Algorand (ALGO)USD

Algorand is a Layer 1 blockchain designed for fast, low-cost transactions, general-purpose smart contracts, and tokenized assets. Silvio Micali, an MIT professor and cryptographer, founded the project in 2017. The mainnet and native ALGO token launched in June 2019, after a public test network release earlier that year. The network runs on a decentralized Byzantine agreement protocol called Pure Proof-of-Stake, where users participate in consensus proportional to their stake without needing to lock their tokens. ALGO is the native token, used to pay transaction fees, participate in consensus, and take part in ecosystem governance. The maximum supply of ALGO is capped at 10 billion tokens, all created at inception, with distribution scheduled through 2030. Token burns have slightly reduced the effective total supply. Algorand targets high-throughput financial applications and institutional use cases.