Algorand coin's latest updates and predictions for 2022

  Algorand coin's latest updates and predictions for 2022

one of the reasons why cryptocurrency has evolved so quickly is because of competition and nowhere is this competition more intense than in the smart contract crypto niche Legoland is one of the few smart contract cryptocurrencies that has continued to raise the bar and its algo coin is gaining popularity among crypto users and institutional investors alike today I'm going to give you a bit of background about Legoland bring you up to speed on some of the project's most important updates and tell you why algo might have some long-term potential.

   if you're unfamiliar with Legoland here's what you need to know Legoland was founded by MIT professor  Silvio McCarley in 2017 and built by algerand inc a software company based in the united states Legrand's development is coordinated by the grand foundation a non-profit based in Singapore grand raised over  126 million dollars across various token sales in 2018 and 2019.  a substantial amount of this money was subsequently returned to ico investors as part of a buyback program thankfully Legoland has since raised hundreds of millions of dollars more from various crypto vcs more about that later algorand's main net went live in June  2019 and though the project is still in development all core features and functionalities have been completed under the hood the algorand blockchain uses a novel proof-of-stake consensus mechanism called pure proof-of-stake which makes it possible to process around 11 000 transactions per second.

 the grand blockchain is currently secured by around 120 validator nodes which select one of Legrand's many participation nodes to propose blocks pseudorandomly based on stake it's not clear how many participation nodes Legoland has as this information is not currently available but it is likely in the thousands as it is quite easy to become a participation node, by contrast, becoming a relay node requires coordination with the grand foundation as well as more advanced hardware note that only around 20 of Legrand's relay nodes are run by entities not directly affiliated with the algorand foundation but the grand foundation is actively onboarding additional unaffiliated relay nodes and around 20  more are scheduled to spin up any day.

 now also is the native cryptocurrency coin of the algorand blockchain it's used for staking governance and to pay for transaction fees participation nodes must take a minimum of one algo to participate in consensus and there is no lock-up or unlock period nor any slashing risks note that relay nodes do not stake any algo according to the algo explorer algos taking rewards are currently just 0.06  percent per year through algo's taking rewards increased to around seven percent with active governance participation according to the algo rewards calculator.

  transaction fees on Legoland cost a  fraction of a cent but because relay nodes do not earn these transaction fees this makes it possible to use these fees for other purposes and Legoland is currently exploring using a portion of all transaction fees to purchase carbon credits more on that in a moment algorand's ecosystem can be accessed using the paralog mobile wallet my algo wallet or the algo signer browser extension wallet according to the algorand ecosystem website about 300 projects are building on Legoland around 10 of these daps are d5 protocols which currently hold around 150 million dollars.

 in total value locked according to to defile lama on that note if you're interested in exploring algorand'sLegrand's rapidly growing ecosystem you can check out my algorand tutorial video using the link in the description now it's been almost eight months since I last covered Legoland and it's safe to say that this video would have been a  very long one if I'd waited any longer because Legoland has been very busy shortly after my last update went out Legoland announced the release of the grand virtual machine opening the door to the next generation of apps and defy protocols in October the algorand foundation announced that accelerated vesting for also had completed for those who don't know accelerated vesting made it possible for early investors to sell lots of algo.

whenever its price pumped so the end of this program was obviously very good news for algo holders in November the algorand foundation announced the first relay node running program featuring 20 new relay node candidates that are unaffiliated with the entities behind algorand an algorand project called alignment also created a bridge between the bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains bridging BTC and eth to algorithms ecosystem shortly afterward a former Citibank executive established a 1.5 billion crypto fund with algorand as its first partner foreshadowing some serious cash flow into Legrand's ecosystem during algorand's decipher conference in Miami at the end of November algorand saw some big announcements such as a  partnership with the city of Miami to monitor air quality algorand's head of engineering also did a keynote about Legrand's upcoming quantum security via state proofs.

 that could benefit from CBC's you might recall that the federal reserve was planning on testing quantum resistance for its digital dollar this year coincidence  I suppose we'll see I digress in early December borderless capital announced that it would be pouring an additional 500 million dollars into Legrand's ecosystem that is another level of bullishness the algorand foundation also announced that it would be expanding its relay node program to the grand community in mid-December the algorand foundation announced a liquidity mining program for Legrand's d5 protocols as part of its  300 million dollar Viridis fund.

  a few days later a highly anticipated grand project called algophi finally launched and it has since become Legrand's top d5 protocol with over 90  million dollars in total value locked in January the algorand foundation confirmed the issuance of the first round of governance tokens to Legrand's governors a drone racing company also partnered with a grand to create an up-and-coming play-to-earn game on the algorand blockchain as a cherry on top grayscale revealed that it was considering the creation of an algorand trust which would make algo more accessible to institutional investors.

  in early February the algorand foundation announced a proposal to establish an exclusive group of algorand governors called expert governors who would table proposals the algorand foundation also announced that it had selected Stacy warden a  former jp morgan executive to be its CEO  at the eth Denver conference Stacy announced that the grand foundation would be allocating 10 million dollars to algorithms Ethereum Ethereum compatibility the algorand wallet also announced it had rebranded to the pera wallet and released a roadmap that includes stuff like to support a fiat on an off-ramp  d5 protocol integrations and access to Legrand's governance interface.

  in early march, algorand underwent an upgrade that expanded its smart contract functionality making it possible to create more complex apps and setting the stage for Legrand's post-quantum features in mid-march a famous former peer-to-peer music platform called Limewire also announced it would be relaunching as an NFT marketplace on  Legoland the algorand foundation also announced it would be phasing out its algo grants program and replacing it with various ecosystem funding programs going forward two days later the grand foundation announced it issued a grant to an algorand project called the algorand name service which will make it possible to create human-readable nfts that can double as wallet addresses.

 the day after that the algorand  foundation announced it had issued a  grant to an outgrown project called also  launch an initial dex offering launchpad for other up-and-coming algorand  projects  at the end of march grayscale announced  the launch of its smart contract  platform x Ethereum fund which includes  Legoland though also only accounts for  about 4.4  of the fund's current allocation of 2.6  million dollars  anyhow in mid-April the algorand  foundation bought up almost all the  billboards in new york city's times  square for earth day to send the message  that cryptocurrency can be  environmentally friendly  as i mentioned earlier the algorand  foundation also announced that a special  smart contract would be created that  will see a portion of all fees on the  algorand blockchain redirected to the  purchase of carbon credits as part of  the project's 2021 pledge to be carbon  neutral at the end of April Legrand  partnered with flair network to build  additional bridges to other  cryptocurrency blockchains .

 now, this is interesting because flair network is a crypto project that's part of xrp's ecosystem and you can learn more about it using the link in the description now where was I in April updates another April thing algorand announced at the end of April April was another proposal to further modify algorand's governance process by introducing extra quote governance seats that would be filled by active participants in Legrand's ecosystem including select users developers and relay node runners earlier this month alter and announced that it would be sponsoring the upcoming FIFAfifa world cup in Qatar for an undisclosed amount.

 but I imagine it's a  lot the sponsorship announcement included a  long-term partnership between Legrand and FIFA which of course includes the issuance of FIFA nfts on the algorand blockchain at some point in the future more recently algorand announced that it had purchased another famous former peer-to-peer music platform called Napster with the help of hive mind capital this makes me wonder if decentralized music streaming services will lead the next wave of crypto adoption you should check out my video about audienceaudies just in case that will be in the description anywho as amazing as all algorithms announcements updates developments and upgrades have been algo is more than 50  below what it was.

 when I last covered the project this is for a few reasons for starters the crypto market has been taking a  beating since November and as many of you November will know this is because of the federal reserve's ongoing fight against inflation which involves aggressively raising interest rates, unfortunately, and of course, as I record this the markets are in free fall following the terra luna and use debacle it sure is chilly out there, unfortunately, there are additional factors specific to Legoland that are holding down the price of algo2  as you might have gathered from my earlier comments accelerated vesting has historically suppressed the price of algo because it allowed early investors to sell large amounts of it whenever it pumped this is why algo only briefly surpassed its ico price of two dollars and forty cents before being beaten down although accelerated vesting ended in early October last year structured selling from the grand foundation seems to have continued.

 I suspect that Legoland inc has been offloading some of its algo as well I'll leave details to the algorand foundation's structured selling methodology in the description but the short explanation is that the algorand foundation can essentially sell as much algo as it wants so long as algo's price doesn't crash by more than 10  within 24 hours I wanted to find out exactly how much algo the algorand foundation has sold since September.

 but it looks like it hasn't published any transparency reports since that time what I did find however is that algo's circulating supply has increased by more than 1.1 billion since September according to to coin market cap's historical data and by more than 900  million according to coingecko's historical data so if we take the middle amount of one billion and assume an average price of around one dollar per algo during the time it's possible that around one billion dollars of algo has been sold since September while it's unlikely that all this algo was actually sold it seems more likely than not, especially with all the money.

  the grand foundation has been spending on expanding algorand's ecosystem case in point the 300 million dollars in the Viridis fund is actually made up of  150 million algo that must be sold for fiat I don't imagine that the FIFA  sponsorship and partnership or the Napster acquisition were particularly cheap either as basic economics dictates all this algo selling wouldn't be a problem if there was sufficient demand for algo coming from elsewhere but the problem is that the demand for also seems to be lacking, for example, the algo signer browser extension has just 20 000 downloads to be fair this is a 3x increase.

 since my grand tutorial in October last year which is not too shabby at all however, the para also wallet is still sitting at 100k downloads since October and this suggests that the algorithm blockchain has fewer than 100 000 active users according to dap radar algorand's top apps have only seen around 50 000 users over the last month this is actually consistent with the number of algo holders who are actively participating in Legrand's governance and I reckon there's quite a bit of overlap here now the last demand indicator I want to discuss is total value locked which is again sitting at around 150 million.

  now I find it hard to believe that all  this money is coming from the few  thousand users of algorands defy  protocols  I suspect much of this money is coming  from the algorand foundation's liquidity  incentive fund which has allocated 200  million dollars worth of algo to  attracting tvl  as such most of the  tv in Legrand's d5 protocols may be just  there to passively collect algo rewards  I will stress that this is just  speculation on my part

  now whether also can reclaim its all-time highs and head to new ones ultimately depends on Legrand's upcoming milestones the timeline here is obviously going to be a lot longer now that the bear market has set in the introduction of  Legrand's governance structure last autumn means it doesn't technically have a roadmap but upcoming milestones can be found in interviews with and presentations by members of the algorand team notably algorand founder Silvio  McCarley.

  in October last year Legrand's chief operating officer sean ford mentioned that it is in talks with central banks around the world to provide the infrastructure for their central bank digital currencies though he didn't specify which ones nor when these announcements will be officially made sean also mentioned that Legoland will soon be scaling to 10 000 transactions per second.

 thanks to next-generation scaling technologies that I detailed in my previous algorand update that's in the description the way in December last year Legrand's head of ecosystem adi wagenekt mentioned that the goal is to get the total value locked in Legrand's d5 protocols to at least 200 million dollars and that the algorand foundation is planning on spending 500 million dollars to expand algorand's ecosystem I managed to find an additional milestone in the grand foundation's faq section.

 according to Legrand's governance forum there currently aren't any measures that will be voted on in Legrand's next voting session so this brings me to some of the challenges I foresee for algorand the first one is Legrand's apparent lack of user adoption almost every smart contract cryptocurrency I've covered recently has seen exponential growth in its user base over the last few months alone but this exponential growth isn't as apparent on Legoland.

  I reckon that this can be chalked up to the fact that the algorand wallets used to interact with its apps aren't nearly as familiar or as user-friendly as other browser extension wallets like metamask it also doesn't help that algo's price has consistently underperformed and that ties into the second challenge algorand's tokenomics still aren't all that terrific and it seems that the end of accelerated vesting for algo's early investors hasn't helped with algo's price action at all to make things worse supply continues to hit the market in fact in a January presentation the algorand foundation's former CEO sean lee actually celebrated the fact that algo's supply had increased from 1.4  billion to over 6.3 billion in 2021.