Avalanche is a

decentralized Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those related to planning and decision-making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group and gi ...

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

Layer-1 blockchain platform developed by Ava Labs and launched in September 2020. It is designed to support fast, scalable, and secure

decentralized application A decentralised application (DApp, dApp, Dapp, or dapp) is an Application software, application that can operate autonomously, typically through the use of smart contracts, that run on a decentralized computing, blockchain or other distributed le ...

s (dApps) and

smart contract A smart contract is a computer program or a Transaction Protocol Data Unit, transaction protocol that is intended to automatically execute, control or document events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement. The objective ...

s. Avalanche’s architecture features three core blockchains—the X-Chain (Exchange Chain), C-Chain (Contract Chain), and P-Chain (Platform Chain)—working together to respectively manage assets (sending of funds), smart contracts, and network coordination, making it a flexible competitor to platforms like

Ethereum Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether (abbreviation: ETH) is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second only to bitcoin in market capitalization. It is open-s ...

. Known for its Avalanche Consensus mechanism, it blends classical and Nakamoto consensus methods to deliver high transaction speeds (throughput), low delays (latency), and strong

decentralization Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those related to planning and decision-making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group and gi ...

, processing thousands of transactions per second with near-instant finality.

History

Avalanche was conceptualized as a consensus protocol that operates efficiently in a network of unreliable machines, addressing both crash-faults and Byzantine faults. The foundations of Avalanche were first shared in May 2018 through the

InterPlanetary File System The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a protocol, hypermedia and file sharing peer-to-peer network for sharing data using a distributed hash table to store provider information. By using content addressing, IPFS uniquely identifies each fi ...

(IPFS) by a pseudonymous group known as "Team Rocket". Avalanche was later developed by researchers from

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

, led by Emin Gün Sirer and doctoral students Maofan "Ted" Yin and Kevin Sekniqi. After the initial release phase, they founded a

startup A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to ...

technology company to develop a blockchain network that would meet finance industry requirements. In March, 2020, the AVA codebase, part of the Developer Accelerator Program or AVA DAP) for the Avalanche consensus protocol, was released as

and made publicly available. In September 2021, the Ava labs foundation secured a $230 million from a consortium including Polychain Capital and Three Arrows Capital through the purchase of the AVAX cryptocurrency. In November 2021, following an agreement with

Deloitte Deloitte is a multinational professional services network based in London, United Kingdom. It is the largest professional services network in the world by revenue and number of employees, and is one of the Big Four accounting firms, along wi ...

to improve U.S. disaster-relief funding, the Avalanche blockchain entered the top 10 cryptocurrencies by

market capitalization Market capitalization, sometimes referred to as market cap, is the total value of a publicly traded company's outstanding common shares owned by stockholders. Market capitalization is equal to the market price per common share multiplied by ...

. In January 2023, a partnership was announced between Avalanche and

Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Amazon that provides Software as a service, on-demand cloud computing computing platform, platforms and Application programming interface, APIs to individuals, companies, and gover ...

(AWS) to improve Avalanche's infrastructure and decentralized application ecosystem. Arkham Intelligence also announced a partnership with Avalanche, allowing Arkham users to analyze the activities of wallets and entities within the Avalanche ecosystem. In August 2022, the whistleblower group "Crypto Leaks" published a report alleging that Ava Labs had entered secret agreements with Kyle Roche of Roche Freedmen law firm with the intent to legally undermine Avalanche's competitors. Emin Gün Sirer, the CEO of Ava Labs, denied any involvement in illegal or unethical dealings with Roche Freedmen law firm. In August 2024, Avalanche partnered with Tixbase and Passolig to implement blockchain technology in Turkey’s ticketing industry. The collaboration integrates blockchain-verified tickets into Passolig's system, which handles ticketing for

Süper Lig The Süper Lig (, ''Super League''), also known as Trendyol Süper Lig for sponsorship reasons, is a professional association football league in Turkey and the highest level of the Turkish football league system. In the 2023–2024 season, twen ...

and other events, while also addressing secondary market regulation and introducing NFT-based digital tickets. In December 2024, Avalanche raised $250 million (USD) through token sale for Avalanche9000 upgrade.

References

{{Authority control Blockchains Cryptocurrencies Cryptocurrency companies