the Algorand Blockchain as well.
5. Algorand Arrives at Tether
Algorand integrates with Tether, the biggest algorithmic stablecoin in the industry, to improve scalability issues on its native OMNI network.
By using Algorand- based USDT, users can eliminate massive waiting times and higher transaction costs as well.
In this case, the USDT is transferred as a Layer 2 while algorand stays at layer 1 improving scalability and efficiency.
6. Algorand Integrates with AlgoFi
AlgoFi is Algorands’ Ultimate DeFi Solution For Lending and Borrowing.
The specialty of DeFi is that there is no KYC, so no strings attached.
Users can Lend and Borrow across the globe without any intermediaries, which is very essential in cross-border payments as well.
Simply connect your wallet, deposit collateral, and get borrowed instantly.
So, no need for a bank manager to approve it for you😉
Yes, It’s that simple 😊
7. Integrating with the world's best NFT marketplaces.
While there are many kinds of NFT marketplaces built on ALGO, I will be talking about AB2Gallery.
AB2Gallery is a leading NFT marketplace built on Algorand along with features of DeFi.
This type of NFT marketplace connects creators across the globe with collectors of their NFTs, which is also a very good solution for creators who are willing to connect with different NFT buyers and Sellers despite global restrictions.
8. Combining the Power of DeFi and DAO Together.
The specialty in the Algorand Blockchain is that DeFi aka Decentralized Finance and DAO aka Decentralized Autonomous Organizations are combined together.
One of that kinds of projects is XBacked.
XBacked is building a decentralized, permissionless stablecoin on Algorand, fully backed by crypto assets instead of centralized assets.
Using Collateralized Debt Positions (CDPs), they ensure that all xUSD minted is backed by more than $1 in underlying collateral in their protocol.
Also according to their website, xBacked is leveraging Algorand to run their protocol and they are using Reach to build their smart contracts, and deploy them onto the Algorand blockchain.
This also helps for cross-border payments as people have the freedom to access their money anytime, anywhere, without relying on a counterparty.
So, here we come to the end of this article.
Hope you enjoyed this simple article along with some explanation of how Algorand is building Cross border payments via its beautiful infrastructure.
Hope this helps, and if you are interested to look more around algorand, feel free to visit https://ecosystem.algorand.com/ for more details.
See you next time 😉
#Algorand #ALGO #EnterpriseSolutions
