-Partnering up with Reach.
-Extending its relay node reward pause.
-Launching the Algorand smart contracts.
Partnering up with Reach
Reach made the following announcement via a blog post:
"Algorand and Reach Platform have a shared vision for real-world application and adoption of blockchain through performance, developer enablement, and simple deployment for applications of the future. Together, the organizations will be working together to support efforts for faster and stronger blockchain development."
Reach helps dApp developers by considerably lowering the barriers to entry. The platform provides an environment where inexperienced developers can create and test out dApps and deploy them on various blockchain networks. Reach abstracts away the complications of the blockchain and formally verifies the outputs of the dApps to ensure that it doesn’t have any vulnerabilities.
Verdict: This is good news for Algorand as it will attract many developers who have just started out in the space. Reach can provide them with a sandbox where they can safely try out their applications without harming the ecosystem.
Extending its relay node reward pause
Relay nodes are critical to the ecosystem since it allows nodes to connect and interact with each other. Since they perform such an important function, Algorand decided to reward them handsomely for their services. They used to do so by releasing a huge amount of ALGO tokens per day into the ecosystem. The community, understandably, was worried about this approach because of the following reasons:
-Supply/demand equation for the ALGO tokens goes out of control.
-One can easily accumulate and dump these excess tokens to create sell pressure.
The community had voted to execute an EIP (Economic Improvement Proposal) called “EIP-09092019PC” to suspend relay-node rewards for 30 days. The thinking was that this would give the community and Foundation enough time to come up with an alternative solution. The community has since proposed a further 30-day extension to the pause period to get more time to create a proper solution to this predicament.
Verdict: This extension shows that Algorand is willing to listen to their community and are willing to come up with a solution that satisfies everybody. Now, whether the solution actually works or not is a different issue.
Launch of Algorand smart contracts
The biggest announcement is the launch of Algorand Smart Contracts at Layer 1 or ASCs. ASCs can be used for the following:
-Automating sales.
-Enable the creation of securitized loans that are collateralized by the borrower.
-If the borrower fails to make payments then the lender automatically gains -ownership of the collateral.
-Collect crowdfunding funds for a project without getting directly involved.
-Allows you to set a condition where only accredited investors can make certain investments.
-Enables the creation of multi multi-sig wallets. These are multi-sig wallets which managed by multiples sets of groups.
Verdict: This is huge news and will likely attract a lot of experienced developers to create on top of Alogrand. ASCs can be applied to either individual transactions or accounts, respectively yielding ASC-transactions and ASC-accounts.
Conclusion
As you can see, there is a reason why the Algorand community has been making quite a lot of noise as of late. While it remains to be seen how the Foundation and the community resolve the node relay issue, the Reach partnership and the launch of ASCs is going to attract a whole bunch of new and experienced developers onto the platform.