Elrond (eGold, or EGLD) is the native coin of a blockchain that implements sharding, a way of cutting down blockchain infrastructure into smaller pieces to help the network scale. The name comes from Elrond Half-elven, a half-man, half-elf from the “Lord of the Rings” novels.

EGLD price

Elrond’s mainnet launched in July 2020, bringing the native EGLD coin into the market. The coin traded in a range roughly between $10 and $12 until 2021. EGLD rose to about $200 by February 2021, then $240 by April, and, after a brief period in a trough, to highs of $542 in November. Like a lot of alternative cryptocurrencies, or altcoins, EGLD could not maintain its November highs, and by 2022 had slumped to about $130.

The coin has a maximum supply of 31,415,926 – the numbers form the first eight digits of pi. Before the launch of the mainnet, a version of the EGLD token traded on Ethereum and Binance DEX under the ticker ERD. The supply of ERD was 20 billion, now equal to 20 million of the maximum supply of EGLD. When EGLD launched in July 2020, ERD tokens could be converted to EGLD coins at a rate of 1000:1.

The founders and core members of Elrond reserved 19% of ERD tokens for themselves, subject to a vesting schedule of 42 months, and private investors received another 19%, subject to a vesting schedule of 18 months. A private sale in June 2019 raised $1.9 million, and a public crowd sale in July 2019 raised $3.35 million.

EGLD incentivizes its network to operate with proof-of-stake rewards, plus guaranteed rewards for stakers. Elrond increases the supply each year but decreases guaranteed staking rewards. Data provider Messari predicts that EGLD’s inflation rate should hit 0% by 2031. At that point, Elrond will rely entirely on its proof-of-stake validators.

How does EGLD work?

Elrond operates a variant of proof-of-stake, termed “secure proof-of-stake,” that focuses on scalability. Its consensus mechanism randomly selects nodes from its shards – partitions of the blockchain – to mine blocks. It can’t predict or influence which validators will be selected (aside from prioritizing validators that stake more EGLD and have a good track record). The turnaround time is quick, taking just 100 milliseconds to choose the nodes.

The blockchain also makes use of something called adaptive state sharding, which dynamically merges and splits shards according to network traffic and the number of validator nodes on offer. The developers claim that Elrond can reach more than 15,000 transactions per second with low transaction fees. In a test environment with 1,500 nodes and 50 shards, Elrond achieved 263,000 transactions per second. Ethereum’s mainnet, by contrast, hums along at about 14 transactions per second.

EGLD governance

Elrond was co-founded in 2017 by two brothers, Beniamin and Lucian Mincu, and Lucian Todea. Beniamin is Elrond’s CEO. Elrond’s investors include Binance Labs, Electric Capital and Maven 11.

The company launched a prototype in July 2018. Through Amazon Web Services (AWS), it reached more than 1,000 transactions per second.

A private testnet followed in June 2019, followed by a public testnet that same month. In June 2019, Elrond raised $5.1 million in an initial coin offering (ICO) for ERD. The mainnet launched in July 2020.

Elrond intends to have EGLD holders govern the network, just like any other decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). It expects to add on-chain governance in the third quarter of 2022.