Ergo (ERG)

Ergo is an independent Proof-of-Work Layer 1 blockchain designed for contractual money and decentralised financial applications. Development began in 2017, and the Ergo mainnet launched on 1 July 2019.

The network uses Autolykos v2, a memory-hard Proof-of-Work algorithm designed to reduce the advantage of specialised mining hardware and remain accessible to commodity GPUs. Blocks are produced approximately every two minutes, while protocol changes can be introduced through Ergo Improvement Proposals and network voting.

Ergo uses an extended UTXO, or eUTXO, ledger model. Each unspent output can contain assets, data and a protecting smart contract. Applications are written with ErgoScript, a specialised language based on Sigma protocols and designed to support predictable financial contracts, zero-knowledge proofs and multi-stage transaction workflows.

The protocol includes storage rent, which charges long-unused outputs to limit permanent blockchain-state growth, and Non-Interactive Proofs of Proof-of-Work, or NiPoPoWs, which can support compact light clients and cross-chain verification. Ergo also supports native tokens without requiring a separate token contract for every asset.

Ergo has a maximum supply of 97,739,925 ERG. Official emission documentation assigns 93,409,132 ERG to miner rewards, 4,330,791.5 ERG to the Ergo Foundation Treasury and one ERG to its proof-of-no-premine mechanism. The project states that there was no ICO, founder premine or venture-capital allocation, although an earlier Waves-based token called EFYT could be exchanged from the disclosed treasury allocation.

The ecosystem includes wallets, decentralised exchanges, stablecoin protocols, token and NFT applications, ErgoMixer, Ergo Raffle, oracle infrastructure, community governance tools and Rosen Bridge, which connects Ergo with external blockchain networks.

Ergo is open-source, and its node software, protocol proposals, documentation and development activity are publicly available. The network remains live, while newer protocol, node, scaling and application-layer developments continue to be tested through its public repositories and roadmap.

Important distribution note

Before mainnet, the Waves-based Ergo First Year Token (EFYT) was distributed and could later be exchanged using the disclosed Ergo Foundation Treasury allocation. It was not an undisclosed ERG founder premine.