Algorand is the public blockchain Trusty Digital uses as its default execution layer. Two documented properties drive that choice: blocks are confirmed every 2.82 seconds on average and are final once certified, and the base transaction fee is fixed at 0.001 ALGO while the network is not congested.
Why finality matters more than speed
On many blockchains a transaction that appears confirmed is only probably confirmed. The network can reorganise (a competing version of recent history wins), and a transaction that looked settled is undone. The usual defence is to wait for several more blocks before treating anything as done.
Algorand does not work that way. Its documentation states that once a block is certified through the soft vote and certify vote, "its transactions are final and cannot be reversed", and that the chain does not fork or reorganise (Algorand Developer Portal, Blocks, checked 17 September 2026).
For asset ownership this is the difference between a register you can act on and one you have to wait on. If a token records who holds a share, and that record can be reversed twenty minutes later, every downstream process (distributions, reporting, transfer restrictions) has to be built around the possibility. Deterministic finality removes an entire category of operational complexity, and operational complexity is what makes a register expensive to run.
The average block time is 2.82 seconds. Useful, but secondary: the important property is that when those seconds have passed, the matter is closed.
Why the fee has to be small and predictable
Algorand's base fee is 1,000 microAlgo, which is 0.001 ALGO. The documentation states it is "fixed to this amount when the network is not congested", and gives the calculation as fee = max(current_fee_per_byte × len(txn_in_bytes), min_fee), so under normal conditions the per-byte component is zero and the minimum applies (Algorand Developer Portal, Transaction Fees, checked 17 September 2026).
Two consequences follow.
Small units become viable. The point of dividing an asset is to make small holdings possible. That only works if transferring a small holding does not cost a meaningful fraction of it. A fee measured in thousandths of a unit does not constrain the denomination you choose, which means the denomination can be set by what the market wants rather than by what the chain permits.
Operating costs can be forecast. A register paying quarterly distributions to several hundred holders performs several hundred transfers. On a chain where fees move with demand, that cost is unknown until the day. A fixed base fee makes it a line in a budget.
Algorand Standard Assets
Algorand supports tokens at the protocol level through Algorand Standard Assets, rather than requiring every issuer to deploy their own contract code.
This is a meaningful difference. Where tokens are implemented as individual smart contracts, every issuance introduces new code, and new code introduces new defects. A protocol-level asset has the same behaviour for everyone, with no bespoke logic to audit, which removes both an audit cost and a class of risk.
An Algorand Standard Asset carries a defined set of parameters: a name and unit name, total supply, decimal precision, an optional URL and metadata reference, and four administrative addresses: manager, reserve, freeze and clawback. Those four are covered below, under the four addresses an issuer must decide about, and they are the part an issuer must understand before issuing anything.
One behaviour surprises people. An Algorand account must opt in to an asset before it can receive it. A holder cannot be sent tokens they did not agree to accept. For a regulated instrument this is helpful rather than inconvenient: nobody joins your register without an affirmative act, which is a useful property when you have to prove who consented to hold what.
Atomic transfers
Algorand can group transactions so that they either all succeed or all fail. There is no state in which one leg has executed and another has not.
For asset transfers this removes settlement risk from a class of operations that would otherwise need an escrow agent or a trusted intermediary. Payment in one direction and delivery in the other can be a single atomic group, and neither party can end up having performed while the other has not.
Each transaction in the group is still signed by whoever is making it. An atomic group does not let one party move another party's assets; it only ensures that the movements each party has authorised take effect together.
What atomicity does not do is tell you what you are receiving. A token has a name and a unit name, and neither is unique: anyone can create an asset called anything. What identifies an asset on Algorand is its numeric asset ID, and checking that ID before signing is the recipient's responsibility. A group that appears to deliver "USDC" may be delivering an asset someone named USDC this morning, and it will settle flawlessly.
Before signing any group, check the asset ID rather than the name, the quantities in every leg rather than just your own, that there are no additional transactions beyond those you expect, and the destination addresses. An interface that shows one leg and asks for a signature on a group is not showing you the transaction.
The four addresses an issuer must decide about
Every Algorand Standard Asset has four administrative addresses, each either set to an account or set to nothing. The choice is permanent in one direction: an address that has been cleared cannot be restored.
Manager can change the other three addresses. Whoever holds it controls the asset's future configuration.
Reserve is an accounting convention. Tokens held there are treated as not in circulation. It confers no special power by itself.
Freeze can prevent a specific holder from transferring. The holding stays where it is and cannot move.
Clawback can move tokens from any holder to any other account without the holder's consent.
Freeze and clawback are the consequential ones. An issuer that needs to comply with a transfer restriction, act on a court order or correct a mis-sent transfer may genuinely need them. An issuer that sets them without thinking, or without telling holders, has created an authority over other people's property that nobody agreed to.
The configuration is public and anyone can read it from the ledger. Trusty Digital's position is that these authorities belong to the issuer by default, and that where they are set it should be a deliberate, disclosed and agreed decision. If a technology supplier proposes holding your clawback address, ask why, and ask what happens if you want it back.
What Algorand does not solve
It does not make an instrument lawful. The chain records a transfer. Whether the instrument may be offered, to whom, and under what disclosure is a question of law in each jurisdiction. See how tokenisation works for why the legal structure does the load-bearing work.
It does not verify anything off-chain. The ledger knows a token exists and who holds it. It does not know whether the building exists, whether the title is good or whether the revenue is real.
It does not create a market. Transferability is not liquidity, and no chain changes that.
It does not undo mistakes. Finality cuts both ways. A transfer to a wrong address is final in exactly the way a correct one is.
And it is not the only option. Algorand is Trusty Digital's default where it suits the asset. A different network, or a permissioned environment, may be right depending on the structure, who holds the keys and the jurisdiction. A supplier that has only one answer has not understood the question.
How to check these figures yourself
Everything cited here comes from Algorand's own developer documentation, and you should verify it rather than take it from a vendor, including this one.
Block time and finality: the Blocks page of the Algorand Developer Portal. Fees and the fee formula: the Transaction Fees page. Both checked on 17 September 2026. Network figures change; documentation moves with them.
Throughput claims deserve more scepticism. Preparing this article we found three different figures for Algorand's transactions per second: a claimed maximum of around 10,000, an observed peak of 5,716, and an independent estimate of 9,384. Rather than choose one, we cite none. Headline throughput numbers are theoretical maxima under laboratory conditions, and for a tokenisation register throughput is almost never the constraint: a few hundred transfers a quarter is not a throughput problem on any modern network.
If you are weighing execution layers for a specific asset, the questions that matter are finality, fee predictability, whether tokens are protocol-level or contract-level, and what administrative authorities the token standard exposes. Those four decide far more than a benchmark.
The short version
Trusty uses Algorand by default for two documented reasons: a certified block is final, and the base fee is fixed at 0.001 ALGO while the network is not congested. Tokens are protocol-level assets, so issuing one needs no custom code, but its four administrative addresses need a deliberate and disclosed decision.
None of this makes an instrument lawful or an asset real, and Algorand is the default rather than the only option.
The Trusty framework sets out how a tokenisation programme is structured, phase by phase, including where the execution-layer decision sits in the sequence.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or investment advice.
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