What Is Elrond?
Elrond is a distributed transactional computation protocol which relies on a sharded state architecture and a secure Proof of Stake consensus mechanism. While most other blockchain networks require custom hardware and high energy consumption, Elrond runs on average computers.
By employing sharding, a method of parallelizing data & transactions processing, Elrond’s performance will scale up with the number of computers joining the network, reaching more than 100.000 transactions per second while growing increasingly decentralized.
How Is Elrond Different From other Cryptocurrencies?
The Elrond network is the first to present a viable solution where all the three aspects of sharding - state, network and transactions - have been implemented at once. Combined with its “Adaptive” component, this novel architecture allows for dynamic network configuration to maintain a high level of security while scaling with demand.
In addition to scaling through sharding, Elrond also approaches the consensus problem with a mechanism called Secure Proof of Stake, which mitigates potential attack vectors when compared to Proof of Work, while also enabling large throughput and fast execution.
By solving some of the hardest consensus and sharding problems in the blockchain space, Elrond is able to provide a very high level of performance on a network made of inexpensive computers, resulting in a very low cost per transaction. In addition to performance and cost, Elrond also stands out through the quality of the developer experience and the resulting boost in usability on the end-user side.
ESDT Tokens (*More Advance)
ESDT stands for Elrond Standard Digital Token.Custom tokens at native speed and scalability.
The Elrond network natively supports the issuance of custom tokens, without the need for contracts such as ERC20, but addressing the same use-cases. And due to the native in-protocol support, transactions with custom tokens do not require the VM at all. In effect, this means that custom tokens are as fast and as scalable as the native EGLD token itself.
Users also do not need to worry about sharding when transacting custom tokens, because the protocol employs the same handling mechanisms for ESDT transactions across shards as the mechanisms used for the EGLD token. Sharding is therefore automatically handled and invisible to the user.
Technically, the balances of ESDT tokens held by an Account are stored directly under the data trie of that Account. It also implies that an Account can hold balances of any number of custom tokens, in addition to the native EGLD balance. The protocol guarantees that no Account can modify the storage of ESDT tokens, neither its own nor of other Accounts.
ESDT tokens can be issued, owned and held by any Account on the Elrond network, which means that both users and smart contracts have the same functionality available to them. Due to the design of ESDT tokens, smart contracts can manage tokens with ease, and they can even react to an ESDT transfer.