Why Algorand?

What distinguishes Algorand is its ability to excel in all core technical areas without sacrificing any other. This is largely because of intelligent design decisions when creating the chain, its consensus mechanism, and its underlying guts. It’s that “overall package” that distinguishes it for me. Lots of chains are on parity with (or sometimes exceed) Algo in one metric or another. But, when you look holistically, Algorand stacks up well on all fronts while lots of others fall short in one particular area. In addition, it has lots of other plus factors.

Throughput without Sacrifice: Algorand’s Layer 1 can handle high volume without sacrificing anything. It can currently handle around 12k TPS and has exceeded that mark in single blocks in the real world. This already exceeds what VISA’s network handles on average per second, and already blows most chains out of the water. Though the capacity isn’t needed right now, block pipelining could take us to 46k even without L2s or sharding. Now, some other L1s either currently handle more TPS or have a theoretical upper limit that exceeds Algorand’s. But, those chains either are bullshitting you or they fall short in other critical areas (e.g. decentralization). Let’s take a couple examples from some big market cap coins. Solana advertises 65k max TPS, but they are full of shit. Due to technical bottlenecks their max real throughput is closer to 20k. But even that number is padded because 75% of Solana transactions are on-chain vote transactions (which is just bad design IMO). This is why they have never pushed the chain past a couple thousand *actual* transactions without (a) astronomical failure rates (there is even a block where essentially 100% of all non-vote transactions failed; (b) their chain skipping blocks and having other wonky issues; or (c) just shutting down entirely. Mind you, they essentially require supercomputers to do this while Algorand bests them using hardware that is essentially a maxed out Raspberry Pi 5. Chains like Sui and Hedera will advertise huge TPS, but the tradeoff is permissionlessness and decentralization. The chains are de facto controlled by centralized entities, and this is essentially required because of how their networks operate. They are DAGS (directed acyclic graphs) instead of blockchains. DAG’s require supercomputers to run and their performance drops off tremendously when you increase nodes or geographical distribution. Want to run a Hedera node? You can’t. That’s reserved to the ~30 corporations on their governing council. Want to run a Sui node? All you need is a supercomputer and hundreds of millions of dollars to buy up an unfathomable amount of circulating supply. Speed and Instant Finality: Algorand is fast. It puts out blocks approximately every 2.8 seconds. And, it can go even faster if needed. Importantly though, it also has instant finality. Finality time is the time it takes to guarantee that transactions cannot be altered, reversed, reorganized, or canceled after they are in a block. Algorand’s chain is essentially impossible to fork (i.e. to have two competing blocks or series of blocks). That means transactions are instantly final as soon as they are verified in a block. Other chains can fork, and thus must wait for multiple block confirmations to say with sufficient probability that a transaction is final. Finality is critical for real world commerce. In the real world, nobody is going to let you walk out of a store because your crypto payment will “probably” go through. Legacy chains are slow and not suited to everyday use. Bitcoin finality takes 6 blocks at 10 min/block. ETH has a finality time on Layer 1 of something like 14 minutes. Cardano is something like 5-10 minutes. Other “fast” chains either aren’t as fast as they claim, or make significant compromises on decentralization to achieve that speed. For example, Solana is seen as fast because it has 400 millisecond block time. But, those transactions aren’t actually final. It takes 32 confirmations to be final, which is 12.8 seconds. (This may seem trivial, but think about the difference it makes for things like event ticketing, or just staring blankly at the cashier for 13 seconds vs. 3 or less). Hedera is pretty quick, but not as fast as Algo. Sui is super fast to finality (something I’m impressed with), but again (as mentioned above) it’s achieved through a de facto permissioned and centralized system. Another good comparison is Avalanche. It has fast block times, they finalize quickly thereafter, and they don’t have the same centralization concerns as those listed above. But, importantly, it is not instant finality. This may seem trivial to you, but it is not trivial when it comes to developing on chain. Even if transactions are finalized fast (and so you don’t have to wait around as long), if there is any lag between block verification and finality, its is something you must engineer around. Additionally, there are things that Algorand blows Avax out of the water on, such as throughput, smart contract handling, fees, etc. Elegant Consensus Mechanism Designed for Decentralization: Algorand has an elegant consensus mechanism that allows its validators to run on low cost hardware. Other highly performant chains effectively require supercomputers to run. For example, Sui requires 24 cores and 128GB RAM to validate (of course, the harder part is first owning hundreds of millions of dollars of SUI). Solana requires 12 cores and 128GB RAM (and also a large amount of SOL since it’s goofy consensus mechanism clogs its own network and so charges validators for voting transactions). Algorand validators can run on a maxed out Raspberry Pi 5. It’s built for decentralization and maximum participation. It’s Pure Proof of Stake design means anybody, no matter the size of your holdings, can participate in consensus with no epochs, no lockups, no slashing, etc. We are moving to a “staking rewards” program to reward validators, which does have a 30k Algo minimum (which can be lowered later). But, importantly, that is not a prerequisite for running a node. A person with 1 Algo can still run a node if they want. Instead, it’s a necessary component for being able to monitor node health with statistical significance (poorly performing nodes do not receive rewards). In short, Algorand is probably the most egalitarian proof of stake consensus mechanism out there. It is designed for decentralization. AVM vs. EVM: Many chains either explicitly use Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) or some derivative of it for coding. That is great for porting over existing Ethereum projects in a copy/paste fashion (which is why EVM chains explode quickly in terms of apps). However, that also means you are adopting the limitations of EVM. Algorand opted to build its system from the ground up with the Algorand Virtual Machine. If you want a technical rundown on benefits of AVM vs. EVM, I’m sure someone here can go into more detail. But here are some examples. Native layer assets: Assets on most chains are smart contracts. Interacting with the token is interacting with a smart contract. The problem with that is that smart contracts can be malicious. That’s why people say to never interact with dust in your wallets. Assets on Algorand are not smart contracts, but rather native layer assets. They operate with the same level of security and ease of use as the native Algo. In addition to security, this gives them a variety of other benefits. A big one is atomic swapping. Assets can be exchanged, trustlessly, on Algorand without needing to code or interact with a smart contract. Smart contract handling. Not all transactions are created equal when it comes to consumption of the network. Things like DEX swaps are a good example. They require smart contracts and are more taxing than things like simple sends or atomic swaps. AVM is incredibly more efficient in its handling of these and so we blow every single EVM chain out of the water in terms of how many such transactions we can handle. Post Quantum Security: Algorand pioneered the use of FALCON encryption, which has now been formally adopted by the National Institution of Standards and Technology (NIST) as one of only a few quantum resistant cryptographic algorithms. Quantum computing is coming. A chain that is not quantum secure will be vulnerable to attack. Maybe it won’t be today, this year, or next year, but in the not too distant future, chains that are not quantum resistant are going to get attacked and when they do, they will fail in spectacular fashion. To my knowledge we are the only chain with a quantum resistant chain history, and in 2025 should become fully quantum secure with quantum resistant VRF for consensus and with quantum wallets. Reliability: Over five years running with zero downtime. Almost no other network can claim this type of reliability. Certainly Solana can’t. Not even centralized stuff like Sui or Base can claim that type of reliability. And, when you issue a transaction it either goes through or you don’t pay for it. Other networks can have ridiculously high failure rates, and they charge you for them. World Class Developer Tools: If you are a developer, you’ll appreciate AlgoKit and how easy it makes developing.