Introduction to Avalanche platform: Avangers are excited before main net launch
In recent years I had some interest in blockchain technology and also cryptocurrencies. I had an account in an exchange and I have bought and sold a few coins in the market. For more than a year I was not involved in any trade of cryptocurrency. In the last days of June 2020, I read that a new platform was making tests and scheduled an initial coin offering (1). I started to investigate the project since the team were consisted from scientists from Cornell University, experienced IT specialists who had great background, cryptologists, finance and blockchain experts and software developers (2). The more I learned about Avalanche, the more my interest increased. Avalanche platform was designed to respond the unmet needs of the ecosystem.
Although the first generation blockchain and its cryptocurrency ‘Bitcoin’ is still the dominant feature and very powerful in the ecosystem, there is need for a faster, practical, scalable, secure, energy saving platform for a long time (3). Expectations from a new platform comprise also being independent from hardware configuration, supporting different applications and/or platforms (e.g. smart contracts, decentralized applications (dApps), decentralized finance (DeFi), digitalization of assets, gaming) and being in a real decentralized nature. The decentralization concept is probably one of the most important idea of the ecosystem and projects supporting it are at great value. Some of the currently available platforms supply these unmet needs at least in part.
The first generation blockchain does not support substantially software and application development because of the codebase architecture, it is being used almost only for payments and digital asset transactions and it can be defined as a ‘store of value’ and ‘hedge against inflation’. It is not easy and practical to develop smart contracts and dApps on Bitcoin blockchain. In order to allow developers to generate decentralized applications, smart contracts and more Ethereum blockchain has been developed and has reached great success. Today, majority of decentralized applications are running on the Ethereum blockchain (3), however there are several problems in this network regarding expensive transections, network capacity and speed to be resolved. The developers are testing a new version of the blockchain and hope to find solutions for these issues (4).
Avalanche platform appears to be exciting regarding implementation of the unmet needs of the ecosystem mentioned above. First of all, the platform is running on its own blockchain which is consisted of three connected sub networks. The X (exchange), P (platform) and C (contracts) chains. The default chain is X-Chain which allows the generation of new assets, making exchanges of assets, and cross subnet transfers. AVAX is the native coin of Avalanche and its transections are made on the X-Chain. The P-Chain is consisted of the metadata and coordinating validators, tracking the active subnetwork and allowing users to create new subnetworks including their own public or private blockchains. The C-Chain is the chain designed for generating smart contracts. C-Chain can work as an Ethereum virtual machine and can support applications running Ethereum blockchain. Differently from most of recent platforms Avalanche is working with proof of stake protocols. The Avalanche consensus protocols (Avalanche and Snowman protocols) have several advantages when compared to both Nakamoto and classical consensus protocols in terms of scalability, security, energy saving, and high throughput (5–7).
Avalanche established a good performance in the Denali test net and reached very fast transection speeds and great transection finality. A few weeks ago the final test net before the main net launch has been started. I have missed the Denali test net in which participators have run nodes, made transections and terminated the tasks with success in June 2020.
This time I have participated to the Everest test net. I preferred to set up a virtual machine on a cloud service and configured a node, run it, validated the network and made some transections in the network. I have also generated my own digital asset (token) and sent it to peers. The validators assessed staking procedures. Nowadays the updated version of the network allows users to run smart contracts and dApps on it. Delegation function is also available. It is possible to follow all transection activities on Avalanche network from the avascan.info (8–10).
The Avalanche platform is making partnerships with different companies including Chainlink, Polyient games, Ledger, Quantstamp and more. The team is working hard and they add new partners to the list before the main net launch. I think that it is very important to realize necessary agreements before the main net. These efforts will improve the value of the project and the allow users to take advantages of the network. For example hardware wallet support is one of these advantages which can be defined as essential. Hardware wallet support will allow users to feel safe and may also increase interest of users to the project. Since DeFi is very important for Avalanche they work with Quantstamp to enhance the security of the platform. Avalanche is integrating with Chainlink and bringing real time market price and data oracles to Avalanche network which will empower DeFi projects (11–14).
Of note, the Avalanche network supports also Ethereum virtual machine (on the C-Chain) and will probably attract applications running on Ethereum blockchain. The team determined that there are no transection fees for now but there will be in the future. This issue important transection fees reached boring levels on the Ethereum blockchain (15).
The partnerships will allow partners to develop their private and public blockchains on Avalanche, to generate non-fungible tokens to DeFi projects on the Avalanche network. Avalanche networks’ validating processes have improved safety and are resilient to 51% attacks according to the recent documentations. Furthermore, validators will not need sophisticated hardware to run a node and will not consume too much energy. The number of validators can reach several thousands and this can contribute to decentralization, safety, and speed of the network.
The Avalanche platform is going to be launched soon with all the advantages mentioned and we will experience its benefits. If everything works as planed carefully it may change the ecosystem in a good manner, bring new concepts to our lives, facilitate and widen decentralized finance and become really the internet of the finance. ‘Avangers’ are excited, since the doors of the Pandora is opening soon…
References
2. https://info.avax.network/#team
3. A First Look at Blockchain-based Decentralized Applications Kaidong Wu, Yun Ma, Gang Huang, Xuanzhe Liu Key Lab of High-Confidence Software Technology MoE (Peking University). https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.00939.pdf
4. https://ethereum.org/en/eth2/#current-limitations
5. https://www.avalabs.org/why-avalanche
6. https://docs.avax.network/v1.0/en/core-concepts/overview/#what-are-subnets
7. https://docs.avax.network/#key-features
8. https://www.avalabs.org/denali
9. https://medium.com/avalabs/how-to-join-avalanche-everest-release-a40cd20aa654
12. https://quantstamp.com/blog/quantstamp-enhancing-the-security-of-avalanche
14. https://decrypt.co/37141/crypto-collectibles-nft-dex-avalanche-blockchain
15. https://medium.com/mycrypto/the-ethereum-virtual-machine-how-does-it-work-9abac2b7c9e
