ALGORAND ECOSYSTEM MONTHLY ROUND UP WITH UBONG EPHRAIM — NOVEMBER 2020

7 min readNov 30, 2020

Hello everyone. I am Ubong Ephraim. A blockchain evangelist and content creator who has been in the blockchain sphere for four years now. I am an Algorand ambassador and I bring to you the ALGORAND ECOSYSTEM MONTHLY ROUND UP — OCTOBER 2020.
The Algorand blockchain keeps on evolving with so many amazing updates being churned out regularly. Partnerships are made and utility tools on the blockchain are built as well. It could be easy to miss vital information amidst all these updates and that’s what this monthly series aims to help with. Bringing all these information to everyone in the Algorand ecosystem. Summarized and coupled with links for comprehensive reports and announcements.

COINBASE LAUNCHES EARN EDUCATION PROGRAM ABOUT ALGORAND

Coinbase launched an Earn Education program about@Algorand.

With this program, users can learn more about the Algorand blockchain and what makes it unique. And in the process of learning , they can earn ALGO tokens as well.

https://coinbase.com/earn/algorand

UPDATE ON ALGORAND FOUNDATION LEADERSHIP TEAM

Having helped to guide the Algorand Foundation through its first 17 months from Mainnet launch, our Chief Operating Officer, FangFang Chen, has decided to accept the challenge of a new role outside the Foundation. Fangfang has been instrumental in the establishment of the Algorand Foundation and built the team and the structure that will continue to serve the Algorand ecosystem well into the future. The Foundation will announce Fangfang’s replacement in due course and in the interim, her responsibilities will be shared by the team that she has built. While disappointed to see Fangfang leave, we are excited to see her continue to progress in her career and we wish her great success. Fangfang’s final day with the Foundation will be December 31st 2020.

MENTAT LEVERAGES ALGORAND FOR SAP CONNECTOR, PAVING THE WAY FOR ENTERPRISE BLOCKCHAIN INTEGRATION, RECEIVES FOUNDATION GRANT AWARD

Mentat Innovations, a leading artificial intelligence and blockchain solutions provider to global enterprises announced that it will develop an open-source SAP connector and Enablement API to the Algorand blockchain.

Mentat has chosen Algorand as their preferred blockchain platform due to the global scale, speed, and security enabled by the Algorand protocol and by the flexibility provided by Algorand Smart Contract (ASC1) and Algorand Standard Asset functionality.

“We have been looking for a blockchain partner that can power efficiently fast and scalable enterprise distributed ledger and transactional applications. We are delighted to work with Algorand on building a solid bridge to real-world enterprise applications on the SAP ecosystem,” said George Cotsikis, CEO of Mentat Innovations.

The Algorand Foundation is supporting Mentat through its 250M Algo Foundation Grant Program, which is designed to foster innovation and on-chain development in the areas of research, education, infrastructure, and applications.

ALGOSIGNER, THE FIRST ALGORAND WALLET EXTENSION FOR CHROME IS UPGRADED TO A NEW VERSION

PureStake, a leader in secure and reliable blockchain infrastructure, has released a new version of AlgoSigner in the Chrome Web Store. This update adds significant functionality for Algorand Standard Assets (ASAs) and enables users to perform more types of transactions in addition to payments. Users can now transact with a large variety of asset and token types from the universe of available ASAs when interacting with AlgoSigner-enabled dApps.

The PureStake team has added several new and exciting features.

UPDATED LIST OF ALGORAND FOUNDATION 250M ALGO GRANTS PROGRAM RECIPIENTS

The ALGO multi-year Grants Program offers various funding level opportunities across application development, tools & infrastructure, research, and education & community.

A list of the 2020 Algo Grants Program Award recipients to date include newly awarded recipients.

INFOCERT PARTNERS ALGORAND TO CREATE A DIGITAL IDENTITY ECOSYSTEM BASED ON SECOND-GENERATION BLOCKCHAIN

Infocert announced that they will create a digital identity ecosystem on Algorand! Leveraging Algorand’s ASA functionality, the DIZME decentralized digital identity platform will guarantee swift, fluid & secure credential monetization processes.

The DIZME platform’s ability to leverage the ASA functionality will enrich the latter with a Medium of Exchange (MoE). As a result, it will be possible to use the Dizme Token to securely and swiftly manage the payment of credential exchange micro-transactions. In this way, the actors will operate in a digital identity ecosystem based on second-generation blockchain with low usage costs and maximum stability.

“The self sovereign identity solution that InfoCert brings to the expanding Algorand ecosystem is a critical component,” said Steve Kokinos, CEO of Algorand. “We are excited they have selected Algorand as the platform of choice and believe their offering provides an ideal alternative for a centralized solution for personal information, something that the internet has not been able to solve for.”

THE FUTURE ON ALGORAND SERIES KICKS OFF

The new Algorand series: The Future on Algorand! Kicked off with an interview where Keli Callaghan sat down with @BleumiInc Co-founder & CEO Thomas Arul to talk about how Bleumi is removing friction from payments.

Watch the full video: https://youtu.be/PzatLDX_SAc

BTC MARKETS BECOMES EXCHANGE PARTNERS OF BLOCKCHAIN POWERED GOLD PLAYER MELD

Australian cryptocurrency and digital asset exchange BTC Markets has welcomed a new gold specialist to its platform amid significant investor demand for the precious metal.

Meld Gold, an Australian early stage tech company, allows investors to trade digital gold certificates that are backed by physical gold.

Meld founder and director Michael Cotton said the Queensland-based group is excited to create world first innovations within the gold industry.

“We are developing systems to streamline and connect the entire supply chain with investors and retail customers alike, offering gold in a way that is more accessible, tradeable and transactable than ever before,” he said. “Through the digitising of gold, Meld is able to grant anyone and everyone the access, security and liquidity of the global gold supply chain from their smartphone.”

Steve Kokinos, CEO of Algorand said: “Meld’s selection of Algorand for the underlying technology is bringing efficiency, transparency, and accessibility to the gold market. “We are excited that Meld is launching on BTC Markets and congratulate them on a major milestone in modernizing the gold industry.”

ALGORAND LAUNCHES GLOBAL PARTNER PROGRAM TO ACCELERATE DEVELOPMENT AND ADOPTION OF BLOCKCHAIN-POWERED PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Algorand announced the Algorand Partner Program (APP), designed to build and curate a partner ecosystem that enables and delivers Algorand-based products to market faster, easier, and with end users in mind. APP participants can differentiate their services and expand their business in the private and public sector with organizations at different stages of their blockchain journey: from those exploring blockchain’s potential to those already working on blockchain projects.

Program participants benefit from unique access to resources and support in building and delivering their Algorand-based offering. Additionally, they get access to the exponentially growing market of organizations seeking resources to develop or adopt Algorand-based solutions.

Algorand plans to expand its program, adding more partners globally to facilitate integrations with enterprise, governments, and financial institutions that leverage Algorand blockchain.

USDC FOR ALGORAND NOW AVAILABLE IN YOUR CIRCLE ACCOUNT

Circle is rolling out broad support for USDC on Algorand, available through your Circle Business Account. Business owners and stakeholders can quickly use the Circle Business Account to send USDC on Algorand easily and at no cost.

With your USDC balance, the Algorand implementation of USDC enables on-chain transactions that provide nearly instant settlement finality (5 seconds). It’s blazingly fast and easy to send digital dollars natively on the internet. The USDC asset on Algorand can be monitored here including circulating supply and transactions.

A PROPOSAL FOR DECENTRALIZING ALGORAND GOVERNANCE

The goal of this proposal is decentralizing Algorand governance, and aligning network rewards with such governance. More precisely, it is putting forward the mechanics and incentives guaranteeing a governance that, just like our consensus protocol, is simultaneously decentralized, secure, and efficient.

QUICK SUMMARY

Participation in governance will be voluntary. The accounts that choose to participate, the governing accounts or, more simply, the governors, lock their tokens for a given amount of time, initially proposed to be one year. Governing accounts shall be rewarded for their work. We anticipate that the rewards earned by governing accounts will be higher than the current network rewards they will replace.

ALGORAND WALLET SUPPORTS 6 NEW LANGUAGES

The Algorand Mobile Wallet now supports 6 new languages — Chinese, Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Korean.

The Algorand Wallet has launched new language support! The latest release brings full support for Chinese, German, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish.

Check it out: https://algorand.com/wallet