Algorand

TL;DR

Algorand introduces a highly efficient, democratic public ledger system that overcomes scalability issues of previous implementations by using a novel Byzantine agreement protocol, enabling secure and transparent transactions.

Contribution

It presents a new blockchain protocol that is scalable, democratic, and requires minimal computation, addressing key limitations of prior proof-of-work systems.

Findings

Algorand achieves high probability of no forks in transaction history.

The protocol is highly scalable and energy-efficient.

It enables secure, transparent, and democratic transaction processing.

Abstract

A public ledger is a tamperproof sequence of data that can be read and augmented by everyone. Public ledgers have innumerable and compelling uses. They can secure, in plain sight, all kinds of transactions ---such as titles, sales, and payments--- in the exact order in which they occur. Public ledgers not only curb corruption, but also enable very sophisticated applications ---such as cryptocurrencies and smart contracts. They stand to revolutionize the way a democratic society operates. As currently implemented, however, they scale poorly and cannot achieve their potential. Algorand is a truly democratic and efficient way to implement a public ledger. Unlike prior implementations based on proof of work, it requires a negligible amount of computation, and generates a transaction history that will not "fork" with overwhelmingly high probability. Algorand is based on (a novel and super fast) message-passing Byzantine agreement. For concreteness, we shall describe Algorand only as a money platform.