What is Avalanche? | Cryplogger

What is Avalanche?

Avalanche is an open source platform for running decentralized applications, as well as deploying public and private blockchains in a single scalable ecosystem.

Avalanche consists of a main network (Primary Network) and an unlimited number of subnets (Subnet).

In turn, the main network includes three blockchains:

• Platform Chain (P-Chain) stores metadata, coordinates validators, and keeps track of subnets;
• Contract Chain (C-Chain) allows you to create Ethereum-compatible smart contracts;
• Exchange Chain (X-Chain) provides tools for exchanging data between subnets, as well as creating fungible tokens and NFTs.

Avalanche subnets are similar to Ethereum’s L2 solutions and Polkadot’s parachains, but with completely isolated blockchain states.

Any Avalanche user can create a subnet. To do this, you need to pay a fee of 0.01 AVAX.

All Avalanche nodes must verify transactions on the main network, and optionally on other subnets.

The creators of subnets can include various parameters in them – run several blockchains and set their own requirements for validators, such as the mandatory passage of KYC / AML.

Who and when created Avalanche?

The first publication about Avalanche appeared on May 16, 2018. On this day, an anonymous group of Team Rocket developers published a document Snowflake to Avalanche: A Novel Metastable Consensus Protocol Family for Cryptocurrencies on the official website of the hypermedia communication protocol IPFS.

A day later, Cornell University professor Emin Gun Sirer commented Twitter post:

“Yesterday someone posted this article on IPFS and several IRC channels. It describes a new family of consensus protocols that combine the benefits of Nakamoto consensus with the best of classical protocols. Huge breakthrough.”

In the same year, Emin Gün Sirer, together with colleagues Kevin Sekniki and Maofan Yin, founded Ava Labs — lead developer of the Avalanche platform.

Ava Labs and Team Rocket published an updated version in 2019 Snowflake to Avalanche entitled Scalable and Probabilistic Leaderless BFT Consensus through Metastability. The company posted it on the site along with three white paper: about the token, stablecoins and the Avalanche platform.

In 2020, Ava Labs raised $12 million in a private token sale and $42 million in a public token sale.

The Avalanche mainnet launched on September 21, 2020.

What consensus protocols does Avalanche use?

V Avalanche Platform Whitepaper described a family of consensus protocols called Snow*. It includes three consensus mechanisms: Avalanche, Snowman and Frosty.

To date, the project team has implemented Snowman in the P-Chain and C-Chain blockchains, and Avalanche — in the X-Chain network. Frosty is under development.

Protocol Avalanche uses the concept directed acyclic graph (Directed Acyclic Graph, DAG), which allows the network to process transactions in parallel.

To determine the validity of transactions, validators send requests to each other randomly. Additional confirmations are not required.

V Avalanche no blocks: the protocol operates on parent transactions – peaks (vertices). They allow validators to group transactions into groups for voting. The validation process takes place in stages over a series of rounds.

Snowman created on the basis Avalanche, but orders transactions linearly and creates blocks instead of vertices. This is necessary to work with smart contracts and increase network bandwidth.

How does the Avalanche protocol work?

On the Avalanche Hub blog, author under the pseudonym Seq explains the process of confirming or rejecting transactions on the example of the collective choice of yellow or blue color by network nodes.

The nodes choose a color and then poll each other. If the node’s decision differs from the majority’s position, it changes its decision.

The node chooses the yellow color and sends requests to five random nodes (in the figure, they are highlighted in red rings). Most of them are blue, so the sender changes color.

This interaction occurs in stages until all nodes are painted in the same color.

The response time is limited. This allows you to weed out nodes that create a large delay.

The algorithm determines the nodes randomly, however, the chance to participate in transaction verification increases with the increase in the number of Avalanche tokens in staking.

For a more detailed description of the Avalanche consensus algorithm, see Russian-language blog AVA Russia project.

What role does AVAX play in the ecosystem?

Avalanche (AVAX) is the platform’s native token with an issue of 720 million. The protocol burns all transaction fees, which makes AVAX a deflationary asset.

The token can be used:

• for staking with annual yield eleven%;
• payment commissions;
• settlements in Avalanche subnets.

How to become an Avalanche validator?

Requirements for network validators:

• staking tokens: 2000 AVAX in P-Chain;
• Hardware: 8 core CPU >= 2 GHz; RAM: 16 GB; 200 GB of free disk space;
• software: Avalanche Go by Ava Labs;
• operating system: Ubuntu >= 18.04 or Mac OS X >= Catalina;
• Internet connection: IPv4 or IPv6 with an open public port, at least 30 Mbps throughput.

To work with a node, you can use a web wallet Avalanche Wallet. It also allows you to connect a node or delegate funds to other network validators.

Instructions for installing a validator node – in Russian-language blog AVA Russia project.

How to add Avalanche to MetaMask?

Go to the wallet settings, select the menu item networks and press the button Add network. Fill in the fields:

• Network name — Avalanche Network;
• New RPC URL — https://api.avax.network/ext/bc/C/rpc;
• Chain ID — 43114;
• Currency symbol — AVAX;
• Block Explorer URL — https://snowtrace.io/.

Click the button Save. See the Avalanche help materials for a detailed instructions by connecting MetaMask and current list supported wallets.

The second way is to use the service Chainlist. Click the button Connect Wallet, type “Avalanche Mainnet” in the search bar, and approve the addition of the network in the MetaMask window.

How is Avalanche developing?

According to the analytical service DeFi Llama, more than $13 billion is blocked in decentralized protocols based on Avalanche. The top three include landing platforms Aave and Benqi, as well as DEX Trader Joe.

On the day of the mainnet launch, the Binance crypto exchange added support for AVAX. The token is currently traded on Coinbase, Huobi, OKEx, Bitfinex and other exchanges.

In July 2021, the Avalanche Foundation, a non-profit organization that oversees the development of the Avalanche ecosystem, raised $230 million in a private sale of AVAX tokens.

In early November, the Avalanche Foundation announced the launch of a $200 million Blizzard fund to support innovation in the platform’s ecosystem. The fund was invested by Polychain Capital, Three Arrows Capital, Dragonfly Capital and CMS Holdings.

On November 16, the head of Ava Labs, Emin Gun Sirer, announced a partnership with the auditing company Deloitte. As part of the cooperation, the parties will launch the Close As You Go cloud platform, focused on helping victims of natural disasters.

On November 18, 21Shares announced the listing of an exchange-traded product (ETP) based on the Avalanche token. Since November 19, it has been traded on the largest Swiss stock exchange SIX Swiss Exchange.

November 24 AVAX entered in the TOP-10 of the CoinMarketCap market capitalization rating with a value of more than $24 billion.