Algorand is a company implementing an open source public ledger and cryptocurrency payment system utilizing the Byzantine Agreement message-passing protocol to reach consensus among network participants.
The probability of a fork in the protocol is estimated at 1/1,000,000,000 and therefore blocks can be considered final upon validation.
October 24, 2018
The $62M comes from a broad global investment group representing the venture capital, cryptocurrency, and financial services communities.
The developers of Algorand, including MIT professor and Turing Award winning Silvio Micali, have raised $4 million dollars in funding from venture capital firms including PillarPillar and Union Square Ventures. Stock investment in Algorand comes with an option for conversion into tokens.
Amy Castor
No Incentive? Algorand Blockchain Sparks Debate at Cryptography Event
https://www.coindesk.com/no-incentive-algorand-blockchain-sparks-debate-cryptography-event/https://www.coindesk.com/no-incentive-algorand-blockchain-sparks-debate-cryptography-event/
News article
Amy Castor
Scaling Consensus? This Turing Winner Thinks He's Found a Way
https://www.coindesk.com/scalable-blockchain-consensus-turing-award-winner-thinks-hes-got-solution/https://www.coindesk.com/scalable-blockchain-consensus-turing-award-winner-thinks-hes-got-solution/
News article
Jing Chen, Silvio Micali
Algorand
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1607.01341.pdfhttps://arxiv.org/pdf/1607.01341.pdf
Academic paper
Silvio Micali and Vinod Vaikuntanathan
Optimal and Player-Replaceable
https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/107927/MIT-CSAIL-TR-2017-004.pdf?sequence=1https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/107927/MIT-CSAIL-TR-2017-004.pdf?sequence=1
Academic paper
Stan Higgins
MIT Professor Raises $4 Million to Build a Better Blockchain
https://www.coindesk.com/mit-professor-raises-4-million-to-build-a-better-blockchain/https://www.coindesk.com/mit-professor-raises-4-million-to-build-a-better-blockchain/
News article
Yossi Gilad, Rotem Hemo, Silvio Micali, Georgios Vlachos, Nickolai Zeldovich
Algorand: Scaling Byzantine Agreementsfor Cryptocurrencies
https://people.csail.mit.edu/nickolai/papers/gilad-algorand-eprint.pdfhttps://people.csail.mit.edu/nickolai/papers/gilad-algorand-eprint.pdf
Academic paper
CESC2017 - Silvio Micali - ALGORAND
Oct 16, 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbnZi9SImYYhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbnZi9SImYY
FSR Event: Blockchain & the Future of Financial Services
May 10, 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=979&v=L3L4tb5a8AUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=979&v=L3L4tb5a8AU
Prof. Silvio Micali: A New Scalable and Secure Approach to Byzantine Fault Tolerant Consensus (169)
Feb 7, 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a40Xt7GnPvs&t=180shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a40Xt7GnPvs&t=180s
The probability of a fork in the protocol is estimated at 1 / 1trillion,1/1,000,000,000 and therefore blocks can be considered final upon validation.
Georgios Vlachos
Algorand’s Instant Consensus Protocol – Algorand – Medium
Blog post
Jing Chen, Silvio Micali
Algorand
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1607.01341.pdf
Academic Paperpaper
Silvio Micali and Vinod Vaikuntanathan
Optimal and Player-Replaceable
https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/107927/MIT-CSAIL-TR-2017-004.pdf?sequence=1
Academic Paperpaper
Yossi Gilad, Rotem Hemo, Silvio Micali, Georgios Vlachos, Nickolai Zeldovich
Algorand: Scaling Byzantine Agreementsfor Cryptocurrencies
https://people.csail.mit.edu/nickolai/papers/gilad-algorand-eprint.pdf
Academic Paperpaper
Critics of Algorand assert the assumption of 2/3 honest nodes may not be fulfilled if honest nodes simply go offline without a monetary incentive to stay online; this is known as the lazy validator problem. Other decentralized systems have maintained network integrity without financial incentives like BitTorrent, and some aspects of Bitcoin and some non-mining aspects of Bitcoin. Given the potential monetary incentive for adversarial nodes, the robustness of non-incentive based blockchains remains an open question.
The developers of Algorand, including MITMIT professor and Turing Award winning Silvio Micali, have raised $4 million dollars in funding from venture capital firms including Pillar and Union Square Ventures. Stock investment in Algorand comes with an option for conversion into tokens.
Security requires a 2/3 honest majority of online nodes.
Security assumes an honest majority of 2/3 of online nodes. The protocol also makes a message propagation assumption whereby all messages reach honest users in a timely fashion.
Amy Castor
No Incentive? Algorand Blockchain Sparks Debate at Cryptography Event
https://www.coindesk.com/no-incentive-algorand-blockchain-sparks-debate-cryptography-event/
News article
Amy Castor
Scaling Consensus? This Turing Winner Thinks He's Found a Way
https://www.coindesk.com/scalable-blockchain-consensus-turing-award-winner-thinks-hes-got-solution/
News article
Stan Higgins
MIT Professor Raises $4 Million to Build a Better Blockchain
https://www.coindesk.com/mit-professor-raises-4-million-to-build-a-better-blockchain/
News article