eGLD will be the national currency of Elrond's economy and all ERD tokens will be gradually replaced by eGLD tokens.
The ticker eGLD is an acronym for eGold, which stands for the simplest and most intuitively powerful metaphor for what Elrond's currency aspires to be. From now on, we will use eGold and eGLD interchangeably to refer to Elrond's own currency.
Going forward, there will be two ways to swap ERD for eGLD: one through Binance.com and the other through the Elrond exchange bridge.
There is no immediate swap deadline: everyone will be able to continue swapping ERD ERC20 or ERD BEP2 to EGLD via Elrond Bridge over the next 12-24 months, so there is no risk of losing your ERD tokens if you do not swap immediately.
Elrond, an internet-scale blockchain designed from the ground up to deliver 1,000x cumulative increases in throughput and execution speed, introduces two key innovations: the new Adaptive State Sharding engine and the Secure Proof of Stake (PoS) algorithm, providing linear scalability with fast, effective and safe consensus mechanism.
Besides the token exchange, Elrond's new economic model is ready to go.
The difference between eGLD and other economic models is similar to the difference between a Shakespeare play and any random story. Just as precise words and phrases are of immense importance because, when taken together, they reveal subtle and profound new meanings, so precise, finely tuned economic parameters are of immense importance, because together they can generate strong economic gravitational forces that can effectively change the global economy.
Its most important parameters are:
1. The eGLD metaphor stands for simplicity and versatility in design.
Complexity is the most important obstacle to acceptance in the real world - try to explain Bitcoin or Ethereum to normal people and you'll see what I mean. To reach the next billion people, we had to completely reimagine Elrond's currency and capture its essence in a universally attractive and powerful metaphor.
2. Congenital deficits to increase cost and demand
Genesis has only 20 million eGLDs for 8 billion people. This translates to just 0.0025 eGLD per person. Owning several thousand eGLDs now is like owning several thousand bitcoins in 2010.
3. Strong incentive to accept the validator, coupled with the maximum theoretical supply limit.
Validators have strong incentives to protect the Elrond network. Initially, these staking incentives come from a new offering released annually, but as implementation begins, inflation is replaced with transaction fees to cover the staking rewards. In addition, unlike most other blockchain networks, where the new release is infinite and unlimited, at Elrond this amount is capped by a theoretical supply limit of 31,415,926 eGLD, which can be reached within 10 years.
4. Adoption reduces this theoretical inflation and increases the deficit
One of the most powerful features of Elrond's economic model is that every transaction fee paid lowers the theoretical limit by replacing inflation with a fee, making eGLD more scarce by ensuring that the theoretical supply limit of 31.4 million is never reached.