Ergo is a new flexible blockchain protocol designed for developing decentralized applications with the main focus of providing an efficient, secure, and easy way to implement financial contracts.^[1]

Overview

Ergo includes various technical and economic improvements to existing blockchain solutions. Every coin in Ergo is protected by a program in ErgoScript, which is a powerful and protocol friendly scripting language based on Σ-protocols.^[2]

Ergo builds advanced cryptographic features and radically new DeFi (Decentralized Finance) functionality on the rock-solid foundations laid by a decade of blockchain theory and development.
Ergo’s Zero-Knowledge Treasury enables users to easily create joint digital signatures, with bespoke conditions for spending funds, while ensuring the signatories to the created address remain hidden.^[3]

Ergo's native token

Ergo platform has its native token, which is called Erg and is divisible to up to 109 smallest units, nanoErgs (a nanoErg is one-billionth of an Erg). Ergs are important for Ergo platform stability and security.^[1]

During the initial phase of Ergo’s life, miners will receive the reward in Ergs according to a predefined and hard-coded token emission schedule. These coins will incentivize miners to participate in the Ergo network, securing it from hash rate-based attacks like the known 51% attack. Erg emission will be finished within just eight years, and after that miners will only receive Erg from fees. ^[1]

Although, adjustable over time through miner on-chain voting, Ergo block size, and maximum block computational cost at any given point in time will be limited, and thus miners are enforced to choose only a subset of transactions from mempool during times of high load. Fees will help miners to sort the transaction, preventing spam attacks while allowing miners to include transactions from honest users in blocks.^[3]