The crypto industry is constantly changing, and every year new projects emerge proposing innovative solutions. Each new blockchain is trying to improve on the progress made by those who came before. Algorand is a blockchain which has managed to incorporate all of the latest state-of-the-art technological solutions to ultimately produce a platform with the potential to revolutionize the finance industry.
Algorand builds a bridge between decentralized and legacy finance and ushers in the age of next-gen financial products. ALGO coin is the native currency of the Algorand blockchain, which simultaneously powers the ecosystem of the project.
NOWPayments offers several ways to accept Algorand as payment.
Key Points
- Algorand is a blockchain which brings together legacy finance and blockchain.
- ALGO crypto is the utility token of the Algorand ecosystem, and it is a green currency with low fees and fast processing speeds.
- NOWPayments can help you or your business to accept ALGO as payment or in the form of donations.
About Algorand
What is Algorand?
Algorand blockchain was created as a platform for FutureFi. Algorand developers believe that the future of the finance industry will depend on the successful convergence of traditional institutions and blockchains. Algorand blockchain is a universal tool ideal for different actors operating in the province of finance. Algorand’s products serve banks, decentralized-finance organizations, and even government agencies, thus promoting wider adoption of blockchain. Moreover, Algorand wants to disrupt the existing landscape of the financial services segment. To do it, Algorand provides organizations with access to the infrastructure necessary for the development of decentralized financial applications.
Key Technology
Algorand blockchain has numerous functions and features which distinguish it from other networks on the market. Smart Contracts are perhaps the key features of the Algorand network. Compared to its competitors’ solutions, Algorand Smart Contracts are trustless and boast faster performance, better scalability, and cost-efficiency. As a result, Algorand Smart Contracts are an excellent choice for organizations wishing to deploy their decentralized finance applications. Additionally, Algorand Standard Assets is a mechanism that lets users create various assets. These include fungible, non-fungible, restricted fungible, and restricted non-fungible assets. Algorand also supports Atomic Transfers, which are essential in situations when users want to simultaneously transfer several assets among different parties.
Pure Proof-of-Stake
Algorand uses Pure Proof-of-Stake as its consensus mechanism. The Pure PoS helps it ensure full participation, security, and decentralization on the network. Thanks to its protocol, Algorand achieves a large transaction throughput which is comparable to the mainstream payment networks. Moreover, Algorand guarantees immediate transaction finality. Algorand utilizes cryptographic sortition as a means to choose users to propose the next block. Once a block is proposed, a committee of randomly selected users votes on the certification of the block. Such an arrangement prevents malicious actors from hacking the blockchain since they do not know which members are selected for the committee.
ALGO Coin
About ALGO
Algorand’s utility token is ALGO, and it has numerous advantages. For instance, ALGO is truly borderless and peer-to-peer, which means that users can send their ALGO funds from any place in the world to recipients living on the other side of the planet. ALGO has low transaction fees, especially when compared to the traditional banking fees charged for money transfers. As mentioned earlier, the Algorand blockchain has a massive throughput which means that it can simultaneously process thousands of transactions. This translates into five seconds which users have to wait before their transaction gets registered and funds arrive to the recipient’s wallet. ALGO is used for staking to earn rewards and ensure the security of the Algorand blockchain.
Environmental Impact of ALGO
Algorand blockchain is one of the most eco-friendly blockchains thanks to its Proof-of-Stake protocol. Essentially, Algorand does not require mining and subsequent use of equipment such as GPUs and ASICs in order to establish its security. This means that one ALGO transaction has practically no negative effect on the environment, especially when compared to Bitcoin and even Ethereum. Thus, the ALGO coin is the choice of those who care about the environment and want to prevent any further wasteful use of energy. Similarly, minting of an NFT also does not entail any excessive impact on the environment. According to Algorand’s official measurements, minting an NFT on Algorand takes approximately 0,0000004 kg of CO2 per one asset.
Algorand Use Cases
Meld Gold
Algorand blockchain has dozens of successful use cases which turned out to yield great benefits to the network’s partners. Meld Gold is a company that ensures the seamless acquisition of gold for its clients. Meld Gold is utilizing the network’s protocol to deliver traceable, transferable, fungible gold. The company tokenizes Gold as Meld Digital Gold Certificate. Essentially, holders of these certificates will be able to store them in the Algorand wallet. Since Meld Gold’s project exists on the Algorand blockchain, the company and its clients will use ALGO to pay for transactions and assets themselves.
Archax
Archax is one of a kind digital securities exchange that was among the first to receive FCA authorization as an actual exchange. Together with Algorand, Archax is going to develop financial products which will eventually trade on the Archax platform. These products include stablecoins and liquid alternative investments.
ClimateTrade
ClimateTrade is one of the most important projects in the history of Algorand because it incorporates both finance and environmental activism. ClimateTrade helps organizations to achieve their sustainability goals by offsetting CO2 emissions and thus generating funding for climate change initiatives. ClimateTrade and its clients will utilize Algorand as the main infrastructure layer and will leverage its capabilities for carbon offsetting. ClimateTrade chose Algorand because of its flexible architecture, low transaction fees, and performance that can scale to millions of users.
About Algorand
How to Accept Algorand as Payment
ALGO constitutes an attractive asset that can certainly become an excellent addition to the list of available payment methods of your business. NOWPayments is a service that offers several reliable solutions for deploying an ALGO payments gateway.
Using NOWPayments’ solutions, you can start accepting ALGO in a matter of minutes.
- Crypto invoices is a particularly popular tool that lets you specify all of the details about a certain product for your clients and put them in a slick invoice form which can be used indefinitely.
- If you own an ecommerce store on platforms such as PrestaShop, WordPress, and many other ones, you can employ a special plugin which will let you accept ALGO or other types of crypto.
- It is also possible to receive ALGO donations. NOWPayments designed a special feature for charities and bloggers which can accept their favorite crypto in the form of donations.
- Companies that settle their contracts with suppliers in crypto or send payrolls in Bitcoin, ALGO or other altcoins can use NOWPayments’ mass payments.
Conclusion
NOWPayments is non-custodial, which means that you retain full control over your crypto funds and wallet. Additionally, NOWPayments guarantees instant payouts if you decide to accept crypto using the company’s solutions.