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Blockchain Industry Review
ALGORAND FOUNDATION, THE BRIXTON POUND AND NETWORK PARTICIPATION by Jillian Godsil
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ean Lee would say his career is a mixture of tech and finance which led him naturally to the role of CEO of the Algorand Foundation in June 2020. Hailing from Hong Kong he has a professional career in North America while working with clients across 20+ countries though all in conventional finance until Algorand. He was very aware of blockchain in his role of tech evangelist and began working side by side with the technology in 2017 when a consortium of banks with which he was consulting for evaluated the Corda blockchain. But he acknowledges that his awareness of cryptocurrencies is recent, really only arising in the past two years or so. So how come Algorand approached him for this position? It’s all to do with science, Sean reckons. Algorand was founded by Turning Award winner, cryptographic pioneer and MIT professor Silvio Micali and that influences the ethos of the company. “Algorand is rigorous in the way it builds technology, engages with clients and implements its busi-
ness strategy. They hire people with strong professional backgrounds which is where I come in – having a strong financial and compliance background with little cryptocurrency bias is a good fit. I also appreciate why regulation is important. And I suspect this makes it easier to talk to a major financial services institution director than a crypto native might. “On the flip side, they needed a global player and my career has spanned most continents. This has been very helpful as we look to grow the Algorand brand internationally.” Sean’s arrival has coincided with the swift expansion of the Algorand Foundation into new regions – with members in Tel Aviv, Dublin, Melbourne, Singapore, Shanghai and California joining New York, Milan and Hong Kong. Sean is fast to jump into the technology too. I ask about pure permissionless proof of stake and learn that rewards are earned proportionately by all stakeholders, large and small, regardless of duration of holding.
“The reason for this pure approach is that we want to encourage token holders to participate in our network and every token count as a vote in consensus. It’s all about free will to be part of the Algorand ecosystem.” “We also guarantee that every transaction written on chain will have almost instant “finality”, currently at 5 seconds moving to under 2 seconds in the near future, as the Algorand blockchain has no “forking”. If there is a platform upgrade, the community votes on a certain point and the upgrade is reflected on the entire chain. We’ve done this during our 2.0 upgrade, and we expect bigger changes to come in future with even more advanced features.” Algorand opted against mining as a mechanism for token distribution; instead it minted 10 billion tokens as a final amount and now distributes them through the initial auction during mainnet launch, early backer program, grants and developer awards amongst other ecosystem development programs.
