Elrond (ERD) is a public blockchain that's developed a novel consensus mechanism called Secure Proof-of-Stake , changed in Egold (EGLD).

Overview

Elrond was founded by Beniamin Mincu who was a member of the core founding team of NEM. It is a high-bandwidth, high security, and low latency blockchain network which is touted as an alternative to the existing global economic infrastructure. ^[1]

It claims to be the first project to employ adaptive state sharding and secure proof-of-stake (SPoS) technologies to achieve both speed and security. It is built upon regular sharding technology, or horizontal scaling, to encompass three types of sharding — network/communication, transaction/processing, and state/storage — in what it calls “adaptive state” to achieve extremely high throughput. ^[3]

Elrond Was developed due to the staking opportunities established by Mincu and his team members who are excited about blockchain and believe in the efficiency of technology from discovering its weaknesses. ^[2]

Features

Adaptive state sharding . The optimal approach to blockchain sharding needs to take into consideration the advantages from all three sharding types: State, Transactions & Network. Elrond’s approach to increased throughput, called “Adaptive State Sharding”.^[2]

Secure proof of stake . Elrond has proposed a novel approach to consensus called “Secure Proof of Stake” which eliminates PoW computational waste, and combines eligibility through stake and rating with random validator selection, and an optimal dimension for the consensus group.^[4]

Elrond VM . Help developers to write smart contracts in whichever language they are familiar with, compile it of WASM, and easily debug its WAT human-readable format.^[1]

Network Structure

Shards . The Shards are smaller partitions of the Elrond network and are used for scaling: each shard is responsible for a portion of the state (accounts, smart contracts, blockchain) and transaction processing so that every shard can process only a fraction of the transactions in parallel with other shards.^[3]

Metachain . This is the blockchain that runs in a special shard, where the main responsibilities are not processing of transactions, but notarizing and finalizing the processed shard block headers, facilitating communication between shards, storing and maintaining a registry of validators, triggering new epochs, processing fisherman challenges, rewarding and slashing.^[5]

Nodes . This is a computer, smartphone, or server, running the Elrond client and relaying messages received from its peers. Nodes can fulfill roles of Validators, Observers or Fisherman providing different support levels to the network and earning proportional rewards.^[1]

Team

• Beniamin Mincu CO-FOUNDER & CEO . Tech Visionary & Early Blockchain Pioneer in Europe. Previously Product & Business at Nem Core in 2014, Founder & CEO MetaChain Capital. 

• Lucian Todea CO-FOUNDER & COO . Tech Entrepreneur. Founder & CEO Soft32, 10M users/month, Partner mobilPay, Angel investor in Typing DNA & Smart Bill.

• Lucian Mincu CO-FOUNDER & CIO. Self-taught Tech Whiz Kid. Previously Engineer at Uhrenwerk 24, Cetto, and Liebl Systems. Co-founder & CTO MetaChain Capital.

• Felix Crisan CTO of Netopia, co-founder of BTKO, Romania's first Bitcoin exchange platform.

• Radu Chis HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY . Software Engineer NTT DATA, Olympiad champion, CS Teaching Assistent Lucian Blaga Sibiu, PhD CS.

• Adrian Dobrita HEAD OF ENGINEERING . Software Engineer Intel, ST-Ericsson, Continental, AI Olympiad champion, MSc CS.

• Iulian Pascalau Software Engineer Compa, IoT specialization, BS CS.

• Sebastian Marian CORE DEVELOPER. Software Engineer Compa, Multiple world AI RoboCup Olympiad champion, RoboCup Executive & Technical Committee, CS Olympiad champion, BS

• Robert Sasu CORE DEVELOPER . Software Engineer Continental, Google summer code school, E-mobility startup, Math and CS Olympiad champion, 20 patents autonomous cars, BS CS, MSc Graphics VR.

• Cristian Corcoveanu CORE DEVELOPER . Full Stack Software Engineer NTT DATA, BS CS.

• Andrei Marinica SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER. Software Engineer Microsoft, BOC Group, Qiagen, Physics & Math Olympiad champion, MSc CS

• Camil Ioan Bancioiu RESEARCH ENGINEER. Software Engineer, PHD Student AI & ML

• Andrei Bancioiu SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER . Software Engineer, MSc CS.

• Beniamin Drasovean SOFTWARE ENGINEER . Software Engineer, BE CS. thesis on Patricia Merkle Trees.

• Bogdan Rosianu SOFTWARE ENGINEER . Software Engineer, BE, CS

• Mihai Iuga SOFTWARE ENGINEER . Software Engineer, BE, CS

• Radu Paun SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER . Software Engineer, Keep Calling TL, Mobile dev, MSc CS.

• Adrian Scanteie SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER . Software Engineer, Keep Calling, Flying.com, BSc CS.

• Constantin Tovisi SENIOR UX DESIGNER . VP BD Soft32, Online Marketer & Developer, BEc

• Dan Voicu HEAD OF COMMUNICATIONS . Head of PR & Market Research ICO Market Data, MSc Business, BA Political Science.

• Daniel Serb HEAD OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT . Social Media & Communication Specialist Continental, Software Recruitment Consultant FRG, BA Politics & IR.

• Sever Moldovean PROJECT MANAGER . Senior Manager OMV Petrom, Blockchain Consultant, IT Engineer, BSc CS.

• Andrei Adam HEAD OF OPERATIONS . Chief Marketing Officer Keep Calling, Managing Director Flying.com.

• Valentin Lup SENIOR SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR . SysAdmin Soft32, Networking, Assistant teacher CS, BS CS. 

Innovations

Elrond is known currently as fast, secured, scalable and with low transaction cost. It has strived to meet up with the anticipated change from blockchain technology.^[2]

Elrond has positioned itself as a blockchain that can enhance the growth of businesses. The organization proposes to assist potential clients optimize costs, add security, and transparency.^[3]

ERD is listed as the second token to be launched on Binance DEX first, with the help of the Binance Chain. Elrond now collaborates with Samsung. To further showcase the blockchain’s capabilities, Elrond is working on a mobile game for the Samsung ecosystem.^[4]

Tokenomics

Elrond’s native token, ERD, has skyrocketed this month as the mainnet launch nears. Since the beginning of July, ERD has surged a whopping 350% to hit an all-time high on Monday of $0.029. ERD currently has a market capitalization of $340 million. Once the token supply is cut by a factor of 1,000, prices may continue to gain momentum, especially when staking incentives are rolled out. Major exchanges such as Bitfinex have already pledged support for staking services, and Crypto.com is already offering 6% interest on short-term deposits.^[5]