Elrond to MultiversX: Exploring the Leap in Crypto Technology

Are you a crypto enthusiast eager to find crypto projects with potential? Are you interested in learning about the Elrond blockchain and what happened in November 2022?

If so, you're totally in the right place.

Why?

Because the exciting developments we saw in late 2022 may have determined what we might expect from the native token eGLD price once we escape the bear market.

In 2021, eGLD hit an all-time high of $542.48. A year earlier, it was less than $0.20. Crazy, right?

In July 2023, the token price is around $32. 

Does the low price of eGLD present a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for crypto hodlers? Maybe. It reminds me of when Bitcoin was less than $10, and the mainstream thought it was a scam. Well, we all know how that went.

Estimating value in a bear market is tricky because we never know if the current low is an all-time low or can go lower. However, the stuff you'll read later in this article may help you understand the perceived value of this project and the eGLD token as a whole. 

In this in-depth Elrond review, you will learn everything you need to know about Elrond and the exciting rebrand to MultiversX. In conclusion, we will look at the long-term prospects for the project and the eGLD token.

Elrond's Background

Let's get the boring stuff out of the way first to show you why proponents of the project believe this blockchain has the potential for growth and longevity.

Elrond was launched in 2017 by brothers Lucian and Benjamin Mincu and Lucian Todea. The founders focused on scalability from the offset without compromising security and transparency. 

The Elrond project quickly became popular, and in early 2020, the ERD token experienced a 5,000% price jump in less than four months before the launch of the Elrond mainnet in July 2020.

Wow, well, that sounds great!

Yes, but then Elrond made significant and potentially super positive changes.

In September 2020, the ERD token changed to the new eGLD or eGold token and became the native cryptocurrency of the Elrond blockchain.

There was a redenomination of 1,000 ERD to 1 eGLD, which was in line with the changed economic model that saw the total supply of the ERD drop from 20 billion to 25 million for eGLD. 

Within the first five months of release, the eGLD token had a 300%+  increase and in November 2022, Elrond transitioned to MultiversX.

What Made Elrond Unique?

One of the most pressing concerns for blockchains is scaling and throughput. Even the largest blockchains have struggled and continue working to balance transaction speeds and scalability without compromising security, transparency, and high fees. 

Elrond aimed to become the industry leader in this aspect and beyond. There have been many changes in the roadmap for Elrond, including an exciting rebrand to MultiversX in November 2022. 

It's also notable that Elrond consistently hit roadmap deadlines, further building trust and loyalty from their followers.

Elrond's Journey to MultiversX

The Elrond Network (now MultiversX) is a Layer 1 blockchain created to provide high-level scalability, interoperability, and high throughput. 

The founders launched the project to develop a decentralized network offering the same or better performance than other centralized networks while providing users greater privacy.

The following is a quick summary of the Elrond roadmap until November 2022, when it will bring us up to speed when Elrond becomes MultiversX. 

From November 2022, Elrond was no more. Although there was a transition period for rebranding products, MultiversX navigated the changes without missing a beat.

What is MultiversX?

MultiversX (ex Elrond) is a Layer 1 blockchain with an impressive ecosystem. As you can see from the 2019 to 2022 roadmap, Elrond laid solid foundations for today's success. The MultiversX ecosystem includes NFTs, games and DApps. 

DeFiLlama ranks MultiversX in the top 20 protocols, while CoinGecko lists the EGLD token as a top #50 by market cap. The protocol has over $97M TVL (Total Value Locked).

From the offset, Elrond proved it was scalable and fast with low transaction feeds. The concept behind the rebrand was to navigate the blockchain into creating metaverse opportunities.

MultiversX states that finalizing a transaction takes around 6 seconds and can cost less than $0.02, which surpasses transaction speeds and fees for most major blockchains. In addition, the MultiversX sharding technology enables maximum transactions per second (TPS) at around 100K.

As of July 2023, the fully carbon-neutral MultiversX reported 334,567,392 transactions and has 3,200 validator nodes.

"A blockchain built for true scale and mass adoption." (Source: MultiversX)

Rebranding to MultiversX did not change the underlying robust protocols underpinning the Elrond blockchain, and the eGLD token still powers MultiversX via staking to secure the network. 

New Product Additions to MultiversX

After migrating Elrond's core products, MultiversX launched three new products: -

#1: xFabric 

xFabric (coming in quarter 3 of 2023) is a fully customizable "sovereign blockchain module" that deploys in minutes and underpins the MultiversX metaverse. It has multiple use cases for companies, brands and creators. 

#2: xPortal

xPortal is a multi-purpose App for storing NFTs, crypto and Avatars. It is a social platform for everything financial, including a crypto-fiat debit card accessible globally. 

Users can receive and send fiat currency payments, swap supported assets, chat with friends and manage their debit cards.

“xPortal is a true SuperApp. The portal to the Metaverse. The home for your avatar. Everything finance. A debit card. Friends, chat and social. Accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world." 
Benjamin Mincu, Founder & CEO of Elrond (MultiversX).

The xPortal App Has Multiple Exciting Features: Image Source: Google Playstore.

#3: xWorlds

The MultiversX describes xWorlds as "A world creation engine. A network of interoperable metaverses. The very first Metaverse planet of this new world." (Source: MultiversX)

According to the MultiversX roadmap, xWorlds will go live in quarter 4 of 2023. There is little information available to expand on the dynamics of xWorlds.

"Making meaningful progress toward building the infrastructure for a high bandwidth, low latency, transparent financial global system, and giving anyone, anywhere easy access to it." (Source: MultiversX)

How Does MultiversX Work?

The MultiversX project executes three types of segmentation:

• State
• Transactions
• Network

The MultiversX Architecture

Adaptive State Sharding Technology 

Adaptive state sharding is a unique way to employ sharding technology, and while it has long been a database optimization technique. Sharding helps increase transaction speeds. 

"The optimal approach to scaling blockchains is parallelization, most effectively executed via sharding: State sharding, Transactions sharding & Network sharding." Source: MultiversX

Nodes and Users: These are the two main pieces keeping the network running. Users deploy network transactions, either as a transfer of value or as the execution of a smart contract. Nodes are the devices on the network that process these transactions in both an active and passive manner.

Validator: These node types generate blocks and achieve consensus in return for rewards. Validators must stake tokens to become eligible and then be nominated by other stakeholders. Other node types include observers and fishermen.

Metachain: The Metachain is the blockchain that runs in a unique shard, where the primary responsibilities are not processing of transactions, but notarizing and finalizing the processed shard block headers, facilitating communication between shards, storing and maintaining a registry of validators, triggering new epochs, processing fisherman challenges, rewarding and slashing.

eGLD Tokens: The eGLD token powers the Elrond network, acting as the entry point for the network. It provides the means to pay for transactions, dApp deployment, storage, smart contract execution and rewards to validators. Elrond splits transaction fees between validators and the Elrond Community Fund.

• The adaptability of the network means shards remain balanced at all times.
• The state-sharding solution employed by Elrond means demand changes occur without impacting network security.
• The network divides its blockchain timeline into epochs and rounds. While it is possible to modify epochs by modifying the system's architecture, for the most part, the epochs have a fixed duration.
• Shards are pruned and reorganized across the network at the end of an epoch. Rounds also have a fixed period. As each new round begins, a new consensus group is selected randomly to commit one block.

Secure Proof of Stake Consensus (SPoS)

Elrond originally developed the SPoS consensus mechanism to improve the existing Proof of Stake solutions. It reduces the latency in the network and allows any node in the shard to determine which members will be part of the consensus group at the start of each round.

Randomization occurs through the aggregated signature from the last block. The MultiversX team estimates this reduces the time required to elect a consensus group to under 100ms.

There is also a weighting factor that promotes meritocracy among nodes while also considering stakes. Elrond introduced the Bellare and Neven multi-signature scheme to reduce the number of rounds of communication necessary in the signing algorithm.

As a more sophisticated version of Proof of Stake, it aims to ensure distribution of shards is fair, and it is a compromise between increased energy and computational demands and security.

MultiversX Network Roles

Validator: Validators are nodes on the MultiversX network that process transactions and secure the network by participating in the consensus mechanism while earning rewards from the protocol and transaction fees. To join the network as a validator requires staking eGLD tokens as collateral.

Observer: Observers are passive network members that can act as a "read & relay" interface. They can be either Full, keeping the entire history of the blockchain, or Light, keeping only two epochs of blockchain history. 

Observers are not required to stake EGLD tokens to join the network and receive no rewards for participating.

Fisherman: A node which verifies the validity of blocks after proposal. 

Fishermen challenge invalid blocks that may result from malicious actors and receive rewards for their service. Validators can adopt a Fisherman role if they are not part of the current consensus round or by observers.

 Network Performance

Elrond launched its mainnet on 30th July 2020. The developers aimed to create a blockchain at the heart of a borderless, global, and fully accessible digital economy. 

The platform also features reduced storage requirements and improved linear scaling as more nodes join the network. The combination of linear scaling and parallel processing is the key that will allow MultiversX to surpass the throughput of current centralized solutions.

Transaction fees are super low, showing as $0.00163 on the MultiversX website (July 2023). 

"MultiversX is a highly scalable, secure and decentralized blockchain network created to enable radically new applications for users, businesses, society, and the new metaverse frontier." (Source: MultiversX)

Cross Chain Interoperability

In addition to efficient decentralization, MultiversX provides cross-chain interoperability. The team wants to deliver complete decentralization to minimize the possibility of bad actors exploiting a single point of failure.

MultiversX launched the Virtual Machine (EVM) to enable complete communication between multiple external services.

MultiversX Virtual Machine

The MultiversX Virtual Machine is a fast, dedicated smart contract engine built on WASM (WebAssembly).

"WebAssembly (abbreviated Wasm) is a binary instruction format for a stack-based virtual machine. Wasm is designed as a portable compilation target for programming languages, enabling deployment on the web for client and server applications." Source: WebAssembly

WASM is secure, fast and efficient and expands the number of languages available for developers, including C, C++, Rust, C# and Typescript.

This virtual machine will support smart contracts written in Solidity, allowing users to create secure transactions between MultiversX, Ethereum and other ERC-20 tokens without using an exchange. The MultiversX VM also features an adapter mechanism allowing communication with other chains that include adapters to work with MultiversX.

xSpotlight: MultiversX NFT Marketplace

xSpotlight is a welcoming NFT marketplace  described on the website as a "life-changing journey of exploration." It has a community, a fascinating blog and a Twitter account.

The xSpotlight ecosystem includes the following: -

• Neftor
• XOXNO 
• Frame It
• Deadrare
• Krogan Swap

xSpotlight Features

1. Verified badge for collections, NFTs and creators.
2. Enhanced curation and aggregation for Web3 projects.
3. An Explore section to quickly find specific NFT collections or creators.
4. Ecosystem partner promotions through marketplace listings and existing auctions.
5. Social Dynamics: "through asynchronous user connectivity, public profiles linked to herotags, and customizable Web3 feed." (Source: MultiversX)

Although xSpotlight still seems in the early stages (only 5.8k Twitter followers July 2023), the website is glossy, easy to navigate and features some impressive collections. If you're into NFTs, it's definitely worth a look.

The XExchange dApp

Formerly the Maiair app, the xExchange "brings robust functionalities thanks to the advancements in the MultiversX protocol and its Smart Contract capabilities." 

The App lets you swap assets globally, earn yields from fee transactions in liquidity pools and staking rewards from LP or MEX tokens. The latter powers the exchange.

You can use MEX (governance and liquidity tokens) for payments in the xSpotlight NFT marketplace, xPortal and the xMoney platform. In addition, you can earn farming and trading fee rewards by depositing MEX in the EGLD-MEX pool.

The MultiversX Wallet

MultiversX designed the feature-rich wallet for user-friendly access. The browser-based wallet interface is intuitive and compatible with the xPortal app, the Ledger hardware wallet and the MultiversX DeFi browser-extension wallet.

The MultiversX Team

MultiversX has a large team of skilled professionals.

The CEO is Benjamin Mincu, who began his blockchain experience as a part of the NEM core team for 1.5 years. He led the marketing, business and community-building efforts to turn NEM into a global blockchain product.

The CIO is Lucian Mincu, an engineer with eight years of experience designing complex infrastructure and network solutions for clients like the German government.

Lucian Todea is the COO. He is a successful entrepreneur with over fifteen years of experience investing in technology and is active in both startup and blockchain spaces. He has significant experience in leadership, management, business development and investing.

"A team with which we can build rockets." (Source: MultiversX)

In addition to his role at MultiversX, he is CEO, partner and founder of several tech startups.

MultiversX Community

The size and enthusiasm of a community can directly impact the awareness and adoption of a cryptocurrency project. A loyal community can positively affect a marketing campaign and general trading volumes.

MultiversX has several social media channels: -

• Telegram: Over 40,500 subscribers
• Twitter: 550k+ followers
• YouTube: 23k+ subscribers
• Github: 200+ subscribers

Content is updated regularly, and it seems something new gets posted on Twitter most days.

The project also has an updated blog to keep its community informed.

The (Discontinued) ERD Token

The ERD token powered the Elrond Network and was the second token launched on the Binance Launchpad. The lottery format initial equity offering ended on 1st July 2019, with the Elrond Network raising $3.25 million. That sale offered 5 billion ERD tokens or 25% of the total 20 billion token supply.

The ERD token was a BEP-2 token while the network ran on a testnet. Since the launch of the Elrond mainnet, the team announced a dramatic change to the token economic model by introducing EGLD. 

The eGLD token opened at just over $0.17 in 2020 and reached a staggering all-time high of $542.68 in November 2021. Don't we all wish we'd bought a few hundred eGLD tokens in 2020?

It will be interesting to see what the eGLD price can do once we get back into a bull market, hopefully, sooner rather than later.

Mainnet Launch & Tokenomics Change

While the mainnet launch itself was a big deal, the most significant announcement was the change to the token economics of Elrond. The team decided to drastically reduce the total supply of ERD tokens from 20 billion to just 25 million eGLD.

The purpose of the change was to adopt an improved deflationary economic model. In addition, Elrond wanted to build a more robust currency that could eventually become the global digital reserve currency.

EGLD token trading began on 3^rd September 2020, and the token swap process followed a day later.

One other change is to migrate the current ERC-20 and BEP-2 ERD tokens to a new native eGLD token that will be exchanged at a rate of 1,000:1. That means 1,000 ERD tokens will be exchanged for 1 eGLD coin.

Along with that, the value of eGLD will be 1,000 times that of ERD. So, if ERD is trading at $0.025 at the date of conversion it will mean 1 eGLD will be worth $25.00. The swap from ERD to eGLD was announced on August 28, 2020 and the eGLD token began trading on September 3, 2020 while the actual token swap began on September 4, 2020.

Those interested in learning more about the economics and operational reasoning behind the switch from ERD to eGLD can watch the AMA that was put on by the Elrond team following the launch of the mainnet.

An Overview of eGLD

In changing the native currency of the Elrond network so dramatically, you can imagine that the Elrond team had good reasons for doing so.

Here is an overview of the core features and characteristics of eGLD:

#1: Designed For Simplicity And Global Adoption

Regarding the adoption of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, the most significant obstacle has been the complexity inherent in the new technology. Try explaining blockchain and the utility of cryptocurrencies to the average person, and you'll quickly see it's not easy. 

The Elrond team saw this obstacle with ERD and knew that to reach over 1 billion people, they needed to completely rethink and redesign the tokenomics of the Elrond native currency.

#2. Digital Store Of Value And A Global Reserve

When the Elrond team created eGLD, their goal was for the token to become the core of all internal usage in the Elrond ecosystem (now MultiversX). They designed it to create a strong store of value, similar to physical gold, but with exceptional functionality that could make it superior to gold in the long run.

By creating new ticker symbols beginning with the 'e' prefix, the team made cryptocurrency more intuitive and easier to understand. Plus, it creates a logical and coherent derivation path for future digital assets and currencies.

Embedded in the design of eGLD is the premise that the MultiversX network will be compatible with other cryptocurrencies and with fiat currencies issued by governments. 

Eventually, anyone should be able to tap into MultiversX's immense bandwidth capabilities and offer ways to transfer value electronically. 

In the future, MultiversX plans to create many new 'e' tokens that encompass fiat currencies, synthetic assets, and stablecoins.

#3. Built-In Scarcity Reinforces Demand For eGLD

eGLD's total supply cap is 25,747,284 eGLD, with a maximum cap of 31,415,926 and a fully diluted cap of 1,023,296,476 (July 2023).

By capping the supply of eGLD, it stimulates demand for eGLD by creating scarcity.

#4. Staking Incentive For Validator Adoption

Validator nodes are incentivized to stake eGLD and secure the network from the newly issued eGLD supplies over the coming decade. 

Eventually, as adoption increases the inflation created by new eGLD supply is supplanted by transaction fees to cover staking rewards. The staking incentive becomes greater by limiting the total supply of eGLD to 31,415,926 eGLD, which will be reached by 2030.

5. Adoption Reduces Inflation And Increases Scarcity

By substituting the emission of new tokens with transaction fees, it reduces the theoretical limit of eGLD, contributing to token scarcity over time. Increased adoption of eGLD increases this dynamic and ensures the theoretical supply limit of 31.4 million eGLD is unattainable.

Looking at the utility of eGLD, the strength of the MultiversX network, and the potential adoption of other products on the protocol, it is clear that each has the potential to be quite valuable. The combination creates a robust ecosystem with the potential to develop a financial revolution similar to the industrial revolution experienced over a century ago.

Given the fixed supply of eGold, combined with the global distribution and intuitive simplicity of the project, increased adoption will reflect the value of eGold. We can only wonder how eGold look with 1 Million people using Multiverse products. How about 10 million or 100 Million people? 

Could eGLD be the next Bitcoin?

To summarize, The eGLD token has five use cases: -

1. Staking
2. Governance
3. Transactions
4. Smart Contracts
5. Validator Rewards

Buying & Trading eGLD

Since the Binance Launchpad featured the eGLD coin, it should be no surprise that nearly all the trading volume is on Binance, the world's largest Exchange.

Several leading exchanges list eGLD: -

• Coinbase Exchange
• Binance
• Bitfinex
• Kraken
• ByBit
• OKX

The 24-hour volume turnover on Binance for eGLD is impressive, averaging over $3.5M compared to a few hundred thousand for other exchanges. 

Compared to similar market cap coins, eGLD has much higher levels. Incidentally, good volume and liquidity are vital for order fills if you're trading. 

You can store your eGLD tokens in the MultiversX wallet or use the Ledger cold wallet if you prefer a hardware wallet.

Staking eGLD

At the genesis of the mainnet, Elrond deployed a closed staking and delegation system to help bootstrap the mainnet. 

Staking helps to secure the MultiversX network, and eGLD holders have voting rights on the platform's decisions.

The MultiversX Wallet Enables You to Do the Following Actions: -

• Connect to MultiversX DApps
• Interact with the blockchain (with a hardware wallet)
• Buy, store, swap and send eGLD tokens (on desktop)
• Easily monitor and understand your blockchain activity

Conclusion

The Elrond Network forged a path for the switch to the MultiversX platform. From the success of visibility on the Binance Launchpad to the $1.9M private funding, the Elrond team stayed true to their vision for scalability, transparency and low transaction fees.

The MultiversX network enables developers to "build open and composable tools" with exceptional resources: 

• xDevhub
• xDevGuild
• Dev Resources
• MultiversX Network
• MultiversX Virtual Machine
• MultiversX Smart Contract Framework

"Come join the MultiversX Builders Discord. Meet other builders, and ship new apps!" Source: MultiversX

Quite often, with some of our favourite blockchains, the core founding team splits to move to separate projects, so, it's good to see the Mincu brothers and Lucian Todea are still working together to take MultiversX to the next level. 

The founders have a large backing team of individuals with broad skills. Proof of the team's expertise is reflected by successfully achieving roadmap deadlines. We've seen many blockchains falter with long delays, which can cause uncertainty in their communities.

With the unique Adaptive State Sharding and Secure Proof of Stake, the project promises unprecedented speed, scalability and low fees. In addition, MultiversX provides multi-language support, making it more inclusive for global users.

What I like about MultiversX is the transparency. You can check token metrics from 2019 to 2023. The blog is up to date, and in June 2023, MultiversX reported that Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum became available on the MultiversX Bridge.

"Bitcoin and Ethereum Live on Multiversx: Transferable at Near-Instant Speed, $0.001 Cost and Usable in DeFi Applications." Source: MultiversX Blog

We are eager to see what comes next for MultiversX. Suppose the project continues to develop and deploy innovative and effective solutions, we're curious to see what happens with the eGLD price when we eventually rise out of the crypto bear market.