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The official Algorand (ALGO) wallet is now fully open source The official Algorand (ALGO) wallet is now fully open source
๐Ÿšจ This article is 3 years old...

The official Algorand (ALGO) wallet is now fully open source

The community can now develop and propose features on the โ€˜officialโ€™ implementation of the Algorand wallet.

The official Algorand (ALGO) wallet is now fully open source

Cover art/illustration via CryptoSlate. Image includes combined content which may include AI-generated content.

The official Algorand wallet is now open-source and its codebase has been made publicly accessible, the protocol said in a blog post today.

โ€œOpen sourceโ€ is a form of software distribution wherein the source code is publicly available to anyone who wants it, and programmers can read or change that code if they desire. This is unlike โ€œclosed source,โ€ where no member of the public can view what goes behind the scenes.

โ€œWe’re excited to announce that the official Algorand Wallet codebase has been open-sourced and is now publicly available. Developers can access the Algorand-Wallet repository via our main GitHub organization,โ€ the team said.

The Algorand move to open source

Algorand is a high-speed blockchain that utilizes a two-tiered structure and a unique variation of the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism to increase transaction speeds and achieve finality for its blocks.

It was one of the first large-cap crypto projects to provide staking capabilities to holdersโ€”requires users to simply hold a minimum quantity of ALGO on their supported wallets to reap staking rewards.

However, a recurrent community criticism was that of the closed-source nature of its official wallet. Blockchain protocols, and arguably the entire industry, is based on the ethos of being community-governed, decentralized, and free-of-censorship, and to some Algorand adopters, the earlier wallet was not exactly that.

But that path has now changed. โ€œThe goal behind Algorand Wallet is to give the Algorand community a secure, trusted, convenient, and powerful way to interact with Algorand ecosystem products and the Algorand Blockchain,โ€ said Ian Cross, a developer at Algorand, in the blog.

He added:

โ€œAs part of that mission, we believe that making our code open source is critical to the success of the project.โ€

The update was one of the biggest requests of the community and has seen a favorable response in social forums.