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What Is Elrond?

Elrond is a fast and scalable blockchain designed to make the new internet economy accessible to everyone. Launched on July 30, 2020, the project aims to alleviate the congestion prevalent across existing networks.

In contrast to Bitcoin, which can only process seven transactions per second (TPS), Elrond claims it can process up to 15,000 TPS at a low average cost of $0.001 each. This blockchain is looking to scale its operations even further as demand increases.

What Is EGLD? 

EGLD is the native token of the Elrond blockchain network. It serves various purposes, including staking and voting. It’s also a key component in Elrond’s system of incentives that rewards network users. 

Who Is the Founder of Elrond? 

In 2017, Lucian Todea, Beniamin Mincu and Lucian Mincu co-founded Elrond to address one of the most pressing issues in the crypto industry — scalability. Before founding Elrond, Beniamin and Lucian Mincu were C-level executives at digital asset investment fund company MetaChain, while Todea has over 20 years of experience in internet and tech-related businesses.

Elrond Network held a private fundraising round in June 2019 and raised $1.9 million from multiple angel investors. The project conducted an initial exchange offering (IEO) that same month with ERD BEP2 tokens, generating $3.25 million in exchange for 25% of its total supply.

Originally, Elrond distributed its token under the name “ERD.” Following the project’s mainnet launch in July 2020, however, Elrond changed its token’s name from ERD to EGLD. Shortly after, the project organized a transitional event during which investors exchanged the old denomination for the new one.

What Is EGLD Used For?

EGLD, the native cryptocurrency of Elrond, is a vital component of the incentive mechanism that rewards network users. It’s used for the following: 

• Transactional purposes

• Engaging with applications

• Sending payments

• Staking

• Voting

How Does Elrond Work?

Supported by smart contracts for third-party sources, Elrond Network facilitates the building of DApps and the creation of digital assets. To achieve its objective, Elrond bases its strategy on two unique features: Adaptive state sharding and secure proof of stake (PoS).

The network’s blockchain comprises three main players: Validator, observer nodes, and users. Validators create new blocks; nodes process them; and users submit transaction requests to the network.

As a project, Elrond's main selling points are its capacity to scale, provide freedom to developers and users, and enable fast transactions. Additionally, using the Elrond integrated development environment (IDE), programmers can create and run adaptable applications that mimic commodities and services on Elrond’s platform.

In essence, Elrond is a blockchain-based program that incentivizes its network users. In turn, their processing power supports the smart contracts system that developers can utilize to build decentralized services and applications.

Adaptive State Sharding

Elrond uses adaptive state sharding to scale its network. With this technique, after the user submits a transaction request, the validator creates a block, and nodes are split into pieces (shards) to verify them. This allows nodes to resolve transactions one fraction at a time in order to avoid network congestion and enable scaling.

This advanced sharding mechanism is responsible for splitting the network's infrastructure to support the increasing number of applications and growing volume on the ledger, and serves as the network's transaction processing mechanism. 

SPoS Consensus Mechanism

Elrond Network uses a secure proof of stake (SPoS) consensus mechanism — a modified version of the conventional PoS protocol — to ensure that all of the network's sharded components are connected to create a functional platform on the ledger.

Since Elrond's blockchain is split into shards rather than one continuous chain, its SPoS consensus process is used to select validator nodes to produce blocks for a specific shard, rather than the entire network.

What Gives Elrond Its Value?

Elrond's underlying technology, the project's potential, its ability to scale, its provision of corporate-level solutions for DApps and digital assets, and its diverse use cases collectively contribute to the value of the network. 

EGLD is essential for the upkeep of Elrond and is used for facilitating network transactions, incentivizing network contributors and executing smart contracts.

Elrond pays the creators of smart contract platforms "smart contract royalties" which take up 30% of the transaction fees. The network also takes 10% of all transaction costs to compensate community members participating in Elrond’s development.

What Makes Elrond Unique?

Thanks to its speed, high scalability, affordable transaction costs and user-friendly interface, Elrond has established itself as the ideal blockchain for developers, businesses and retail users. Here are four things that set it apart from its competitors.

1. Minimal Transaction Costs

For blockchain projects to be accessible to the public while remaining competitive, it’s necessary to keep fees low. Elrond is setting a new standard with transaction costs lower than those of payment providers such as Visa and Mastercard.

1. High-Speed Transactions and Ideal Scalability

Elrond addresses scaling and speed issues by processing transactions simultaneously.

The testnet of the Elrond chain can process transactions at a rate of more than 250,000 TPS. A large capacity is an important prerequisite for blockchain project developers.

Good user experience is a vital requirement to improve the uptake rate of any piece of technology, which is certainly the case with Elrond.

1. Random Validator Sampling

Every round, Elrond draws a random sample of validators and block proposers from the shard nodes.

By limiting the amount of time the validators are exposed to a cycle (five seconds) or only one globally predictable event, Elrond is more secure than Ethereum against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and corruption. According to its Economics Paper, Elrond aims to strengthen its ecosystem and establish EGLD as a store-of-value asset.

1. Optimal Security

Elrond’s hardware structure, which consists of millions of computers called nodes, stores data during transactions in encrypted form. All nodes are updated whenever a new data record is created, ensuring each one has access to the most recent data. 

Elrond uses a SPoS consensus mechanism to increase the blockchain's security to the highest level possible. Validators are chosen randomly to build consensus within 100 milliseconds or less, with the short time frame effectively preventing manipulation in any form.

How Many EGLD Are in Circulation?

In July 2019, before the network's mainnet was created, Elrond held an ICO (initial coin offering) and issued 20 billion ERD (as the token was known previously) on the Binance chain. The company sold 25% of its total token supply, raising $3.2 million. In November 2019, 500 million ERD tokens were burned on the Binance Chain and minted on the Ethereum ecosystem as ERC20 tokens. 

In September 2020, the company held a token swap in which token holders exchanged their ERC20 and BEP2 tokens for mainnet EGLD tokens. By setting the swap ratio to 1,000 ERD for 1 EGLD during this event, the total supply of the token decreased from 20 billion to 20 million, and its circulating supply followed suit.

Like all cryptocurrencies, EGLD has a finite supply, meaning there will only ever be (approximately) 32 million tokens in existence.

According to CoinMarketCap, as of Aug. 12, 2022, EGLD has a market cap of roughly $1.5 billion, a circulating supply of about 23 million tokens, and a maximum supply of about 32 million EGLD tokens. 1 EGLD is currently priced at $65.52.

How to Store EGLD

Many wallet options are available for you to store your EGLD. The wallet you choose will depend on what you plan to use it for and how many tokens you want to keep.

The Elrond blockchain protocol powers Maiar, an official eGold digital wallet. 

Unlike the typical crypto wallet, Maiar doesn’t require lengthy and complicated passwords, private keys or recovery pass phrases. Instead, the blockchain generates a wallet address from a phone number. If you lose your phone, you can use a recovery phrase to retrieve your assets. Additional security measures that users can implement include a PIN and biometric authentication.

Using the digital wallet connected to your phone's address book, you can send tokens to your friends and family members anywhere in the world.

Where to Buy EGLD

You can buy EGLD from any top crypto exchange, including Bybit.

How to Buy EGLD on Bybit

To purchase EGLD on the Bybit exchange, follow these simple steps:

1. Head to Bybit’s spot trading page (Home → Trade → Spot Trading).

2. Select your trading pair on the left side of the page. You can trade EGLD with USDT (EGLD/USDT).

3. Choose the type of order you’d like: Limit Order, Market Order or Conditional Order.

For Limit Orders:

1. Select Limit.

2. Enter the order price.

3. Enter the number of EGLD you wish to buy.

4. Click on Buy EGLD.

5. Once you’ve confirmed that your information is correct, click on Buy EGLD.

6. View your order details under Active on the web page, or Orders if you’re using the Bybit app.

For Market Orders:

1. Select Market.

2. Enter the amount of USDT you’ve paid to buy EGLD.

3. Click on Buy EGLD.

4. Once you’ve confirmed that your information is correct, click on Buy EGLD.

5. View your order details under Filled.

For Conditional Orders:

1. Select Conditional.

2. Enter the trigger price.

3. Choose to execute at Market Price or Limit Price.

1. Market Price: Order price doesn’t need to be set.

2. Limit Price: Order price needs to be set.

4. According to order types:

1. Market Buy: Enter the amount of USDT you’ve paid to buy EGLD.

2. Limit Buy: Enter the number of EGLD you want to buy.

5. Click on Buy EGLD.

6. Once you’ve confirmed that your information is correct, click on Buy EGLD.

7. View your order details under Conditional on the web page, or All Orders → Current Orders on the Bybit app.

For more help, visit the Bybit spot trading guide.