Announcing Full Open Source Availability of the Algorand Blockchain
Algorand is delivering a scalable, secure and decentralized blockchain to enable our developer community to thrive and realize new opportunities. As part of that mission, we believe that making our code open source is critical to the success of the project. Over the past year, we have open sourced several of our projects including our implementation of a Verifiable Random Function and all of our Developer SDKs.
Today we’re excited to announce another significant milestone: the Algorand node repository has been open sourced and is now publicly available. Developers can access the Go-Algorand repository right now at: https://github.com/algorand/go-algorand
Today’s announcement includes several other important news items for developers, including analytics tools for applications, details on our bug bounty program, and more. Here’s everything you need to know.
Putting Developers First
In addition to building out our first of its kind protocol, one of our first major initiatives as a company was to build a developer relations team responsible for creating tools and resources to enable people who want to build on the platform. That includes our SDKs and our developer website, where we publish documentation and APIs to provide deeper insight into what’s possible on Algorand.
These developer tools have led to the development of real-world use cases built on Algorand in areas like media, entertainment, real estate, and financial services. Use cases are continuing to grow, especially with our active community at https://community.algorand.org.
Data Insights and Simplicity for DApp Development
Our goals are to make it easier for developers to build on Algorand and give them a clear vision for how their users are engaging with their solution to solve real-world problems. To that end, we’re excited to announce a partnership with Flipside Crypto to provide a free user engagement analytics suite. This free analytics suite gives Algorand-based developers a superior level of user insight, helping them build the best DApps possible.
To date, DApp development has meant a lot of trial and error. Developers are flying blind, building applications without insight into user behavior, interactions, or what’s going in and out of their DApps. As a result, it has been difficult to measure DApp success or to make targeted enhancements.
The Flipside Crypto toolset solves these problems, bringing the insight and intelligence needed for developers to build better applications. It allows developers to annotate their DApp addresses; monitor the live number of active addresses, incoming transactions, and outgoing transactions; compare their DApp’s activity to other DApps on Algorand’s platform; and more.
If you’re a DApp building on Algorand, you can request the free analytics suite from Flipside Crypto by emailing hello@flipsidecrypto.com.
Foundational Security
We take the security of our platform very seriously. Algorand’s core technology has been rigorously peer-reviewed and published as academic papers. To learn more about the security of our platform, you can view those papers here and here, as well as a summary of our core technology here.
In addition, the protocol itself has gone through deep audits and reviews from both internal and external parties. We chose to work with firms that we consider to be market leaders with deep security expertise, such as Trail Of Bits, NCC and InCodeWeTrust. Each security review brought important perspective to the integrity of our platform through code audits and testing. You can read the full results of the source code review performed by InCodeWeTrust here.
We Want to Make Algorand Even Better
We understand the hard work that goes into security research. To show our appreciation for researchers who help keep their fellow community members safe, we operate a public bug bounty program with rewards for responsibly disclosed vulnerabilities, as well as a vulnerability disclosure program. Our goal is to both reward and recognize those that operate in a responsible manner for the greater good.
Developer documentation is available in the GitHub repository README, which provides information on building Algorand from source, contributing to the public repos, reporting bugs and filing issues. It also includes a project layout to help you understand the architecture of the Algorand platform. We actively want your participation to help us grow the project and work towards our collective future.
All of today’s announcements are important milestones on the path to fulfilling Algorand’s long-term vision for developers and our project. As blockchain technology continues to grow and evolve, we look forward to continuing to provide a platform that lives up to the promise of true decentralization and scalability. We hope you join us as we enter a new era where you’re no longer constrained by immature technology and can build opportunity in a new borderless economy.
