Despite its young age, Avalanche is the 10th most popular crypto project. Perceived as a competitor to Ethereum, Avalanche (AVAX) uses its technical strength to establish itself in the blockchain world. Discover its history and characteristics!

What is the Avalanche blockchain?

You can’t separate Avalanche from Emin Gun Sirer, a former professor at Cornell University. Passionate about distributed systems, he unveiled in 2003 the first decentralized virtual currency: Karma. At Cornell, the draft of the Avalanche project was born in 2018 under the impetus of Emin Gun Sirer, who was then assisted by Ted Yin and Kevin Sekniqi, who became Chief Protocol Architect and COO of Ava Labs. The Ava Labs team, which develops the protocol, now includes dozens of people with impressive backgrounds (Google, Microsoft, NASA, Morgan Stanley, Cisco…).

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How does the Avalanche blockchain work?

From a technical point of view, the Avalanche blockchain is described by Ava Labs as “the fastest smart contract platform in the blockchain industry”. It manages to validate 4,500 transactions per second (TPS). A transaction takes less than 2 seconds to commit. All transaction fees, paid with the AMAX token, are systematically destroyed.

In its whitepaper dated June 30, 2020, the Avalanche platform is described as having three objectives:

• The creation of private or public blockchains
• Creating Dapps
• Creating complex digital assets with custom rules

Its main net was launched on September 21, 2020.

The Avalanche protocol is touted as ideal for DeFi (decentralized finance), enterprises, institutions and governments, and NFTs—all with multiple applications, ranging from supply chain to intellectual property, DEX, stablecoins and collectables. Avalanche’s consensus method is Proof-Of-Stake (PoS). You should know that Avalanche does not have only one blockchain, but three, which derive from the Primary Network, a subnet.

A subnet?

 It is a group of validators, each of which has at least 2,000 AVAXs.

The 3 blockchains of Avalanche:

• Exchange Chain (X-Chain): which manages the tokens and which works Avalanche consensus protocol.
• Platform Chain (P-Chain): coordinates validators and creates subnets. It works with the Snowman consensus protocol.
• Contract Chain (C-Chain): this allows you to create smart contracts. It is an instance of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which also relies on the Snowman consensus protocol.

Having a multi-chain system allows Avalanche to improve its scalability. From Snowman’s emergence, the Snow family of consensus protocols mixes a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) structure with a random vote verification process to ensure that all validators agree. Proof of stake (PoS) allows the project to resist Sybil’s attacks.

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Avalanche vs Ethereum

Can the Avalanche blockchain compete with Ethereum? If stats are anything to go by, Avalanche is much faster, greener, and cheaper than Ethereum. The platform has the advantage of offering compatibility with Ethereum’s clever contract programming language, Solidity. Ethereum developers are, therefore, aware of Avalanche and can continue to use their favourite tools.

The Avalanche Ecosystem

Avalanche has 178 projects listed on the website dedicated to its ecosystem.

The projects are listed in 7 categories:

• Culture: including 20 projects related to NFTs
• DeFi: Aave, Curve, SushiSwap, 1inch and many more
• Company: including Mastercard, Bitgo
• Exchange: dozens of cryptocurrency exchange platforms
• Infrastructure: including the Oracle Chainlink, Avalanche Bridge, Chainstak
• Tools: multiple tools like The Graph, DappRadar, Avalaunch, Avascan
• Financial Management: with many wallets, including Metamask and Ledger, portfolio tracking tools like Zapper, e-commerce platforms like Shopping.io

Partnerships with Avalanche are multiplying. Recently, Mastercard announced that it was joining the platform. Since the beginning of 2020, nearly a dozen partnerships have been established.

AVAX, the native corner of Avalanche

With its crypto AVAX, Avalanche is positioned in 10th place in the Market Cap ranking, with a more than 18 billion euros valuation. The crypto AVAX, listed at €3.50 in September 2020, is trading at around €70. His ATH was observed on November 21, with 132€09. On the side of its ROI, this cryptocurrency shows an excellent performance with +15,593%. If it experienced a period of decline from mid-December 2021, it has since returned to an uptrend.

Where to buy AVAX crypto?

With such popularity, Avalanche’s crypto, AVAX, is for sale on dozens of exchanges. For those who want to buy their cryptos in euros, several exchanges allow it, such as Binance, Kraken, FTX and Coinbase.

How to do AVAX staking?

The cryptocurrency AVAX can be staked. To become a validator, a minimum of 2,000 AVAX is required. If you don’t have as many tokens, you can delegate AVAX staking as long as you have at least 25 AVAXs in your Avalanche Wallet. Careful! Choose your validator carefully, as Avalanche does not penalize malicious validators via slashing.

Conclusion:

• Avalanche is a competing blockchain of Ethereum that allows you to create smart contracts.
• It has 3 chains and consensus protocols.
• The Avalanche blockchain is faster, more economical and less energy intensive than Ethereum.
• AVAX is the native cryptocurrency of the Avalanche network and is used to pay transaction fees on all dApps.