Wikipedia

Avalanche (blockchain platform)

Avalanche is a public blockchain and smart-contract platform launched in September 2020 by the American company Ava Labs.[1] The platform's native cryptocurrency is AVAX.

Avalanche
Avalanche logo
Denominations
CodeAVAX
Development
White paperwww.avalabs.org/whitepapers
Initial release21 September 2020; 5 years ago (2020-09-21)
Code repositorygithub.com/ava-labs/avalanchego
Development statusActive
DeveloperAva Labs
Source modelOpen source
Ledger
Block explorerexplorer.avax.network
Website
Websiteavax.network

Design

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Avalanche's primary network consists of three interoperable blockchains: the Exchange Chain (X-Chain), the Contract Chain (C-Chain), and the Platform Chain (P-Chain). These chains are used for asset transfers, smart-contract execution, and validator coordination, respectively.[2]

History

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The Avalanche consensus protocol was first described in a May 2018 whitepaper published pseudonymously under the name "Team Rocket." A group of researchers from Cornell University, including Emin Gün Sirer, expanded on this description.[3][4][5] Sirer and two PhD candidates formed the company Ava Labs to develop the blockchain for use in the financial industry.[6][5][1] In March 2020, Ava Labs released the Avalanche codebase as open-source.[7]

In September 2021, the Avalanche Foundation secured a $230 million investment from a consortium including Polychain Capital and Three Arrows Capital by purchasing AVAX.[8][9]

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. Sirer, as CEO of Ava Labs, denied any involvement in illegal or unethical dealings with the Roche Freedmen law firm.[10][11][12][13]

In April 2025, according to the New York Times, Ava Labs donated $1 million dollars to Make America Great Again Inc., coinciding with Ava Labs's president John Wu attending a private fundraising reception with Donald Trump.[14] In August 2025, Anthony Scaramucci announced that his firm SkyBridge Capital would place $300 million, which was 10% of the firm's funds under management, into tokenized assets on the Avalanche blockchain.[15]

As of January 2026, AVAX trades near $13.8, placing its market cap around $5.9 billion, with daily trading volume often between $400 million and $500 million.[16]

In January 2026, Avalanche launched a $1 million competition to encourage development on the blockchain platform.[17]

On March 17, 2026, the SEC and the CFTC issued a joint press release that classified 16 cryptocurrencies, including AVAX, bitcoin, Ethereum, and others, as "digital commodities" rather than securities.[18][19][20]

In January 2026, the State of Wyoming launched the Frontier Stable Token (FRNT) as the first U.S. state-issued stablecoin. FRNT is available on multiple blockchains including Avalanche, Solana, Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, and Polygon.[21][22]

References

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  1. 1 2 Lefkowitz, Melanie (4 August 2020). "Blockchain startup raises a quick $42M in first sale". Cornell Chronicle. Retrieved 22 March 2026.
  2. ↑ Harer, Felix (2022). "Towards Interoperability of Open and Permissionless Blockchains: A Cross-Chain Query Language". 2022 IEEE International Conference on e-Business Engineering (ICEBE). IEEE. pp. 190–197. arXiv:2209.07224. doi:10.1109/ICEBE55470.2022.00041. ISBN 978-1-6654-9244-7.
  3. ↑ Lefkowitz, Melanie (4 August 2020). "Blockchain startup raises a quick $42M in first sale". Cornell Chronicle. Retrieved 24 April 2026.
  4. ↑ Rocket, Team; Yin, Maofan; Sekniqi, Kevin; van Renesse, Robbert; Sirer, Emin Gün (2019-06-21). "Scalable and Probabilistic Leaderless BFT Consensus through Metastability". arXiv. arXiv:1906.08936. Retrieved 22 March 2026.
  5. 1 2 Leising, Mathew (April 17, 2020). "New Startup Aims to Prove Blockchain Is Fast Enough for Finance". Bloomberg. Retrieved 27 August 2020.
  6. ↑ Kharif, Olga (16 May 2019). "A Cornell University Crypto Professor Is Launching His Own Coin". Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg.
  7. ↑ Brett, Charles (17 March 2020). "AVA Labs releases codebase for AVA blockchain platform". Enterprise Times.
  8. ↑ Ossinger, Joanna (16 September 2021). "Avalanche Raises $230 Million From Sale of Surging Crypto Token". Bloomberg. Bloomberg Law.
  9. ↑ Dillet, Romain (16 September 2021). "Avalanche raises $230 million from private sale of AVAX tokens". TechCrunch. Retrieved 22 March 2026.
  10. ↑ Carreyrou, John (2023-06-18). "He Went After Crypto Companies. Then Someone Came After Him". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2025-02-27.
  11. ↑ Miller, Rosemarie (August 31, 2022). "Crypto Lawyer Roche Beset On 2 Fronts After Leaked Videos". Forbes. Retrieved May 13, 2026.
  12. ↑ Miller, Harrison (30 August 2022). "Ava Labs, Roche Freedman Deny Scheme To Sue Competition". Investor's Business Daily. Archived from the original on 14 December 2024. Retrieved 15 May 2026.
  13. ↑ Roe, Dan (12 September 2022). "Embattled Crypto Lawyer Kyle Roche Confronts the Rules of Professional Conduct". Law.com. Retrieved 15 May 2026.
  14. ↑ Vogel, Kenneth P.; Yaffe-Bellany, David (2 August 2025). "Donor List Suggests Scale of Trump's Pay-for-Access Operation". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 May 2026.
  15. ↑ Weiss, Ben (19 August 2025). "Anthony Scaramucci's SkyBridge Capital to tokenize $300 million on Avalanche". Fortune. Retrieved 17 May 2026.
  16. ↑ Kaplan, Isaac (15 January 2026). "Cardano and Avalanche Investors Eye a 3000x Coin". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 24 April 2026.
  17. ↑ Rajkumari, Pooja (January 20, 2026). "Avalanche launches $1M competition for on-chain innovation". Retrieved 24 April 2026.
  18. ↑ "SEC Clarifies the Application of Federal Securities Laws to Crypto Assets". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (Press release). March 17, 2026. Retrieved March 25, 2026.
  19. ↑ "CFTC Joins SEC to Clarify the Application of Federal Securities Laws to Crypto Assets". U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (Press release). March 17, 2026. Retrieved March 25, 2026.
  20. ↑ "SEC, CFTC Move to Define Which Digital Assets are Securities". Bloomberg News. March 17, 2026. Retrieved March 25, 2026.
  21. ↑ Ouellet, Nicky (7 January 2026). "Wyoming releases FRNT stablecoin for public purchase". Wyoming Public Media. Retrieved 14 May 2026.
  22. ↑ Mason, Emily (August 19, 2025). "Wyoming Becomes the First to Launch a State-Issued Stablecoin". Bloomberg AI. Retrieved May 12, 2025.
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