Algorand: Circle Announces Support For USDC Stablecoin On Algorand Blockchain, 1-Year Anniversary of Algorand Mainnet, The Blockchain Game Alliance Announced Algorand As A New Member, Republic Note, a Next-Generation Profit Sharing Token, Will Launch on Algorand
Biweekly update 18th June — 4th July
Hello, and welcome to our biweekly recap on Algorand, which has already become a wonderful tradition! Over the past two weeks, a lot of news and events took place within the Algorand Ecosystem! So let’s have a brief overview! On June 19th, the Algorand team celebrated one year since the Mainnet release. The project surpassed a lot of milestones — check their year-summing video to learn more!
The work is going steadily on the development side. Following the release of V2 API, the updated samples for Algorand Assets and Atomic Transfers were published. The Assets examples cover creating, modifying, sending, freezing, revoking, and destroying an Algorand’s layer 1 Assets. The Atomic Transfer examples explain how to combine multiple transactions into one grouped operation where all transactions either pass or fail.
Over the past two weeks, Algorand was frequently featured in various media, videos, and articles. It’s highly recommended to check out the new Base Layer Episode with Muneeb Ali from Blockstack and Steve Kokinos from Algorand. Blockstack and Algorand, have jointly announced an independent open-source project to support a first-of-its-kind smart contract language, Clarity. They talk about the why, what, and how and dig deeper into how Clarity uses a “decidable” language, meaning that developers can know, with mathematical certainty, what a program will and will not do ahead of time. This shift addresses a key obstacle currently preventing large-scale, serious use in their opinion. For more media highlights, check the update below.
You can also check an extensive article highlighting Algorand’s approach to the Right to Be Forgotten by Silvio Micali.
A lot of progress was made with partnerships and integrations. Firstly, Circle, Coinbase will Bring USDC Stablecoin to Algorand’s Blockchain. Through this agreement, Circle will add support for digital dollar stablecoins that are interoperable with USDC, enabling customers of Circle Business Accounts and Circle APIs to quickly move funds between traditional banks and card networks to digital dollars on the Algorand blockchain. Customers will be able to have custody and manage accounts and payments activity through Circle APIs and gain the speed, security, and throughput advantages of Algorand’s blockchain. Furthermore, Algorand has been selected as the blockchain infrastructure layer for the Republic Note. This innovative profit-sharing token will be offered to both accredited and retail investors starting July 16th. Algorand was chosen for its breakthrough proof-of-stake design, which allows the Republic to fulfill the demands of a regulated security token that trades freely among potentially millions of investors.
By the way, Algorand’s development and social media activity show quite positive dynamics. Join the official channels to keep Yourself tuned with all the Algorand news and updates. Stay safe and see You in two weeks!
Development
As pointed out in last week’s article, Algorand has a new V2 API. This API upgrade was released in conjunction with a new Open API specification for the algod process. This process is responsible for handling the Algorand protocol for a node and provides endpoints for submitting all types of transactions, registering participation keys, reading account data, checking the node status, and many other functions. This new specification allows to optimize for working with the blockchain data in its low-level format while moving many of the searching and aggregating features to the new Indexer. This upgrade is implemented in all four (Python, JavaScript, Java and Go) SDKs, and provides many improvements for developers, including new transaction builders with optional parameter support, that make managing transactions very simple.
With these updated SDKs, they are currently working through the developer site to update all the samples to illustrate using the new features. They released the updated samples for Algorand Assets and Atomic Transfers. The Assets examples cover the process of creating, modifying, sending, freezing, revoking, and destroying an Algorand’s layer 1 Assets. The Atomic Transfer examples provide details on how to combine multiple transactions into one grouped operation where all transactions either pass or fail.
In addition to the revised code, all examples for V1 and V2 of the APIs are being made available on the documentation GitHub site.
Check out the latest developer resources at developer.algorand.org
Social encounters
Some key takeaways:
Muneeb and Steve join Base Layer to talk about a big joint venture. Blockstack and Algorand, have jointly announced an independent open-source project to support a first-of-its-kind smart contract language, Clarity. Recognizing the need for smart contract languages that are more safe, secure, and predictable in order to mature the industry beyond its current state, teams run by Blockstack Founder Dr. Muneeb Ali, a Princeton Ph.D in computer science, and Algorand Founder Dr. Silvio Micali, a computer science professor at MIT, will collaborate on Clarity design and development. They talk about the why, what, and how and dig deeper into how Clarity uses a “decidable” language, meaning, according to the team, developers can know, with mathematical certainty, what a program will and will not do ahead of time. This shift addresses a key obstacle currently preventing large-scale, serious use in their opinion.
- Algorand’s Approach to the Right to Be Forgotten By Silvio Micali
Algorand embraces the RTBF by design. It enables and in fact encourages users and developers alike to work with RTBF. Fundamental rights benefit all, but scientists and legislators must work together to ensure that, whenever possible the enforcement of this right remains compatible with other great benefits such as trust and transparency provided by a public and truly decentralized blockchain. Read more in the paper above!
David Markley of Algorand’s Business Solutions group told that:
“Blockchain enables people to transact in a secure and transparent way, and the adoption of this technology in gaming represents a significant increase in the global markets that gaming publishers can tap into.”
Check the link above for more!
- Algorand Review: High Performance (DeFi) Blockchain by Young And Investing
Finance
- Algorand X Ledgible
- Algorand X Exosus
- Norwegian exchange Kaupang Krypto has listed ALGO
For any norwegians in the community: Kaupang Krypto now offers buying and selling of ALGO. Read more in the article!
Roadmap
By combining cutting-edge research and innovation with an ecosystem that enables ease and speed of development, the Algorand Foundation strives to anticipate and fulfill future technology needs.
The Algorand Foundation has contracted with Algorand, Inc. to begin development on several advancements to the foundational Algorand public blockchain.
VAULT™
Vault is a blockchain compression technology that allows new users to immediately join and participate in the Algorand network without a burdensome download.
View Whitepaper: Vault: Fast Bootstrapping for the Algorand Cryptocurrency
Algorand’s Forthcoming Technology, by Silvio Micali
PIXEL
Pixel is a new digital signature scheme built for Proof of Stake systems that reduce space requirements through committee member signature aggregation while maintaining forward-security through key rotation.
Pixel-signatures: Efficient and Secure Digital Signatures for Proof-of-Stake Blockchains
Algorand’s Forthcoming Technology, by Silvio Micali
SELF-VALIDATING TRANSACTIONS
Self-validating transactions are an advance that allows separation of consensus and storage to enhance the efficiency and the logical structure of the Algorand blockchain.
Algorand’s Forthcoming Technology, by Silvio Micali
ATOMIC² SWAPS
Atomic² swaps leverage Algorand’s instant transaction finality and implement same-chain swaps of assets, without any type of time- or hash-locks, in a single transaction.
Algorand’s Forthcoming Technology, by Silvio Micali
POST-AND-SALE TRADES
An exchange of assets usually requires interactivity: prior to delivering the asset, a seller must find a buyer and negotiate terms. Post-and-sale trade technology will allow any seller to post assets for sale, at a given price. Any buyer can browse these offers, pay the price and receive the asset immediately without having to interact at all with the seller or any third party.
Algorand’s Forthcoming Technology, by Silvio Micali
SMART² CONTRACTS
Smart contracts permit trusted transactions and agreements to be carried between parties around the world without the need of a trusted third party, but they can be slow and expensive.
Smart² contracts™ leverage Algorand’s consensus mechanism to offer faster and cheaper forms of smart contracts.
Partnerships and team members
Through this agreement, Circle will add support for digital dollar stablecoins that are interoperable with USDC, enabling customers of Circle Business Accounts and Circle APIs to easily move funds between traditional banks and card networks to digital dollars on the Algorand blockchain. Customers will be able to have custody and manage accounts and payments activity through Circle APIs, and gain the speed, security and throughput advantages of Algorand’s blockchain.
“The combination of USDC and Circle Platform Services with the Algorand blockchain will create a foundation for developing a wide range of scalable, secure and compliant financial applications,” said Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and CEO of Circle, in a statement.
Also read on Blockchain Council and Cointelegraph.
Algorand has been selected as the blockchain infrastructure layer for the Republic Note, an innovative profit-sharing token that will be offered to both accredited and retail investors starting July 16. Algorand was chosen for its innovative proof-of-stake design, which allows Republic to fulfill the demands of a regulated security token that trades freely among potentially millions of investors.
A first of its kind innovation as a profit-sharing token, the Republic Note pays holders when startups and private equities that are funded through certain Republic investment platforms are acquired or go public. Payment will be made in the form of a stablecoin, and is proportional to the amount held by the investor. The Republic Note also offers investor perks, including investment vouchers, waitlist priorities, and other platform benefits.
- A tale of tokens and sensors by PlanetWatch
Some of you might have noticed that new assets with coloured icons are populating the Algorand TestNet, (see an example here). Technically speaking, these digital assets are called non-fungible tokens (NFTs)
The interesting bit is that these digital assets, living in the fancy blockchain world, are linked to very tangible objects: air quality sensors currently in the hands of PlanetWatch Beta Testers. Since each NFT has UNIQUE attributes, it can be used to represent a unique object in the real world, such as a sensor with its own serial number. Each sensor in the Planetwatch network is associated with a NFT on the Algorand blockchain. Such NFTs can be regarded as digital sensor property certificates. In fact, the Planets generated by the data streams linked to a sensor will only be paid into the wallet containing the relevant NFT. Thanks to Rand Labs, each PlanetWatch sensor NFT also has a visual identity in the Algo Explorer, summarizing the sensor’s key features (see below).
The ratings of FIDE Online Arena players will be recorded on the blockchain. The arena partner, the Boston based company Algorand will help with that.
Algorand is the world’s first open-source, permissionless, pure PoS blockchain protocol dedicated to removing friction from the financial exchange. Some example benefits of Algorand’s blockchain in the gaming space include:
- Scalability that the gaming industry has come to require
- Simple creation of nonfungible tokens (NFT)
- Network speed and finality that unleashes new gaming possibilities
- Miniscule transaction costs
- Robust set of developer tools and resources
- Community ownership of the entire gaming ecosystem
- New monetization models
- Expanded market opportunities for players and publishers
Social media metrics
See also:
- YouTube
- Medium official page
- Algorand.com
- Algorand.foundation
- community.algorand.org
- developer.algorand.org
- forums.algorand.org
The graph above illustrates changes in the number of Chainlink Reddit subscribers and Twitter followers. The information is taken from Coingecko.com.
