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Avalanche is an open-source platform for launching decentralized applications and enterprise blockchain deployments in one interoperable, highly scalable ecosystem. Developers who build on Avalanche can easily create powerful, reliable, and secure applications with private or public blockchain networks. Avalanche gives you complete control on both the network and application layers–helping you build anything you can imagine.
Experts were trying for a long time to solve known problems from existing coins to improve scaling, while the network remains decentralized and secure to prepare blockchain for mainstream adoption. While new projects were launched constantly, so far, no project could deliver an adequate improvement.
But now, Avalanche has implemented a new consensus protocol for its native cryptocurrency, AVAX, and offered a new, groundbreaking solution.
The various features and benefits why Avalanche is offering a great solution for normal users, developers and business infrastructure are explained in the following paragraphs step by step.
Avalanche consensusAvalanche works with the Avalanche Consensus Protocol, which was developed in 2018 by a group named “Team Rocket”. The basic idea behind this protocol is that numerous independent voters (validators, knots) jointly agree upon solutions regarding decisions that have to be made. These decisions can for example refer to transactions within the network. If all Voters are coincident in opinion a synchronized view on the data within the network is ensured. If even a few voters turn out to be flawed or malicious and carry out contradicting transactions, this will be revealed by the other voters. The flawed transactions will stand out from the transactions of the other voters in the network. As a result, a violation of security is assumed since at least one of the voters does not align with the other voters in the network. This principle nearly precludes any unauthorized intrusions to the network.
The idea of a consensus does not constitute a novel concept. Next to the Avalanche Consensus, there are two other approaches that implement the idea: The classic protocol and the Nakamoto-Consensus. However, the Avalanche Consensus is more recent and aims at integrating the benefits of the other two approaches while reducing their disadvantages.
There are two main problems regarding the classic protocol. First, it is highly prone to errors. The success of the approach requires that every voter knows the identity of each of the other voters in the system and that they agree upon a decision with an accuracy of 100 percent. Even single deviating opinions will lead to security violations. Second, an attacker solely has to control one third of the network in order to execute an attack with doubled expenses. Moreover, the scalability of the system forms a great weakness, rendering it inappropriate for global deployment.
The disadvantages of the Nakamoto-Consensus are its slowness in its high energy requirements. Additionally, the time span for the final confirmation of a transaction is remarkably high.
Avalanche closes the gaps of these two approaches. It is marked by robustness, scalability, energy efficiency and high decentrality. A detailed overview on the features of Avalanche is depicted in the following figure.
Avalanche manages to reduce the error-proneness of the entire system to an extent where the occurrence of an error becomes almost impossible. Moreover, Avalanche enables the immediate completion of transactions without the need to wait for their confirmation. This allows for the execution of transactions in under a second of time.
Additionally, Avalanche is highly resource efficient, making more than 4.500 transactions per second possible – with a basic computer. This feature contributes to the high scalability of the network.
Avalanche opted for the Proof of Stake procedure. This means that users have to hold a certain amount of coins in order to be able to confirm transactions. In contrast to the Nakamoto-Consensus, Avalanche knots are only active when there is work that has to be dealt with. When there is no transaction taking place, the knots return to stand-by and wait until new transactions are executed. Only when this is the case the knots are reactivated. Hence, Avalanche works more intelligent and smarter than the other consensus approaches.
The most important feature of Avalanche is that there is no maximum limit of users working in the network. Therefore, there are no problems regarding the scalation of the network.
The Avalanche Consensus is based on a well thought out mechanism. The single validators wait on transactions and then vote whether these transactions should be accepted or declined. In this process, every validator first makes his own decision. Afterwards he works with the rest of the network to assess whether other validators have the same opinion. In this, the validator randomly choses other validators and examines their opinion. This process is repeated until there is enough data to ensure the accuracy of the decision. Every validator is seen as an independent decision maker. This process makes Avalanche so special.
You can read more about it here:
https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmUy4jh5mGNZvLkjies1RWM4YuvJh5o2FYopNPVYwrRVGV (Team Rocket)
https://files.avalabs.org/papers/consensus.pdf (from AVA Labs website)
Avalanche’s platform consists of four key concepts: | ________________________________________ |
- 1. Consensus engine: The basis for the Avalanche protocol is the Snow family of consensus
protocols. On launch, the platform has two different consensus engines:
- a) Avalanche: First illustrated in the Team Rocket report, DAG-optimized consensus. High-throughput, easy to prune, parallelizable.
- b) Snowman: First generated by the Ava Labs team, chain-optimized consensus. Totally-ordered, high-throughput, perfect for smart contracts.
- 2. Virtual Machines: VMs in Avalanche are code that produce a database using consensus. This database can take the form of a chain, a DAG, a log file, or some other data structure that involves multi-machine synchronization. In several subnets, the VM logic can be deployed several times, each creating an individual ChainID for that case.
- 3. Chains: Chains for VM instances are a generic concept. A Chain ID is allocated to each chain and can be part of one subnet and only one subnet. However, to deploy the same form of chain several times within a subnet or in other subnets, the same VM may be used. For eg, one might install their own EVM in their subnet as well as use the EVM in other subnets, and these two VMs will be completely distinct state machines.
- 4. Subnets: A Subnet is a subset of Avalanche platform validators who have chosen to engage in the validation of a group of chains. The validators who want to become members of that subnet can validate all chains deployed on the subnet. Subnets for these validators are expected to establish their own reward structures. Subnets may have hundreds of chains if they are
| _____________ |
A detailed explanation can be found here:
https://files.avalabs.org/papers/platform.pdf
Fast peer to per paymentsPeer-to-peer payments have been the most important use case for cryptocurrencies and will continue to do so. Bitcoin started as a decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency and was working well for years. But now, as we have seen a large increase in adoption, Bitcoin is working at full capacity. Serving more customers would mean increased transaction fees and / or a longer time to get your transaction confirmed. In addition, it’s far from being enough to have efficient confirmation times at an average block time of 10 minutes. It’s just not suitable for instant payments to be used when you pay for your daily purchases.
Ethereum tried to improve it, confirmation times are faster but reality has shown, Ethereum is also no solution to be used as a fast and decentralized payment solution. Fees are increasing massively when too much transactions were sent, what’s especially a result because Ethereum is widely used for decentralized applications.
Now Avalanche tries to step in and offer what Bitcoin and Ethereum or any project else failed to deliver so far: a decentralized peer-to-peer payment solution.
And Avalanche offers many features to be successful here:
- fast confirmations of only 2 seconds finality for almost instant payments
- 4,500 transactions per second (2x of Visa)
- a decentralized, censorship-resistant platform
It wouldn’t be a surprise if Avalanche will get adopted as blockchain for payments but right now, Avalanche is still too unknown and needs more stores accepting it.
Over time, it could happen like Bitcoin, but not slowing down adoption when fees are expensive and confirmations times long, but in opposite accelerating adoption and benefit from network effects in business.
Avalanche is predestined to become a global, fast and reliable peer to per payment network.
Decentralized Finance (DeFi)Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is one of the most promising “inventions” of modern Blockchain industry. It’s independent from centralized intermediaries and gives all users full control over their crypto currencies.
If you want to generate yield or just want to swap your coins on a decentralized exchange, DeFi is providing it.
But recently, it has become critical to use ETH-based DeFi applications when fees for a single swap were 100$ or more because of very high Ethereum transaction fees.
Using Avalanche now to build DeFi applications will solve such problems by providing low transaction fees and fast confirmations.
A first step to increase and improve DeFi applications is Pangolin, a DEX like Uniswap but based on Avalanche. It will work like Uniswap or Sushiswap but while transaction fees are cheap and fast. Like native governance tokens from Uniswap (UNI) and Sushiswap (SUSHI), Pangolin offers a governance token (PNG), too.
Given how popular DeFi applications have become on Ethereum, it will likely take the next step at Avalanche where more users are able to participate and entire new applications can be built.
Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs)Many experts have agreed, that NFTs (Non-Fungible-Tokens) could be a mayor part of linking real-world assets to crypto. Avalanche supports creating, storing and sending NFTs on Avalanche, providing a secure platform and low transactions fees.
A short explanation from AVA Labs website explaining NFTs:
As opposed to regular tokens, which are interchangeable (fungible), meaning that each one is the same, each non-fungible token is unique on the network, with a distinct ID making it different from any other. This enables many use cases that would be impossible with interchangeable tokens, like proof of ownership of a unique asset.
NFT studio on Avalanche WalletNFT studio on Avalanche Wallet is a great tool for everyone to create own unique NFTs or collect and store existing ones:
NFT studio by AVA Labs
NFT Decentralized Exchange (DEX): Polyient GamesFor buying or selling NFT’s most people are using opensea.io currently. Opensea.io is based on Ethereum, and therefore very costly to use. Transaction fees can be up to 50$ for a single transaction right now.
Polyient Games, which will be based on Avalanche, will require much lower transaction fees and improving user experience also by fast transaction processes. Polyient Games will be a decentralized exchange where users can buy and sell NFTs independently and no centralized authority is in charge.
Polyient Games is also building a big ecosystem of NFT partnerships especially for blockchain gaming:
Polyient Games to Bring NFT-Focused Decentralized Exchange to Ava Labs’ Avalanche
Traditional Finance (ILOs, Predictions, Trading and more)Avalanche is focusing not only on existing areas known for crypto currencies like Decentralized Exchanges or NFTs but also on traditional finance. Moving traditional finance to blockchain is important for the whole crypto ecosystem and is making procedures more efficient.
ILOs, a $10 billion asset class will start to be opened to Avalanche: Litigation funding, also known as legal financing and third-party litigation funding, provides individuals who otherwise lack the necessary resources the funds needed to litigate or arbitrate a civil claim. ILOs raise the funding required to pursue litigation in these cases and tokenize an economic right in such claims. Each token indirectly represents a legal claim to a portion of the potential financial recovery which has been converted to a digital asset.
Initial Litigation Offerings to Bring $10B Asset Class to Avalanche and Retail Investors for the First TimeIn addition, Avalanche will cover use cases like decentralized margin trading and prediction markets:
bZx to Bring Decentralized Margin Trading & Lending to AvalancheProsper is bringing the first non-custodial prediction market to Avalanche
StablecoinsAs a fiat-equivalent currency, stablecoins are an important utility vehicle to provide fiat-backed money transfers.
Stablecoins launched on Avalanche will provide sub-second finality, transaction fees of only a few cents and fast finality which is essential if you want to use crypto for instant, local purchases. It will be a mayor improvement compared to existing stablecoins.
Avalanche has a few partnerships launching stablecoins based on Avalanche so far:
BiLiraeMoneyTrueUSDMore stablecoins are expected to be added.
AVAX as Store of valueUnlike most other coins, Avalanche is designed to serve as a store of value. As a payment solution it is essential for Avalanche to ensure preservation of value and everyone knows it bears no risk of inflation to accept Avalanche as money.
Being capped at 720 Million AVAX, Avalanche is a scarce asset and ensures to prevent inflation which would lead to dilution of each AVAX over time. Avalanche is a similar store of value like BTC and Gold.
Why Avalanche (AVAX) has the potential to be an incredible store of value
There will be a
maximum limit of 720 million AVAX coins. The intervals in which the limit is lifted until it reaches 720 million is up to the governance. Every validator in the network is entitled to make suggestions regarding the adjustment of the system. Therefore, in the end it is up to the validators to determine when the maximum limit is reached. In addition to that, the inflation of the coins is protected by the structure of the fees. Here it is distinguished between Staker fees and transaction fees. In contrast to other protocols which pay the fees to the miners, the fees are burnt at Avalanche. With that, the payment is global and for the good of the entire ecosystem. The burning of the coins leads to a scarcity of the coins in the system and therefore contributes to preventing an inflation.
Regarding the fees for transactions Avalanche differs depending on the type of transaction. The instantiation of new subnets has the highest fee. In contrast to that, simpler payments in AVAX have low costs. For further actions within subnets the fees are payed in the native token of that subnet. In the end, the creator of the subnet decides about the fee structure for his subnet, which will deliver incentives for the validation. Additionally, the transaction fee is not static but adapts to the workload of the network. If the network is busier, the transaction fee will increase. After a certain time, this function will be recomputed to balance the natural increase of transaction volume in the network.
Token economics / Allocations of AVAX distribution: 
More information how Avalanche sale was done can be found here:
https://files.avalabs.org/papers/token.pdf
Launched in September 2020, Avalanche has made much progress so far and is currently developing a main udpate, called
Apricot.
In a very short time Avalanche has gained much interest and as a consequence several partnerships
have emerged.
The following are real partnerships resulting in projects that will launch 100% in the coming months:
Roche Cyrulnik Freedman LLP, and Republic Advisory Services (ILOs)[/li][/list]
- Jelly Swap (DEX)
- TrueUSD (Stablecoin)
- Ankr (Gateway to the web3)
- Prosper (Prediction platform)
- Reef (DeFi)
- bZx (DeFi)
Developer Grants (Avalanche-X)To incentivize building decentralized application on Avalanche, AVA Labs offers an interesting program for developers called “Avalanche-X grants”: Developers building decentralized applications like lending, decentralized exchanges or stablecoins and more, can apply and if applied successfully, get funding from AVA Labs to develop such applications.
Famous Avalanche-X grants recipients so far: - AVAscan
- Polyient Games
- AVAdo
… to be continued…
Open grantsAvalanche is still giving out grants for different applications build on Avalanche. If you are an experienced developer, it might be interesting to have a look at it.
Should new grants come up, it will be listed immediately. If existing grants got rewarded and are finished, it will be removed immediately, so developers know and are updated.
Important grants are given out for: Decentralized ExchangeBuild a secure, easy-to-use decentralized exchange on Avalanche, like
Uniswap.
LendingBuild a safe, non-custodial lending solution on Avalanche, like
Compound or
Aave.
StablecoinBuild the next-generation stablecoin on Avalanche, like
DAI or
USDC.
And much more. Developers can apply here:
https://www.avalabs.org/avalanche-x/explore-open-grants
Avalanche is growing quicky and always searching for experienced, curious and skilled people who want to help building Avalanche. You can be part of a fantastic team exploring new fields of blockchain industry and next-generation distributed systems.
Avalanche is hiring from Engineers and Developers to Community Managers. All available positions, conditions and requirements are listed here:
https://jobs.lever.co/avalabs
Avalanche is driven by a broad and fast-growing community. For building and rewarding community contributions, AVA Labs has created a community accelerator called Avalanche Hub.
Everyone can join and choose from a various set of tasks like content writing or translations, creating visual content or sharing content on social media. For good content, you can earn Avalanche Hub points, which can be exchanged to AVAX, at a ratio of 1 Avalanche Hub point = 0.01$ of AVAX (market price).
Avalanche Hub was launched in February 2020 and will continue to play an important role in community building:
https://medium.com/avalancheavax/ava-hub-launch-ef98548262a5Avalanche Hub:
https://community.avax.network/
For technical discussions and questions, you can create an account in Avalanche Forum and ask whatever you want.
Avalanche Forum:
https://forum.avax.network/
Avalanche has created a very detailed documentation of technical explanations and tutorials. If you have questions about Avalanche in general, creating and managing a wallet or staking, you’ll find detailed guides here. In addition, all whitepapers are available here.
Documentation:
https://docs.avax.network/
Avalanche Lounge is a website where you can find all important applications based on Avalanche, tools about Avalanche or Services supporting it, like Decentralized Exchanges based on Avalanche, Avalanche Block Explorers, Exchanges where you can buy it
Avalanche Lounge:
https://www.avalanchelounge.com/
Avalanche is a very fast growing team of experienced computer scientists, developers, experts for economics, finance, marketing and community building. While it's impossible to keep this list updated we refer to
https://www.avalabs.org/team, where new team members are added frequently.
Avalanche has been mentioned by quite a few famous members of Blockchain:
https://www.avalabs.org/ - Website
Avalanche:https://medium.com/avalabs/avalanche-mainnet-is-live-c2101c82ce10 - Mainnet
https://explorer.avax.network/ - Explorer
https://wallet.avax.network/ - Wallet
https://info.avax.network/ - AVAX Public Sale Info (Closed)
https://community.avax.network/ - Avalanche Hub
Developers: https://docs.avax.network/ - Documentation
https://github.com/ava-labs - Github
https://forum.avax.network/ - Avalanche Forum
https://www.avalabs.org/avalanche-x - Avalanche-X
https://athereum.avax.network/ - Athereum
https://www.avalabs.org/whitepapers - Whitepaper(s)
Learn & Get Helphttps://www.avalabs.org/why-avalanche - Why Avalanche?
https://www.avalabs.org/solutions - Solutions
https://www.avalabs.org/roadmap - Roadmap
https://medium.com/avalabs - Blog
https://support.avalabs.org/ - Support
Get Involvedhttps://www.avalabs.org/avalanche-x/apply-for-general-grants - Propose a Grant
https://www.avalabs.org/avalanche-x/explore-open-grants - Explore Open Grants
https://www.avalabs.org/news- News
Social Media:https://www.avalabs.org/social - Overview Social Media
Ava Labs:https://twitter.com/avalabsofficial - Twitter
https://www.facebook.com/AvaLabsOfficial - Facebook
https://www.linkedin.com/company/avalabsofficial/ - LinkedIn
https://discord.com/invite/RwXY7P6 - Discord
Avalanche: https://t.me/avalancheavax - Telegram
https://t.me/avalanche_announcements - Announcements
https://t.me/Athereum - Athereum
https://t.me/avalanche_zh - Chinese
https://t.me/avalanche_nl - Dutch
https://t.me/avalanche_fr - French
https://t.me/avalanche_dach - German
https://t.me/avalanche_it - Italian
https://t.me/avalanche_jp - Japanese
https://t.me/avalanche_ko - Korean
https://t.me/avalanche_ng - Nigeria
https://t.me/avalanche_pt - Portuguese
https://t.me/avalanche_ru - Russian
https://t.me/avalanche_es - Spanish
https://t.me/avalanche_tr - Turkish
https://t.me/avalanche_vn - Vietnamese
https://twitter.com/avalancheavax - Twitter
https://twitter.com/avalanche_fr - French
https://twitter.com/avalanche_dach - German
https://twitter.com/avalanche_it - Italian
https://twitter.com/avalanchejp - Japanese
https://twitter.com/avalanche_ko - Korean
https://twitter.com/avalanche_ru - Russian
https://twitter.com/avalanche_esp - Spanish
https://twitter.com/avalanche_tr - Turkish
https://www.facebook.com/avalancheavax - Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/AvalancheEsp - Spanish
https://www.youtube.com/c/avalancheavax - Youtube
http://www.linkedin.com/company/avalancheavax/ - LinkedIn
https://chat.avalabs.org/ - Discord
https://www.reddit.com/r/avax/ - Reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/Athereum/ - Athereum
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