Algorand founder Silvio Micali speaking at a conference. CoinDesk
On August 19, the Algorand Foundation announced an upgrade to their protocol with the launch of new comprehensive smart contract capabilities. The change is said to enable the creation of dapps and solutions that can scale to billions of users and tens of millions of daily transactions, paving the way for mainstream blockchain technology adoption.
In the announcement, the company said that the key element of the launch is the addition of stateful smart contract functionality integrated into layer-1. Joining existing features such as Atomic Transfers, stateless smart contracts, and Algorand Standard Assets (ASA1s), the new stateful smart contracts will enable developers to scale their applications and work on the creation of a borderless economy.
“DeFi gives the world access to an essentially unlimited number of financial products and services. It’s important for the new generation of dapps not to be stalled by the shortcomings of the first-generation blockchains,” said Silvio Micali, founder of Algorand. “Algorand’s protocol serves as a solid foundation to power truly frictionless applications, and our approach to smart contracts makes them high-performing and functionally advanced enough to rival today’s existing financial services.”
As reported by the company, 400 companies have already joined the Algorand ecosystem within a year since the launch of the mainnet. Their developers are working on providing the public with an elegant solution to power the new wave of DeFi applications in the area of investing (Republic), asset tokenization (Props), stablecoins (Tether, USDC, MELD Gold), CBDCs (Marshall Islands), gaming (World Chess), insurance (Attestiv), and accounting (Verady).
Co-founder and CEO of Republic, Kendrick Nguyen, said in an interview:
“We looked at several potential technology partners to truly unlock the potential of decentralized finance, but ultimately chose Algorand to issue our innovative profit-sharing token because of the functionality on a cost-effective platform at scale. Since the launch of Republic’s digital asset on the Algorand blockchain, we’ve been impressed by the performance, scalability and strategic value it brought to the Republic ecosystem.”
According to Algorand, their protocol can unlock the full potential of blockchain, bringing a fundamental shift in smart contracts and unleashing the next generation of decentralized applications. With the latest upgrade, the company aims to make its platform a place where developers could bring their visions into the mainstream and grow their innovative projects.