Are you looking for introductory level content for an overview of the Algorand Blockchain and developer tools? This session is on Algorand Blockchain Basics — Decentralized for Developers and presented by Algorand’s Russ Fustino, Technical Specialist and Sergey Gorbunov, Head of Cryptography. This video was recorded live at Hack The North, the largest hackathon in Canada. Hosted at the University of Waterloo, the event brought over 1500 students from around the world to work together on teams competing to build the best project in 36 hours.

Session section time marks are below. We start with a session overview, resources, and the importance of blockchain.

The section on Blockchain Basics covers: what a blockchain is and blockchain properties as well as examples of blockchain applications & domains.

The section on Algorand Consensus Model includes an explanation of Pure Proof of Stake, and the key ideas around block creation, as well as Verifiable Random Functions. Algorand is a Pure Proof of Stake Blockchain which scales to billions of users, with 5 second block confirmation times and 1000 transactions per second at a transaction cost of less than a penny!

We discuss and demonstrate various developer tools in the remainder of the session. This includes walkthroughs of several solutions built with our SDKs in Javascript, Java, Go and Python. Other tools shown include AlgoExplorer, TestNet Dispenser, the Goal command line utility, private networks, and the use of the REST API demonstrated through agnostic tools such as Postman. Use of the NoteField on transactions is also discussed when building Layer 2 solutions.

The session covers:

00:00 Importance of Blockchain and session overview with useful links

06:46 Blockchain Basics

17:20 What is Algorand?

19:34 Algorand’s Consensus Model

26:40 Algorand Foundation

27:25 TestNet

28:06 Process Architecture

30:16 APIs, SDKs and Command Line Tools

32:30 Purestake

33:34 Demo of developer tools, SDKs and code

45:13 Oskar Krig on Purestake

46:05 Planned Developer Features

47:01 Summary

Resources:

Link to PowerPoint PPT:

Lab Exercise and code shown in the presentation: https://github.com/algorand-devrel/hackathon