Market Signal

What Is Elrond (EGLD)?

Elrond is a [blockchain] protocol that seeks to offer extremely fast transaction speeds by using sharding. The project describes itself as a technology ecosystem for the new internet, which includes fintech, [decentralized finance] and the Internet of Things. Its [smart contracts] execution platform is reportedly capable of 15,000 transactions per second, six-second latency and a $0.001 transaction cost.

The Elrond network rewards the community and active participants with EGLD tokens. EGLD, or Electronic Gold, is Elrond's native token. It acts as a store of value currency to pay for network usage. The coin also serves as a medium of exchange between platform users and validators. Users pay transaction fees in EGLD and validators provide services.

EGLD allows developers to deploy smart contracts, protocols, and dApps on the platform. It empowers participants to perform any network action. Through [staking] and validation rewards, as well as transaction fees, EGLD manages the Elrond network. Plus, EGLD is endowed with the functionality of a governance token, so its holders can vote on network decisions.

Elrond was first [announced] in August 2019, and its mainnet [went live] in July 2020.

Who Are the Founders of Elrond?

Elrond was co-founded in late 2017 by brothers Beniamin and Lucian Mincu alongside Lucian Todea as a solution to the problem of blockchain scalability, which they [thought] to be the most pressing problem facing the industry.

Prior to Elrond, Beniamin and Lucian Mincu co-founded MetaChain Capital, a digital asset investment fund, with Beniamin Mincu serving as CEO and Lucian Mincu as chief technology officer. The two also co-founded ICO Market Data, an aggregator of information around [initial coin offerings].

Beniamin Mincu was also responsible for product, marketing and community for blockchain platform [NEM] from 2014 to 2015, in addition to being an early investor in projects such as [Zilliqa] (ZIL), [Tezos] (XTZ), Brave and [Binance]. Lucian Mincu has additional experience as an information technology engineer and security specialist, having worked with Uhrenwerk 24, Cetto and Liebl Systems.

Todea is a serial tech entrepreneur who previously founded and served as CEO of Soft32, a software review and download site, and a partner of mobilPay, a mobile payments application. He is also an angel investor, having invested in biometrics tech company TypingDNA and accounting platform SmartBill.