Guide to Algorand and New Developments

Well, the best way to find out is to research and experience the ecosystem first hand. So I wanted to provide a snapshot into my experience along with some interesting developments. There is a fine line between shilling and sharing, so I'm going to do my best to share for those who want to explore it.

The first step would be to set up a My Algo desktop wallet, and for the sake of repetition: don't lose or share your seed phrase. You could easily get started with like $5-10 worth of Algo. Since the fees are so cheap, you could make a lot of trades and explore without losing much.

From there, https://tinyman.org/ is the swap. https://tinychart.org/ is where to view the ASAs (Algorand Standard Assets) and prices. I like the general feel that many of the use cases are attempting to be helpful in nature, with things like Planet Watch or Clean Ocean Token. Even their animal meme coins like Kitten Coin donate to shelters. There are rug pulls or projects that won't pan out, but in general the community tries to be on top of things like that and call them out when they see them.

The two ASAs I like the most are Choice Coin https://choice-coin.com/ bringing voting to the blockchain and Chips https://algo-casino.com/. Both very new and highly speculative but I like where they are heading and the developments so far.

Yieldly https://yieldly.finance/ is another big part of the ecosystem where you can stake yieldly or other assets at fairly high yields. Choice coin is currently at 840% APY, which is obscene. It will go down once more people pool, but for now it is just nuts. There is no locking period, daily rewards, and the cost to claim rewards is 0.002 Algos.

What else. Algofi https://www.algofi.org/ is launching this Friday. Its a lending market, earn interest, borrow, etc., like Aave. Lofty is also pretty cool https://www.lofty.ai/. You can pool money to buy real estate, which isn't a new concept, but new to the blockchain.

The first governance period is ending this month, so in the next couple weeks would be the time to stake Algos for round 2. Next year they plan to phase out staking rewards for simply holding Algo in your wallet, so this would be the way to go for rewards. This also keeps Algorand forkless and give the community a voice. https://governance.algorand.foundation/governance-period-1 Gotta hold the whole time to claim the rewards at the end.

Decipher recently ended which was a 2 day event outlining the future of Algo. Much of their roadmap looks promising, particularly their work with Latin American governments. Some of it is speculation right now, but I like how the Chivo wallet was built on Algorand. Hopefully more to come.

If you are new I hope this helped, if you're an algonaut please add to anything I missed, and if you are involved something like ONE or MATIC and just don't care about Algo then props to you, cause those projects are also pretty dope.

Edit: I forgot about Algomint! We now have wrapped BTC and wrapped ETH. It’s about as good as a duck stuffed in a chicken stuffed in a turkey.