ALGORAND ECOSYSTEM MONTHLY ROUND UP WITH UBONG EPHRAIM — SEPTEMBER 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 — SEPTEMBER 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.
Centre Consortium Announces Algorand as an Official Chain for USDC, Launches on Mainnet.
The Centre Consortium announced that Algorand is now an official blockchain for USD Coin (USDC). The newly released mainnet implementation of USDC for Algorand is available today, and becomes the second major blockchain after Ethereum with native support for USDC. The Algorand blockchain brings significant innovations to the market, specifically around transaction scale and speed, helping to expand the use cases for USDC across a broad range of payments and financial applications.
“This is a defining milestone for frictionless mainstream payments as well as sophisticated financial applications,” said Silvio Micali, Founder of Algorand, Inc. “This launch brings together the convenience of USDC and an advanced protocol for global financial exchange in which Layer-1 smart contracts are as simple and secure as ordinary payments.”
Read more : https://www.algorand.com/resources/news/centre-consortium-announces-algorand-as-an-official
Update on Period 2 of 200M ALGO Staking Rewards Program
The Algorand Foundation 200M Algo Staking Rewards program has just completed Period 2 and the staking rewards associated with this period have now been distributed on September 2nd, 2020. After accounting for disqualified participants, the remaining qualified participants will have received 0.37 Algo for every Algo staked (put simply, 37 ALGO per 100 ALGO staked). This is a staking reward of 37% in Period 2. Qualified participants remaining in the plan until the end of Period 4 are now projected to receive a minimum of 1450 Algo per 1000 Algo staked (or a staking reward of 145%).
Read more : https://algorand.foundation/period-2-200m-algo-staking-rewards-program-update
JellySwap are the latest recipient of an Algorand Foundation Grant
Since the Algorand Foundation launched its Grant Program this year, many developers and innovators around the world have been eager to participate. After thorough review and selection, we are delighted to announce that JellySwap has received an Algorand Foundation Grant, to make it easier for Algo token holders to quickly and seamlessly exchange their tokens for the tokens of other blockchains.
JellySwap is a cross-chain atomic swaps protocol that supports different blockchains. The main goal is to allow everyone to seamlessly swap the underlying assets of multiple heterogeneous blockchain networks and to provide liquidity in a permissionless, borderless, secure, and non-custodial manner.
Read more : https://algorand.foundation/jellyswap-grant
Algorand Wallet Upgrades Features and Capabilities for a Seamless User Experience
Algorand’s Wallet is the official interface that lets users interact with the Algorand blockchain, without needing special blockchain developer tools or knowledge of advanced feature sets. This wallet operates on both iOS and Android platforms and allows people to securely manage Algorand Accounts and transact with Algos and Algorand Standard Assets (ASAs). In this release, Algorand has developed features that allow for a better experience with managing a wallet accoun
Read more : https://www.algorand.com/resources/blog/algorand-wallet-upgrades-features-and-capabilities
Rekeying with Ledger Nano X Tutorial
After the latest release of Algorand’s new Rekeying Feature, Algorand Wallet users now have more control and flexibility when it comes to how transactions are signed and how accounts are managed. This provides for 2 additional workflows within the Algorand Wallet.
Not only do these new workflows allow you to change account configurations while not impacting your balances, public addresses, etc. they also enable users to have several Algorand accounts being signed by the same Ledger device.
Read more : https://www.algorand.com/resources/blog/rekeying-with-ledger-nano-x-tutorial
Algodesk receives an Algorand Foundation Development Award
Since the Algorand Foundation launched its Development Awards Program last year, many developers around the world have been eager to participate. After thorough review and selection, we are delighted to announce that Shiva Prasad has received a development award for Algodesk.
Algodesk is an open-source and developer-friendly web-based tool to build decentralized apps and smart contracts on the Algorand network. The development award covers an asset management portal and a Web IDE for TEAL smart contracts.
Read more : https://algorand.foundation/algodesk-development-award
China’s state-backed BSN Integrated with Algorand for Global Outreach
BSN International announces today that it will be supporting 3 more public chains including Algorand — the world’s first open source, permissionless, pure proof-of-stake blockchain for the next generation of financial products.
As a part of the Chinese government’s Global Blockchain Strategy, unveiled by President Xi Jinping in November 2019, the BSN initiative is a joint effort led by the State Information Center of China, China Mobile, China UnionPay, and Red Date Technology. It is a standardized, global public infrastructure network to support faster and cheaper blockchain development and deployment.
Through BSN integration, developers on Algorand can run nodes and build applications using data storage, bandwidth and other resources provided by BSN. Compared to running their own nodes, BSN offers them better network quality and more comprehensive services, such as node monitoring.
Read more : https://algorand.foundation/bsn-integration-algorand
Ledger Adds Algorand Support in Ledger Live, Launches Self-Custody Staking for ALGO
Ledger, the global leader in security and infrastructure solutions for critical digital assets and blockchain applications, announced today support for Algorand (ALGO) and Algorand Standard Assets (ASA) in its software application, Ledger Live, bringing the total amount of supported coins to 27 and more than 1500 tokens. Ledger users will be able to securely hold, transact, manage, and stake ALGO directly with their smartphones or desktop using Ledger Live.
In addition, Ledger can be used to manage Algorand Standard Assets (ASA), which includes stablecoins (such as USDT), loyalty points, system credits, and single, unique assets issued on the Algorand blockchain that benefit from the same security, compatibility, speed, and ease-of-use as the ALGO.
“We are excited to further collaborate with Ledger as part of Algorand’s commitment to ensure the highest standard of crypto security,” said Fangfang Chen, COO of Algorand.
Read more : https://algorand.foundation/ledger-live
Renowned Economist Paul Milgrom joins Algorand as Advisor
Algorand is excited to announce that Paul Milgrom has joined its distinguished list of advisors and will bring deep expertise across a range of modern microeconomic theory to the Algorand team and extended community. Algorand, a next generation blockchain platform, has seen increased adoption across financial organizations and central bank digital currencies in particular. With purpose-built functionality built directly into layer-1, Algorand’s pure proof-of-stake blockchain is proving a compelling option for sophisticated applications of the future.
“I am honored to be advising one of the most advanced and high performing blockchain platforms available today,” said Dr. Milgrom. “It is thrilling to be a part of a visionary team that is delivering on what may lead to widespread blockchain adoption. I look forward to bringing my experience and knowledge to advance Algorand and the community it serves.”
Read more : https://www.algorand.com/resources/blog/paul-milgrom-joins-algorand-advisor
Introducing Algorand’s Smart Contract Debugger
Algorand is pleased to announce that we now have a debugger for smart contracts.
As part of the latest release, Algorand added a new API call that supports compiling TEAL programs within the SDKs plus a new dry-run API call. The dry-run API call allows you to perform test executions of Algorand smart contracts. While these dry-runs are helpful, what most developers are looking for is the ability to do line by line debugging of their smart contract code, and the debugger does just that.
The debugger supports both stateful and stateless smart contracts. You can debug individual transactions or atomic transfers that contain multiple, grouped transactions. The debugger supports setting the specific context for debugging purposes, including transactions, round number, latest timestamp, balance records, etc
