By 2018, it has become clear that Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other existing networks don’t meet rising demands in cheap transactions and scalable blockchains. This is how Avalanche was conceived — a dApp ecosystem that processes many more transactions per second than its competitors, offers low fees, and allows businesses to create flexible and customizable smart contracts and dedicated blockchains (subnetworks).
Thousands of crypto enthusiasts use Avalanche to trade digitized financial tools like securities or bonds, exchange tokens, and leverage P2P lending. The platform’s unique Avalanche consensus mechanism ensures high decentralization without harming security and makes the AVAX token deflationary. This, among other things, has helped the cryptocurrency rise 30X since the beginning of 2021 and has given it the way to CoinMarketCap’s Top 10 list.
Let’s take a look at how Avalanche works, what makes it a strong competitor to Ethereum, and when we will see AVAX for $300 with today’s $120.
What is Avalanche? Top Ava features
Avalanche was conceived as a unified global marketplace for trading digitized financial assets. The platform aims to bring together financial markets that are fragmented due to geographical and regulatory differences. It provides an easy way to create and trade digital assets in a legally compliant way.
Here are the top Avalanche features that help the platform implement its vision:
- Scalability and speed. Avalanche can process up to 6500 transactions per second compared to Ethereum’s 10–15 and Bitcoin’s 7 TPS. It finalizes payments faster than in 1 second, and fees are low: usually, they are around $0.2–0.5.
- Huge possibilities to build. Businesses and developers can create smart contracts, decentralized apps, and dedicated blockchains called subnetworks. Anyone can build a token, a financial service, or mint an NFT on Avalanche. The platform has strongly improved its position at the DeFi market in 2021.
- It’s easy to build on Avalanche. You can customize your smart contract or subnet to whatever needs your project has. It’s possible to enable private transactions, make your network permissioned or permissionless, and much more.
- Avalanche is based on three blockchains. X-chain powers AVAX transactions and custom tokens, C-chains allows deploying smart contracts, and P-chain enables the creation of subnets while coordinating network validators.
- Unique consensus mechanism. Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum, and most of the Proof of Stake coins, the Avalanche consensus allows all nodes to participate in validating transactions, making the network decentralized and secure. And this security is very affordable: any node can validate Avalanche transactions even with a CPU.
- AVAX token. The platform’s native asset is used for fees: like gas in Ethereum, AVAX is paid by users for sending transactions, by devs for painting their assets, and more. AVAX fees are burned, which makes it deflationary and thus helps its value rise.
Avalanche was launched in 2018 and raised $60 million in an ICO. The testnet started operating in April 2020, and the mainnet went live in September of the same year. If you look at the AVAX price chart, you can see how well the token started performing after the latter event:
What is the team behind Avalanche?
Avalanche was developed by — a bright team with expertise in science, finance, and law. People building Avalanche have previously worked at Google, Microsoft, and NASA. The platform was conceived by Emin Gun Sirer — a professor at Cornell University who was familiar with distributed LEDGER technology even before Bitcoin was founded. He even launched a virtual currency Karma before BTC mainnet went live. Sirer’s peers at Cornell helped him build Avalanche.
However, the original idea behind the platform doesn’t belong to him: in 2018, an anonymous group “Team Rocket” published a document describing an Avalanche-like protocol. Sirer liked the idea, improved it, and launched Ava with his co-founders Maofan “Ted” YinKevin Sekniqi. Ava Labs boasts over 100 members today.
Avalanche roadmap
Avalanche has a comprehensive roadmap published on its official website. However, it is only available for 2021. Here’s what the team has managed to achieve over the last year:
- In Q1, over $1 billion has been traded on all Ava-based DEXes.
- AVAX worth over $10 billion are staked on the platform.
- The Avalanche-Ethereum bridge was developed in Q1 and has become 2 times faster and 5 times cheaper by Q3. The bridge allows developers to deploy EVM-compatible contracts on Avalanche.
- Ava launched the Initial Litigation Offerings. An ILO is when a user doesn’t have money for legal costs and asks retail investors for money, and they profit from the financial outcomes of the case.
The plan for Q4 was enabling cross-subnet transfers, decentralized identity (DID), X-Chain dynamic fees, permissionless subnets, and subnet validation reward.
Avalanche network: validation and 3 chains
How Ava confirms transactions
Avalanche is a new type of Proof of Stake: it has implemented the best practices from the other PoS chains and added something special. The platform isn’t running on a single blockchain: besides X-, P-, and C-chain, there is an ecosystem of subnets created by third parties interested in Avalanche’s security and scalability.
Each subnet needs to achieve their own consensus in order to operate. Here’s how it works: nodes “gossip” the information between each other before they obtain all the necessary data, and these nodes are validators who are trying to reach consensus of the whole network. Thus subnets profit from the security of the entire Ava.
Every subnetwork can create their own reward structure in order to incentivize validators. The latter will choose what subnets to help.
Three networks of Ava
Avalanche runs on 3 blockchains that reinforce each other.
X-chain powers all transactions with the AVAX token and its minting. Also, this chain is used for creating new tokens and exchanging them across subnets.
allows creating new subnetworks and coordinates validators. AVAX staking is also based here: to become a validator, you need to stake 2,000 AVAX, and to delegate your right to confirm transactions to a validator, you need to stake at least 25 AVAX. If a validator breaks consensus rules, their stake isn’t slashed like in some other networks.
C-chain is used to deploy smart contracts and DApps. Developers can leverage C-chain to run EVM-compatible smart contracts on Avalanche. Ethereum-based DApps can be easily transferred here to leverage high network’s security, scalability, and low fees. C-chain-based smart contracts can process 1,500 transactions per second.
Can you mine AVAX?
AVAX is a Proof of Stake token, so you can only stake it to receive rewards. You can become a staker, delegate your right to validate transactions, and earn passive income. Validators will do their job and you will get a part of their staking reward for giving them such an opportunity.
Currently, the AVAX official validator stats show there are over 1,200 validators and 15,000 delegators in the network, while 23,4 million AVAX is being staked. The current AVA staking APR is 9.82%.
AVAX price dynamic and prediction for 2022 and on
The Avalanche’s native asset has demonstrated a blazing surge from $3.3 to $119.6 in 2021, which means the coin has made an at least 30X increase. The all-time high of $146.22 was reached in November. AVAX’s ROI is 20,000%, which is amazing for an asset launched in 2020. By December 2021, the token has entered CoinMarketCap’s list of Top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap.
According to the Wallet Investor predictions service, AVAX will cost $224 in a year and $774 in 5 years. The Economy Forecast Agency expects the token to end this year at $132, then reach $153 in January and $267 by late 2022. The Agency gives AVAX $365 in a 5-years perspective. The forecasts may look not as bullish as some experts’ predictions, but keep in mind that these have been created by algorithms, and we encourage you to do your research to make weighted AVAX investment decisions.
Where can I buy AVAX?
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If you trade crypto on a centralized exchange, you can easily buy AVAX there: Binance, Bitfinex, Huobi, Coinbase, and others offer the Avalanche token. See the complete list of exchanges that have listed AVAX on CoinMarketCap
Where should I store AVAX?
You can store AVAX in the official Avalanche Wallet developed and recommended by the Ava team. It’s non-custodial (you own your private keys which adds much security), lightweight, and allows for creating a 24-word seed phrase. Avalanche wallet offers you to unleash the full potential of the Ava ecosystem: use it to browse Avalanche DApps and store Ava-based tokens, stake AVAX, delegate transaction confirmation, and more.
If you prefer keeping our entire portfolio in one place, choose . These are multi-asset wallets where you can hold Bitcoin, Ethereum, Avalanche, and hundreds of other coins. Built-in crypto exchanges and handy user interfaces make these wallets a good choice for daily interaction with crypto.
If ultimate security is your top priority, store AVAX in . These are hardware wallets — small flash drives that store your private keys disconnected from the internet, which makes them inaccessible to hackers. Ledger and TREZOR do not have native apps for AVAX, but you can use the token by connecting third-party wallets.
Bottom line
Avalanche is a very promising project that is believed to become a strong player among other DApp platforms. With the unique Avalanche consensus, Ava was created as a fast and scalable blockchain with low fees. High efficiency has helped Avalanche attract thousands of users who engage with DeFi and NFTs.
Avalanche allows for creating customizable smart contracts and subnetworks. The Ethereum bridge and EVM-compatible C-chain make it easy for devs to bring any DApp or token from Ethereum to Avalanche. AVAX token plays an integral role in the ecosystem: it is paid as gas (and is further burned, helping to protect the coin from inflation). Anyone can stake AVAX to help keep the network secure and earn rewards.
During the last year, Avalanche has grown 30X and has recently entered the Top 10 cryptos list. Many believe that this is only the beginning and the coin may grow further. If you believe in the potential of AVAX too, visit to buy the token without registration and hidden fees.
Disclaimer: ChangeNOW does not bear responsibility for any trader’s decision or action. Do your own research and calculate risk while trading or investing in cryptocurrencies.
