Algorand (ALGO)

Algorand (ALGO) is the native cryptocurrency of the Algorand blockchain, a proof-of-stake network designed for fast, low-cost payments and asset issuance. ALGO pays transaction fees, is staked by holders who take part in reaching agreement on new blocks, and serves as the minimum balance every account must hold. Its supply is capped at 10 billion ALGO.

The network was designed by Silvio Micali, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who shared the 2012 Turing Award for work in cryptography. The Algorand Foundation funds development, grants and staking rewards for the ecosystem. Blocks on Algorand are final as soon as they are added, so the chain does not split into competing versions.

Imagine a large club that has to approve a new page of its accounts every few seconds. Asking every member to vote each time would be slow, and letting the same small committee decide would be risky, because its members could be bribed. Algorand's answer is a lottery: for every page, the software secretly draws a fresh committee from the members, with the chance of being picked in proportion to how many coins each holds.

No one knows who is on the committee until its members have already cast their votes, so there is no time to bribe or attack them. Once the committee agrees, the page is locked for good. ALGO is the club's money: it pays the small fee for each entry, and holding it is what gives a member a ticket in the lottery.

Micali founded Algorand in 2017, and the mainnet went live in June 2019, followed by a public auction of ALGO. From 2021 to 2024 the foundation ran a governance programme that paid ALGO to holders who committed their tokens and voted on proposals. In January 2025 it replaced this with staking rewards paid to accounts that actually help produce blocks; by late 2025 about 2 billion ALGO were reported as staked. In 2022 world football's governing body, FIFA, named Algorand as its official blockchain partner. In 2023 the US Securities and Exchange Commission listed ALGO among the tokens it called securities in lawsuits against exchanges, but in March 2026 a joint interpretation by the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission cited ALGO among assets treated as digital commodities, which places spot trading in the token closer to the rules of the commodities market.

Algorand uses a form of pure proof of stake. For each round, a verifiable random function, a cryptographic lottery that each participant can run privately and others can check, selects a proposer and a voting committee weighted by stake. Committees reach agreement in a few seconds through a Byzantine fault tolerant voting process, which gives immediate finality and avoids the forks common in proof-of-work chains. The network supports smart contracts through the Algorand Virtual Machine and has a built-in token standard, Algorand Standard Assets, used to issue stablecoins, loyalty points and other tokens without custom code. The minimum transaction fee is 0.001 ALGO, a fraction of a cent.

All 10 billion ALGO were created at launch and released into circulation over time; no new ALGO can be minted. Since January 2025, an account that commits at least 30,000 ALGO to consensus and runs a node can earn a reward each time it proposes a block: half the block's fees plus a bonus from a foundation-funded pool that shrinks over time:

• $B_{n}$ is the bonus, in ALGO, paid per block.
• $n$ is the number of million-block intervals since the programme began.
• $0.99$ reflects the 1 percent cut applied every million blocks.

After 20 million blocks the bonus is $10 \times 0.99^{20} \approx 8.18$ ALGO per block. The bonus pool was planned to run for about two years. Holders below the threshold can join staking pools or use liquid staking services, and their ALGO never leaves their own account, because Algorand does not lock or slash staked funds.

• Payments. Low fees and quick finality make ALGO and tokens issued on the chain suitable for small and frequent transfers.
• Asset issuance. Companies and governments have used Algorand Standard Assets for tokenization of bonds, property and loyalty programmes.
• Applications. Decentralized finance apps, wallets and identity projects run on the network.
• Investment. ALGO is traded on major exchanges and held through regulated platforms.

Despite its technical reputation, Algorand has struggled to attract as many users and as much locked value as larger networks such as the Ethereum Blockchain, and the ALGO price fell far below its 2019 auction level. Critics have pointed to the large share of supply held for years by the foundation and early backers, and to the network's reliance on foundation funding for rewards and ecosystem grants. Its exposure to US regulation has also shifted, from the 2023 securities claims to the 2026 commodity interpretation, so its legal treatment has depended on agency policy rather than settled law.

• Algorand
• Algorand developer portal