AvalancheAVAX

About Avalanche (AVAX)

Avalanche is a layer-one blockchain protocol that provides a programmable smart contracts platform for decentralized applications. Like many other layer-1 blockchains, Avalanche aims to solve the blockchain scalability trilemma. To aim at a potential solution, Avalanche has adopted a unique approach with its distinctive proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism and the use of multiple blockchains for its primary network.

Avalanche claims to be one of the fastest smart contract platforms in the crypto industry, especially when taking time to finality into account. Furthermore, since Avalanche’s smart contracts are written in the Solidity programming language also used by Ethereum, it can integrate many Solidity-compatible decentralized applications, thus creating greater blockchain interoperability between Avalanche and Ethereum.

Avalanche’s overall concept was thought up in May 2018, by a pseudonymous group of software developers known as Team Rocket. They published a paper describing the Avalanche protocol. Soon after, Cornell University professor Emin Gün Sirer, computer scientist Kevin Sekniqi, and Maofan “Ted” Yin launched Ava Labs in 2018 with the intention and goal of developing the Avalanche network.

The project had its ICO in 2020 during which $42 million were raised in a token sale. In July 2021 the Avalanche Foundation managed to raise an impressive $230 million in a token sale that attracted participants like Polychain, Three Arrows Capital, and many other venture capitalists.

AVAX is the native token of the Avalanche network and is used to power transactions in its ecosystem. AVAX is how system incentives are maintained, network fees are paid and on-chain governance is facilitated. The latter enables AVAX holders to participate in voting on changes to the network, thereby settling upgrade decisions democratically. AVAX has a maximum supply of 720,000,000 tokens.

Price history

The Avalanche mainnet was launched in September 2020 with the AVAX token trading at $5.3. The digital token would trade below the $5 mark for the next few months until Jan 9, 2021, until it finally broke an important barrier of around $5.7. During the 2021 bull run, AVAX maintained its upward trajectory and reached a price of $55 in early February 2021.

In August 2021, the AVAX price rose again to $76 following an announcement of a $180 million liquidity mining incentive program. This meant Avalanche users would have access to certain Ethereum DeFi protocols and by using them through Avalanche, they would have the possibility to earn incentives in the form of AVAX tokens.

In the aftermath of this major announcement, the price of AVAX didn’t do much for the next few months. It wouldn’t be until August of 2021 when the coin finally surpassed its previous all-time high. At the peak of the 2021 bull run, AVAX recorded its highest-ever price of $128 in November 2021. This price peak coincided with an announcement by Ava Labs that it was partnering with global accounting company Deloitte to build a more efficient disaster relief system based on the Avalanche blockchain.

Going into 2022, the price of AVAX fluctuated between $90-$120 until April 2022 when it declined in tandem with the broader cryptocurrency sell-off. In mid-October, AVAX was trading at around $15.

How does Avalance (AVAX) work?

At its core, Avalanche is combining different methods to solve the blockchain scalability trilemma. There are three main aspects of its designs that differentiate it from other blockchains networks. This includes its consensus mechanism, its use of subnetworks, and its incorporation of three interoperable blockchain networks.

The Avalanche consensus mechanism builds on the original proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism. When a transaction is initiated on the Avalanche network, it is received by a validator node that communicates with a random set of validators, checking for and establishing consensus. The validators perform this sampling procedure repeatedly until they arrive at a consensus.

In other words, a transaction is sent to a validator, which sends a message to other validators, which sample more validators, and on and on the procedure goes, until the entire system reaches an agreement on the outcome. Validators are rewarded according to the amount of time they have staked their tokens. This mechanism is referred to as Proof of Uptime. Proof of Correctness refers to whether the node has in the past acted according to the algorithm's rules. Both of these mechanisms serve as additional scaling mechanisms to incentivize validator nodes to perform honestly.

Additionally, Avalanche users can launch subnetworks, also called subnets. They represent specialized chains that can work using their own set of rules. Consensus on these chains is reached by the subnetworks themselves. These subnets don’t share execution, storage, or networking with either other subnets or Avalanche’s primary network. It is the case though that subnetworks are validated by Avalanche validators on the Avalanche mainnet. To do so, they are incentives by subnet owners.

The last part that makes Avalance unique is its three blockchain design that makes up its overall network. In total, there are three chains that are interoperable allowing for the movement of crypto assets across chains to fulfill different functions within the ecosystem. They include:

• The Exchange Chain (X-Chain): This is the default blockchain where AVAX tokens are created and exchanged. The blockchain uses the Avalanche consensus mechanism.
• The Contract Chain (C-Chain): This chain enables the creation and execution of smart contracts. Since it is EVM-compatible, the blockchain’s smart contracts can take advantage of cross-chain interoperability. C-chain uses an upgraded version of the Avalanche consensus mechanism known as Snowman.
• The Platform (P-Chain): This chain is responsible for coordinating validators and allows for the creation and management of subnetworks.

With each blockchain taking on different roles, the Avalanche network can improve network throughput to up to 6,500 transactions per second without compromising on decentralization.

FAQs

Does Avalanche have a future?

Avalanche offers similar functionality to Ethereum and other layer-one networks. Developers on Avalanche can create tokens, decentralized applications (DApps), and NFTs. Avalanche users can validate transactions, stake tokens, and access hundreds of DApps. As such, Avalanche seems to be a serious and noteworthy contender for a lasting smart contract platform.

Is Avalanche a good investment?

Avalanche is a solid project, with an excellent management team, a strong technology stack, and a big community. Avalanche offers users and validators a chance to stake tokens and earn AVAX as reward. Its popularity gives it a high level of recognition within the crypto space. Readers should do their own research (also referred to as DYOR in the space), to make sure they know what they are investing in.

Can Avalanche (AVAX) reach $1,000?

Some price analysts like Gov Capital have made claims that AVAX can one day reach a price $1,000; however, there is little evidence to support this theory. The consensus is that if such a target is ever reached, it will certainly take time. In the end, no one knows the price it could reach in the future and as with any cryptocurrency, it is plausible that such price targets won’t be reached.

Related

Popular criticisms

Ava Labs was recently embroiled in a scandal in that the company was working in cahoots with its attorney, to attack other crypto projects deemed competitors through class action lawsuits. The allegations stated that Ava Labs and its attorney, Roche Freedman, used class action lawsuits to legally attack other companies while preventing any regulatory spotlight on the activities. Ava Labs did deny any allegations that were brought forth against it.

Comparisons to other projects

Avalanche is often mentioned together with projects such as  Polkadot and Cosmos that are seeking to solve scalability challenges inherent in layer-1 chains. Avalanche beats the other two by having higher transactions per second, no limit on the number of subnets, and a scalable consensus model. Polkadot offers more transactions per second than Avalanche but is limited to only 100 parachains whereas Cosmos is limited to a relatively small validator size of around 200. This makes Avalanche an interesting alternative option.

As of now, all of these networks offer a vastly superior transaction throughput performance compared to Ethereum. However, Avalanche does not see itself so much as a competitor to Ethereum but rather as a complementary network because of its native Solidity-based EVM interoperability.

Development timelines

Avalanche recently released the Banff upgrade that allows validators to stake and earn rewards with a subnet’s native token. The upgrade enables subnet creators to customize and control their ecosystems.

For the upgrade to take effect in a subnet the creator will have to change the subnet into an elastic subnet. This is a one-time configuration that forces the creator to give up the ability to change the subnet in the future. The Banff upgrade has been enacted as a hard fork, thereby forcing validators to upgrade to the newest version or risk being marked as offline and seeing diminishing returns.