Elrond is a high-throughput public blockchain focused on providing security, efficiency, scalability, and interoperability by employing two key elements: Adaptive State Sharding and a new Secure Proof of Stake ("SPoS") consensus mechanism.

Elrond's blockchain protocol for smart contracts & dApps can process over +10k transaction per seconds with low block times (5s), negligible transaction fees, and with fast finality for cross shard transactions in a matter of seconds.

The Adaptive State Sharding, works via shard merges & splits for unlimited scalability, and uses a fully sharded Architecture, which includes state, transactions, and network. This architecture is deemed highly resilient against malicious attacks due to validators shuffling between shards.

Elrond features smart-contract royalties, where 30% of the fees can be reallocated to the smart contract author.

ERD is the native asset of Elrond and is used to pay for transaction fees and the cost of deploying dApps on the network, along with rewards for various contributions to the network.