Concordium was founded by Lars Seier Christensen, the co-founder and former CEO of the online trading and investment platform Saxo Bank. Christensen, who is the current Chairman of the Foundation Board was able to grow Saxo to 1,500 employees in 150 locations. However, the company has a team of more than 30 experts, making up the Foundation Board, the Science Team, the Technical Team, an Operations Team, and an Advisory Board.

Other notable mentions on the team include Professor Ueli Maurer, a senior academic at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and renowned for his work in cryptographic innovations. Professor Ivan Damgård, the co-inventor of the Merkle-Damgård cryptographic hash is also part of the team.

Other key C-level team members include Group CPO/CTO Kåre Kjelstrøm (entrepreneur, Silicon Valley startup veteran from multiple ventures including Uber).

Concordium’s most unique selling point comes from its built-in identity layer. The ID layer employs trusted identity issuers to provide users with their self-sovereign identity. However, the network tries to maintain a balance between user privacy and the need for identification if a legitimate legal issue arises.

On the other end of identification, on-chain transactions are carried out privately using cryptographic means to prove that all participants have been verified without disclosing their identity.

Asides from its privacy and identity features, Concordium provides a powerful execution environment for smart contracts and digital financial primitives suited for enterprise users. Some of these features include high throughput with fast finality, low, fixed transaction costs, and a regulated DeFi Lab.

Speaking of transactions, the blockchain network uses a dual consensus mechanism. At one end, operators (known as bakers) process transactions using a Nakamoto-style Proof-of-Stake mechanism, and at the other end, a Byzantine fault tolerant (BFT) agreement among a set of specialized bakers (known as finalizers) is used to finalize transactions.

Any user that stakes more than 14,000 CCD can become a baker, while finalizers need to stake at least 0.1% of all CCDs.

Concordium (CCD) tokens can be purchased on several exchanges, such as Kucoin, Bitfinex, AscendEX and MEXC.

New to the crypto space? Read more on how to buy Bitcoin and other crypto.

Learn more about zero-knowledge proof on CMC Glossary.

Check out our guide on what privacy coins are.

What is a smart contract? Find out more.

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