Team1 Builder Grants fund builders who are shipping on Avalanche. The program is live and open to anyone, anywhere. The committee has formed, is meeting, and has already chosen a first Accelerator Grant recipient.

The First Accelerator Grant: YourGrails

The first pick went to YourGrails, a platform built around graded trading cards that live onchain.

You buy a sealed pack with USDC and rip it open. Inside is a digital representation of a physical card, scored by an independent grader for condition and authenticity. From there, it’s yours to do what you want with it. Keep it. List it for a 90% buyback. Stake it in a head-to-head battle where the winner takes the pot. Even ship the physical card to your door. The cards themselves sit graded, vaulted, and insured, so you’re holding something real the whole time.

It’s a working product, currently in beta, built by a team that shows up every day for the community. The grant amount was set at $30,000 and approved at the committee’s first meeting. A solid way to open the account.

Team1’s Latest Mini-Grant: Empowr

The newest Mini Grant, $5,000, went to Empowr by @TippiklLabs, a proposed onchain bounty platform aimed at creating earning opportunities for the community. The funding is released in two stages: half up front, half once the project ships and five ecosystem projects have posted a bounty, with Team1 lining up as the first user. Kieron is a Team1 UK member who’s shown up consistently for the ecosystem, and that steady presence is exactly the kind of commitment these grants are meant to back.

How the program works

Two tracks make up Team1 Builder Grants, each designed to catch builders at different stages. The mini-grants came first, earlier this year. Recipients shipped, got noticed, and several went on to win builder competitions. Accelerator Grants are the next stop for builders who’ve proven themselves and are ready to scale.

Accelerator Grants reach $30,000 with no application to fill out. The committee proposes projects and votes on them, and a project with real momentum can be fast-tracked straight through without starting at a mini-grant.

Mini Grants cap at $10,000 and stay open to everyone. This is the entry point, the place to start when you’re after your first bit of backing and ready to show what you can do. Builders must fill out an application.

Both tracks are global and ongoing. Anyone can apply, and we want you to. The grants go to builders committed to Avalanche for the long haul, the ones growing communities that last and lifting the whole ecosystem as they go. That commitment is what the committee puts significant weighting on.

Prior Foundation funding counts as a factor, but it won’t close the door on you.

The Committee is Set

The Accelerator Grants committee has been announced: ten people spanning Team1, the community, Ava Labs, and the Avalanche Foundation, weighted most heavily toward the community and Team1. They meet once a month; any member can submit a project, and a majority vote approves it.

They’re already at it. The first grant went from proposal to approved on the committee’s opening call, and they got YourGrails over the line in the program’s first week.

Get Involved

Are you building something people are starting to use? This is your opening. Mini-grant applications are live right now, and that’s the front door for most early projects.

Apply for a mini-grant here: https://www.team1.network/grants

Know a builder who deserves a look? Share this, tag them, and tell us what they’ve shipped. We’re watching.

Team1 Mini Grants application does not guarantee a grant. A high volume of applications and participation does not guarantee funding.

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On August 27, Charles Schwab announced plans to add Solana, Avalanche, and Chainlink alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum.

For AVAX, the move puts the token in front of a huge audience of traditional investors. As of July 31, Schwab had $13.04 trillion in client assets across 39.9 million active accounts. Soon, eligible clients will be able to buy and sell AVAX alongside their stocks, ETFs, and other investments.

An audience of that size is significant on its own. But Schwab’s selection of Avalanche is also notable: the brokerage chose AVAX as part of its first expansion beyond BTC and ETH.

So why Avalanche?

Avalanche Was Already on Wall Street’s Radar

Schwab hasn’t published a detailed breakdown of its selection criteria, saying only that the additions match client demand for established assets. Avalanche’s history with major financial institutions provides some useful context.

In November 2023, J.P. Morgan’s Onyx division and Apollo Global Management ran a Project Guardian proof of concept using a permissioned Avalanche Evergreen subnet, the predecessor to today’s Avalanche L1 architecture. WisdomTree provided tokenized funds for the trial, which tested how smart contracts could automate portfolio management across traditional and alternative assets. A few months later, in February 2024, Citi ran another trial on Avalanche Spruce with Wellington Management and WisdomTree to test tokenized private funds, automated distribution rules, and compliance.

These were early pilots rather than full-scale products, and they happened years ago. Wall Street didn’t migrate to Avalanche overnight. What the trials did show, however, was that Avalanche was already attracting serious attention from major financial institutions.

Why Institutions Want Their Own L1

One of Avalanche’s main advantages for financial institutions is its customizable L1 architecture.

Financial firms may not want to run regulated assets on an open, shared public chain where fees can change and access can’t easily be restricted. An Avalanche L1 lets an institution set its own validator rules, restrict network access, and customize gas mechanics while remaining connected to the broader ecosystem.

Project Guardian showed how this could work in practice. The participants tested tokenized funds on a permissioned Avalanche network while maintaining control over who could take part. The project also used its own gas setup, showing that an Avalanche L1 doesn’t have to work exactly like the public C-Chain.

Ethereum L2s and other networks are competing for the same institutional market. Avalanche has been building around customizable L1s for years, though, and the J.P. Morgan and Citi trials show that major financial firms have already tested the model. That history doesn’t tell us why Schwab chose AVAX, but it helps explain why Avalanche is already familiar to major financial institutions.

Schwab Makes AVAX Easier to Buy

Avalanche’s growth is happening on two fronts: institutions are building on the network, while investors are gaining more ways to buy AVAX. Schwab directly addresses the second.

A Schwab client won’t need to open an account with a crypto exchange or manage self-custody wallets just to buy AVAX. The token will be available through Schwab’s website, mobile app, and thinkorswim platform, alongside the stocks and ETFs clients already use. Schwab is charging 75 basis points per crypto trade.

That doesn’t guarantee an immediate wave of buying, but it removes a barrier for a huge group of investors. Looking further ahead, Schwab also plans to offer digital asset trading, transfers, and custody to financial advisors by mid-2027. Schwab Advisor Services works with more than 16,000 Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs), potentially giving digital assets another path into professionally managed portfolios.

There’s also a difference between this and ETF exposure. Schwab customers will be able to buy the actual AVAX token through a brokerage they already use, rather than getting exposure through a fund that holds the asset.

Why the Schwab Move Matters

Short-term price reactions aren’t the key takeaway here. AVAX rose after Schwab’s announcement, but a few days of price movement says very little about the long-term impact of a platform listing.

What matters is that Schwab brings together two parts of the Avalanche story that have largely developed separately.

On one side, financial institutions are testing Avalanche technology for tokenized funds and dedicated networks. On the other, traditional investors now have a direct way to buy AVAX through a brokerage account they already use.

What Happens Next

The Schwab announcement is only the start. AVAX has yet to launch on the platform, so the more useful numbers will come once clients can actually trade it. Trading activity will show whether Schwab’s large customer base translates into meaningful interest in AVAX, while new institutional projects will show whether Avalanche’s earlier pilots are turning into live products.

For now, Schwab has given AVAX something it didn’t have before: direct access to a huge traditional investor base. At the same time, Avalanche continues to build the financial infrastructure that has put it on the radar of major institutions.

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AMI introduced itself to Avalanche on June 5, 2024, in a forum post with a modest pitch. It called itself the Avax Meme Index, and it wanted to make Avalanche’s memecoins easier to see: more visibility for small tokens, technical help for the teams behind them, and liquidity spread across more than 25 pools that the post said were largely funded by the coin creators themselves.

The extras were pure 2024. Free marketing support, promotional competitions, and an AI tool called COQGPT wired up to price data and social feeds.

None of that was infrastructure. AMI was a scoreboard: a place to look up which memecoins existed and how they were doing.

Six months later, on December 21, 2024, the team opened a GitHub organization. Its description still reads Formerly AMI (Avax Meme Index), though what it hosts now has nothing to do with indexing memecoins.

What AMI Sells Today

Today amichain.org opens with four words: Launch an L1 without the noise. The project describes itself as an L1 deployment and node-hosting service, and its own documentation is blunt about the lineage: AmiChain “originates from the AMI (Avax Meme Index) project.”

The scoreboard operator went into stadium management. Avalanche made launching an L1 accessible, and any team can now spin up its own chain with its own gas token and its own validator set. The launch is the easy part. After it, somebody has to watch the validators, replace failed hardware at 3 a.m., keep the explorer online, and sit through every upgrade.

Most teams that launch an L1 have no interest in doing that work themselves. AMI is betting they will pay someone else to do it.

What Changed From Index to Infrastructure

The pivot happened in two visible stages, and the GitHub org is where it is easiest to trace.

Stage one was building the map. Through early 2025 the org filled with the unglamorous pieces of EVM plumbing: a chainlist SDK published as @amichain/chainlist, a companion app, a set of chain icons, a fork of the Blockscout explorer. This is the tooling a project needs when it stops tracking chains and starts running them.

Stage two was selling the operation. By 2026 the site had stopped talking about memecoins and started quoting deployment metrics: two chains live, thirteen managed validators, and an average launch time of 72 hours, as listed on the homepage as of September 1, 2026. Ami engineers deploy and operate the L1 stack, and validators, explorers, and co-marketing come bundled.

Why would a team hand that over? Because running validators is mostly a staffing problem. It needs monitoring, an on-call rotation, and a hosting bill that arrives whether or not anyone is using the chain. A team of five building a game does not want to become a team of five running a datacenter.

AMI’s answer to the trust question is the substrate. The site lists SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2, ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, and HITRUST alongside its validator hosting, but the wording matters: AMI says it uses compliant infrastructure, which means those certifications describe the hosting providers underneath rather than an audit of AMI itself. Any institution doing diligence will care about that difference.

Three Things That Stand Out

The tooling bundle is the real product. At app.ami.finance, the L1 Manager sits alongside a wallets manager, bulk transactions, an airdrop tool, and a C-chain/P-chain bridge. Launching a chain takes a weekend. The reason to stay is that the wallet, explorer, and dashboards arrive white-labeled on day one.

The workflow builder is an unusual idea. AMI is building visual DeFi automation, and its own site compares the result to n8n, the tool that lets people chain services together without writing code. You drag a trigger, connect an action, and let it run. Applied onchain, the idea fills a real gap, and it is still listed as in development.

The agent registry is a bet on what comes next. The app lets users register wallets as ERC-8004 AI agents onchain. The team promotes it hard: a February 2026 post framed the feature as giving bots a “passport” to interact with other AI agents, and AMI joined Agent Community, a network built around that same “agentic web” idea. It all points at the same territory as the x402 payment work now appearing across Avalanche: machines holding wallets and paying each other without a human clicking approve. Whether that demand arrives is an open question, and AMI is positioned for it either way.

Who AMI Is Actually For

Small teams that want a chain without running one. A studio shipping a game, or a consumer app that needs its own gas token, can hand the stack over and keep its engineers on the product. That is what the managed launch program is built around, and it is the clearest fit for what AMI sells.

Token projects that need distribution tooling. The airdrop tool, bulk transactions, and wallets manager have little to do with running a chain. They are launch-day plumbing for getting a token into a lot of hands quickly, and they are the clearest surviving trace of the memecoin business AMI came from.

Builders experimenting with onchain agents. This is the newest of the three and the least proven. Anyone building a bot that needs an onchain identity can register one today, though the demand for that is still mostly theoretical.

The audience the site implies but has not yet earned is the institutional one. Enterprise validator hosting and a wall of compliance badges suggest a bank or a fund on the other side of the sales call, and nothing AMI has published shows one. Two live chains is a book of business a single mid-size customer could double.

What the Numbers Do Not Support Yet

Two chains and thirteen validators is a small operation. Every managed-infrastructure business starts with its first customers, so this is not a failure, but it is nowhere near the scale the enterprise framing on the site implies. The stadium is built and mostly empty.

The public repositories are quiet. The last push to any of the org’s eight repos was August 16, 2025, and across all of them GitHub counts seven stars and four forks in total. Much of the real work may be happening in private repos, which is normal for a managed-services company, but a builder evaluating AMI has little public code to judge it by. The quiet code sits oddly next to an active account: AMI’s X posts continue through 2026, including a June 29 update claiming fourteen managed Avalanche L1 nodes. The site, checked two months later, lists thirteen managed validators. The two counts use different words and point in different directions, and neither is auditable from outside.

That gap gets one real correction. In June 2025, the Avalanche Foundation named Ami to the first cohort of nineteen Retro9000 grantees, a program that pays out specifically for L1s and infrastructure tooling already live on mainnet. That is third-party recognition from the one party best positioned to judge whether a chain is actually running, though it confirms only that AMI is a real, live project the Foundation is willing to fund, not the specific deployment numbers on the site, which still have no independent source to check them against.

Then there is the toolkit. Two of the tools in the app are a Volume Booster, in beta, which offers to “boost volume of any token on any dex,” and a Buy & Sell in 1 Txn tool, in alpha, that deploys a bot contract to schedule round trips. A bot buying and selling the same token inflates the volume figure that everyone downstream reads as organic demand. Nothing about it is hidden, it sits on the product page under its own name, and it is a direct inheritance from the memecoin-marketing business AMI started in.

The framing shifts depending on where you read about it. The dashboard is blunt: boost volume on any dex. A forum post introducing AMI Finance in February 2026 pitches the same tool to builders in gentler language: MEV-protected, coordinated trading. It is the same feature described two different ways.

It still sits awkwardly next to SOC 2 badges and enterprise validator hosting. Those two products are pitched to two different customers, and the second one has reason to ask about the first.

Where AMI Fits in the Avalanche Ecosystem

AMI’s business exists because of a protocol change. Before Avalanche9000 activated on December 16, 2024, running a subnet validator meant staking 2,000 AVAX and validating the Primary Network alongside it. ACP-77 removed both requirements and replaced the stake with a recurring fee starting at 1.33 AVAX per validator per month.

That turned launching a chain from a capital decision into an operating expense, and it moved the hard part along with it. The 2,000 AVAX lockup used to be what stopped teams. The obstacle now is staffing a chain for years.

AMI opened its GitHub organization five days after the upgrade went live. Whatever the intent behind that timing, the pivot tracks the opportunity: a market for post-launch operations was only worth entering once launching stopped being the obstacle.

AMI is a small entrant in that market, and what it has to sell is experience. A team that has already run its own chain, published its own chain metadata, and forked its own explorer knows what breaks.

Final Thoughts

What makes AMI worth watching is the direction of travel. Plenty of projects spent this cycle chasing attention, which got crowded and cheap. AMI went the other way, into work that is dull, hard to fake, and that somebody has to do regardless of what the market is paying for.

Whether AMI is the team that does it at scale is undecided. Two chains does not make a track record, and the volume tooling is a question the project will have to answer as it moves upmarket. The pivot is real. The proof is not in yet.

Explore for yourself: amichain.org · docs · GitHub · X · Discord · AMI on Cascade

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August was the month Wall Street started showing up on Avalanche in earnest. Charles Schwab added AVAX for its 40 million brokerage accounts, Dinari brought 724 tokenized U.S. stocks including the full S&P 500 to Avalanche investors, and POSCO International completed a proof of concept for tokenizing global trade receivables on the network.

At the same time, Team1 officially launched in Korea. With Avalanche Summit NYC less than three weeks away, September is shaping up to be a major moment for the ecosystem.

Here’s everything that happened in August.

Tokenized Assets Grow Nearly 8x in a Year:

Tokenized assets on Avalanche climbed from $242 million to $1.93 billion over the past year, with Securitize now accounting for more than half of that value. [Growth]

Foundation Introduces Gross Chain Income:

The Avalanche Foundation published a new Gross Chain Income framework from Lead Economist Eric Lu, extending its Gross Chain Product work into a three-step model for measuring, capturing, and distributing value across the ecosystem. [GCI]

RWA Transfer Volume Jumps 360% in 30 Days:

Avalanche’s RWA ecosystem recorded $365.29 million in 30-day transfer volume, up 360.15% from the prior month, spanning tokenized funds, equities, treasuries, and private credit. [Volume]

Team1 Korea Officially Launches:

Team1 Korea launched after onboarding more than 500 builders, 12 teams, 200-plus developers, and 80-plus founders, giving Korean talent a clearer path to build on Avalanche.

Team1 Chapters Stay Busy Across Five Continents:

Team1 chapters continued bringing Avalanche directly to local builders. August highlights included a builder workshop in Seoul focused on AI-agent payments, a meetup in Reggio Calabria, a Builder Connect at Oracle’s Bogotá offices, an L1 workshop in Türkiye, university activity in Vietnam, and multiple builder and community events across Brazil, India, Latin America, Nigeria and lots more.

New paths for funding and support opened up this month.

Team1 Opens Applications for ProtocolCamp Cohort 10:

Team1 called for builders to join ProtocolCamp Cohort 10, a 12-week program turning ideas into shipped products with travel covered and a kickoff during Korea Blockchain Week. [ProtocolCamp]

Fyeo Offers Free Security Scans to Builders:

Fyeo began giving Team1 projects and members free scanner credits so builders can catch issues early and ship faster. [Securityscanner]

Retro9000 Program Concludes

The Avalanche Foundation has officially concluded Retro9000 following the final funding rounds, marking the end of the program after its final disbursements. [Details]

Foundation Draws 150+ Research Proposals:

The Avalanche Foundation received more than 150 applications for its Call for Research Proposals, now moving to review by an academic committee spanning Ava Labs, the Foundation, and outside economists. [Announcement]

Loopia Goes Public With Season 1:

Loopia opened to the public with missions, exploration, and leaderboard rewards including $2,000 in PNG, 10 YourGrails FreePacks, and 300 Blaze Backstage rewards. [Loopia]

EVEN Artist Sells $57K in Albums in 24 Hours:

La Russell sold 1,000 albums for $57,000 in a single day on EVEN, revenue the platform equates to roughly 14 million streams. [EVEN]

Agent-driven payments became a real focus, not just a talking point.

Avalanche Joins the Agentic Payments Alliance:

Avalanche became a founding member of the Agentic Payments Alliance, organized by Rain, to help shape standards for agent-driven commerce. Team1 Seoul ran an AI agent payments workshop with QuackAI, and Team1 LatAm covered how agents pay using x402. [Alliance]

Dinari Brings 724 Tokenized U.S. Stocks to Avalanche:

U.S. investors can now trade 724 tokenized stocks and ETFs, including the S&P 500, through the Dinari Trading App, settling on Dinari’s Avalanche L1. [Dinari]

Cashlink Brings European Institutional Tokenization to Avalanche:

Cashlink, a European tokenization leader with €1 billion-plus in volume and clients like KfW, is bringing its securities infrastructure to Avalanche. [Cashlink]

GCash Brings Stablecoins to 94 Million Users:

Avalanche stablecoins EURC, USDC, and USDT went live on GCash’s GCrypto, giving the Philippines’ largest wallet borderless access for 94 million-plus users. [GCash]

Neuberger Berman’s $230B Platform Comes Onchain:

Securitize launched the Neuberger Securitize High Income Tokenized Fund, bringing Neuberger Berman’s fixed income business onchain on Avalanche and three others. [HINC]

Asset Managers Keep Adding AVAX:

Bitwise, VanEck, and Grayscale crossed 5 million AVAX combined, with 3.49 million staked, while Bitwise’s ETF added nearly 90,000 AVAX in a month. [Holdings]

Ava Labs Announces Leadership Changes:

Ava Labs named Charley Cooper President, Lydia Chiu CFO.

Delphi Digital Maps a Growing Real-World Finance Stack:

Two Delphi Digital reports tracked $2.8B-plus in Japanese securities migrated, $1.6B-plus in cross-border payments settled, and $2.5T-plus in settlement infrastructure migrated. [Report]

POSCO Completes a Trade Tokenization Proof of Concept:

POSCO International, with Intain and Olea, completed a proof of concept tokenizing trade receivables, and plans to expand into treasury and stablecoin payments. [POSCO]

KBank Builds a Stablecoin Remittance Market:

KBank, gateway for Korea’s largest crypto exchange, announced an Avalanche remittance market with Korea Telecom and BC Card. [KBank]

Kenya Anchors 15 Million Academic Records Onchain:

Kenya’s KNEC anchored 15 million-plus academic records dating to 1989 on Avalanche’s C-Chain, cutting verification time from months to seconds. [Blog]

Charles Schwab Adds AVAX:

Charles Schwab, home to 40 million brokerage accounts, added AVAX to Charles Schwab Crypto, its first move beyond BTC and ETH. [Schwab]

Uniswap Auctions Launch on Avalanche:

Uniswap’s Continuous Clearing Auction issuance method went live on Avalanche, giving teams a fully onchain way to run auctions and bootstrap liquidity. [Uniswap]

Robinhood chain on Tippikl:

Robinhood Chain went live via Tippikl Labs for tipping. [Announcement]

Avalanche Summit NYC Takes Center Stage:

If August was about building the infrastructure, September is about bringing the people building it into one room.

Avalanche Summit NYC takes place September 16–17, bringing together institutional leaders, founders, builders, policymakers, investors and major businesses exploring what comes next for onchain finance.

The speaker lineup now includes leaders from Securitize, Aave, BlackRock, Apollo, FIFA Collect, EVEN, Tether, Strata Media, Rain, Valinor Digital, the Cleveland Cavaliers and more. Conversations will span tokenization, stablecoins, payments, institutional adoption, fan engagement, digital identity and the future of blockchain-powered businesses.

Carlos Domingo of Securitize will discuss how compliant tokenization is changing the way securities are issued, managed and traded. Other sessions will explore tokenized equities through Dinari, institutional finance through Aave, stablecoins and policy, and the infrastructure needed to bring traditional markets onchain.

The Summit goes beyond finance, reflecting just how far Avalanche’s real-world applications have come. As blockchain increasingly becomes part of how businesses operate, Avalanche Summit NYC is a chance to see what that future looks like and where the ecosystem goes next.

Get your tickets here.

A few conversations explained the “why” behind August’s institutional wave.

John Wu Points to Hyundai and Securitize as Proof Points:

Speaking with Schwab Network, John Wu cited Hyundai’s cross-border payments and Securitize’s tokenized equity as Avalanche put to work. [Interview]

Stani Kulechov Explains Why Aave Picked Avalanche Again:

Aave founder Stani Kulechov said proven DeFi, durable liquidity, and institutional strength made Avalanche the natural choice for V4. [Kulechov]

Axiym Finance Frees Up Working Capital at Scale:

Ava Labs’ Tokenization Lead explained how Axiym Finance passed $1 billion in volume by freeing up 70-90% of working capital through just-in-time funding. [Axiym]

August was less about one explosive announcement and more about the accumulation of infrastructure.

Tokenized assets grew. Financial institutions moved closer to production. Stablecoins reached new users. Businesses explored blockchain-based settlement, treasury and trade finance. Team1 kept expanding the human layer behind the technology.

And now, with Avalanche Summit NYC just around the corner, the ecosystem has a stage to bring all of these stories together.

September is going to have a lot to talk about.

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Nigeria has long been recognized as a powerhouse of African developer talent and Web3 adoption. But turning that enthusiasm into real products with venture-ready protocols requires structure, a bridge between developer curiosity and long-term ecosystem support.

Throughout 2026, Team1 Nigeria has been building that bridge by combining hands-on technical incubation, campus tours, real-world utility onboarding, and regional ecosystem grants.

Global Recognition: Spotlighting Top 20 Build Games Finalists

The true test of any regional ecosystem is what its builders produce when given the right resources. On the global stage, Nigeria made its mark as two local teams placed in the Top 20 of the inaugural Avalanche Build Games out of more than 2,000 applicants worldwide.

• Poll It: Building a permissionless perception market on Avalanche where users stake on crowd sentiment, and creators monetize activity. Pushing through every competitive stage into the Top 20, Poll It earned a $15,000 grant from Avalanche. Their early traction highlights real onchain utility, generating over $18,000 in volume across 251 polls and distributing thousands of dollars to creators and participants.

• SliqPay: Tackling broken payment rails in Africa through simplified QR payments, phone/email transfers, bill splits, and merchant checkouts on Avalanche. SliqPay reached the Top 20 and secured a $10,000 grant from Avalanche as they prepare for mainnet deployment.

These teams represent what Build Games is all about: solving real problems, building consistently, and shipping actual products that bring value onchain.

Unlocking Regional Talent: The Grassroots Tour

To ensure these opportunities reached beyond major commercial hubs, Team1 Nigeria took the ecosystem directly to developer centers across the country.

In Uyo, over 60 builders gathered for an intensive incubation day focused on smart contract deployment and building in public. Experienced founders provided live feedback on product architectures, resulting in six live project applications submitted to Build Games on the spot.

In Awka, local developers explored Avalanche’s L1 architecture and downloaded Core Wallet to execute their first live onchain transactions. Similar momentum carried into Lagos and Ibadan, where a dedicated Developer Workshop guided participants through smart contract deployment and the application process for Team1 Mini Grants.

Showing Up Consistently: The Monthly Ecosystem Call

Regular community engagement helps keep the ecosystem growing. Beyond physical meetups and hackathons, the Team1 Nigeria Ecosystem Call gives builders, creators, contributors, and community members a space to connect, learn, and share ideas.

The monthly calls cover:

• Ecosystem Updates: News, technical releases, and developments across Avalanche.

• Opportunities & Grants: Updates on hackathons, initiatives, and funding opportunities such as Team1 Mini Grants.

• Builder Spotlights: Showcasing local founders and projects building onchain.

• Growth & Onboarding: Practical conversations around content, community growth, and bringing more people into Web3.

• Open Discussions: A space for questions, feedback, collaboration, and new ideas.

Fostering Inclusive Community Culture

Beyond code and terminal windows, ecosystem growth relies heavily on culture, accessibility, and trust. Team1 Nigeria actively sponsors and onboards female developers through partnerships with groups like Women in DeFi, creating clear entry points into Web3 development.

At the same time, casual, culturally aligned gatherings, such as the UEFA Champions League Final hangout at the University of Ilorin and World Cup watch parties in Lagos, create relaxed spaces for students, creators, and engineers to connect naturally. These shared experiences build the real-world relationships that often form the groundwork for future project co-founders.

The Road Ahead

From Poll It and SliqPay to projects coming out of Uyo, Awka, and Ibadan, Team1 Nigeria is giving local builders the space and support to turn their ideas into real products on Avalanche.

Ready to build? Join Builders Hub and connect with other builders.

Stay informed on events and opportunities by following Team1 Africa

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In the blockchain world, some concepts are used so often that, over time, everyone starts acting as if they already know them. L1 is one of them. Yet when talking about Avalanche today, leaving this concept at the surface means missing the real difference. Because Avalanche approaches the idea of Layer 1 not only as a “main chain,” but as a more flexible and more modular network model.

That is why it is necessary to start with the most basic question first: what is L1?

What Is L1?

In Ethereum’s official What is layer 2? explanation, Layer 1 blockchains are defined as the base networks that Layer 2 projects are built on top of, such as Ethereum and Bitcoin. On the same page, it is also explained that Ethereum, as an L1, includes the nodes that validate the network, block producers, transaction history, and the consensus mechanism. To put this in simpler terms, L1 is the main blockchain layer that provides its own security and transaction validation by itself. It does not live on top of another chain, it works by its own rules, and it serves as the foundation for upper-layer solutions.

Today, when most people say L1, they think of a single main network such as Ethereum, Bitcoin, or Avalanche. In other words, the everyday use of the concept mostly rests on the idea of a “base chain.” This is not wrong. However, from this point on, Avalanche takes the concept in a different direction.

What Is Avalanche L1?

According to Avalanche’s official Avalanche L1s documentation, an Avalanche L1 is a sovereign network that defines its own membership rules and token economy. This network is validated by a dynamic subset of Avalanche validators and reaches consensus on the state of one or more blockchains. The critical difference here is this: in Avalanche, L1 does not mean only a “single chain.” As clearly stated in the same documentation, while each blockchain is validated by exactly one Avalanche L1, one Avalanche L1 can validate multiple blockchains. As a matter of fact, Avalanche’s own Primary Network is also defined as a special Avalanche L1 and runs three separate chains: P-Chain, C-Chain, and X-Chain.

For this reason, the best way to understand Avalanche L1 is to see it not only as “a main chain,” but as an independent network structure with its own rules, connected to the broader Avalanche ecosystem.

Avalanche Primary Network: A Brief Overview

The Avalanche Primary Network is itself a special Avalanche L1 that runs three separate blockchains: P-Chain, C-Chain, and X-Chain, as explained in Avalanche’s official Primary Network documentation.

The P-Chain is responsible for validator management, staking, and Avalanche L1-level operations. The C-Chain provides an EVM-compatible environment for smart contracts and decentralized applications. The X-Chain is designed for the creation and transfer of Avalanche Native Tokens and other digital assets.

This brief overview establishes the role of the Primary Network. The individual functions and technical architecture of the P-Chain, C-Chain, and X-Chain will be covered in separate articles.

Differences Between a Normal L1 and Avalanche L1

1. Classical L1 describes the base chain. Avalanche L1 describes a sovereign network model

In Ethereum’s official explanation, L1 is the base blockchain layer that L2s are built on top of. In other words, the emphasis is on the main chain being the core infrastructure. On the Avalanche side, the official L1 documentation approaches L1 not only as a base layer, but as a sovereign network that can define its own rules, membership structure, and economic model. This gives the concept of L1 in Avalanche a higher level of customization.

2. The classical perception of L1 is mostly single-chain centered, while Avalanche L1 can be multi-chain

In general use, people are used to thinking of L1 as a single main network. In Avalanche, however, one L1 can validate multiple blockchains. Even Avalanche’s own Primary Network example shows this. This difference matters because Avalanche’s architecture offers a structure in which multiple chains can operate within the same ecosystem but according to different needs, instead of the “let one chain grow” approach.

3. Avalanche L1 supports application-specific design more strongly

Not every application has the same needs. While speed and low cost stand out for a payment system, compliance, control, and a more predictable structure may be more decisive for an enterprise financial product. Some use cases want a more open environment, while others need a more limited and more controlled network structure. Avalanche’s L1 approach allows the network to be shaped according to the need instead of forcing these different expectations into a single mold. The ability to customize many elements, from execution logic to fee structure, from the validator model to network behavior, forms the basis of this flexibility. That is why the Avalanche L1 model is particularly striking for payment systems, financial infrastructures, enterprise products, and use cases that require private data.

4. C-Chain is a shared and open environment; Avalanche L1 can be a more controlled alternative

As we saw above, C-Chain is the shared application area on Avalanche. It works close to an open and permissionless structure; that is, developers can deploy smart contracts here and users can interact directly with applications. This is a strong advantage for many applications. However, some projects may need tighter access control, more specific validator rules, or a more controlled operating model. This is where the Avalanche L1 model stands out. Because the application can establish its own network and define in a more controlled way who can transact or who can be a validator.

5. There is performance isolation in Avalanche L1s

On Avalanche’s L1 page, it is clearly stated that the performance of each Avalanche L1 is isolated from the others. In other words, heavy usage on one network does not directly degrade the performance of another Avalanche L1. This is a very important difference in practice. Because congestion on a shared general-purpose chain can affect all applications that share the same area. The Avalanche L1 model, on the other hand, aims to create a more predictable environment by separating certain workloads from one another.

6. Avalanche L1s can have their own gas token model

In the same documentation, it is explained that transaction fees on C-Chain are paid with AVAX, whereas when a custom Avalanche L1 is established, the application can define its own native gas token structure. This difference is especially important for teams that want to build the application economy according to their own needs. Because the issue is not only being present on a chain; it is also being able to control the economic logic of that chain.

7. Validator management becomes more flexible in the Avalanche L1 model

In the Avalanche ecosystem, the PlatformVM architecture shows that P-Chain manages validators, the staking process, and the creation of Avalanche L1s. In addition, Avalanche’s official L1 documentation emphasizes that L1s can define their own validator management logic. This matters not only in theory but in practice. Because while some networks may want permissionless proof-of-stake, others may need permissioned proof-of-authority style structures. Here, Avalanche L1 offers a more flexible framework instead of imposing a single validation model on everyone.

8. Interoperability stands out as a built-in element in Avalanche’s design

In Avalanche’s official ICM Contracts documentation, it is explained that a developer-friendly interface is provided for sending and receiving messages between different Avalanche L1s. Again, on the Avalanche L1s page, it is stated that Avalanche Warp Messaging enables native cross-Avalanche L1 communication. This shows the following: Avalanche does not only want to produce independent networks, but also sees the natural communication of these networks with each other as part of the architecture.

Why Is This Difference Important for Avalanche?

What makes the Avalanche L1 approach valuable is that it treats blockchain not as a single shared space, but as a set of sovereign networks that can be shaped according to different use cases. Some applications want to be open and permissionless. Some want more controlled validator structures. Some want to build their own gas economy. Others seek a structure focused on high throughput, privacy, or compliance. Avalanche’s official documentation highlights the L1 model precisely for these needs. That is why the subject of Avalanche L1 is not only a technical detail. At the same time, it is the core architectural idea that explains why Avalanche often comes up in finance, enterprise infrastructure, gaming, data systems, and specialized use cases.

Conclusion

In the broadest sense, L1 is the base blockchain layer that provides its own security, consensus, and transaction validation by itself. Avalanche takes this basic idea and makes it more modular. Avalanche L1 is not only a “main chain,” but a sovereign network model that can define its own membership rules, validator structure, token economy, and even the logic of validating multiple chains. That is exactly why Avalanche L1 differs from the classical Layer 1 narrative. Here, the issue is not only establishing a new chain, but building networks that are isolated from one another according to different needs, yet able to communicate with one another when necessary. This is where Avalanche’s real difference begins.

Technical Terms Mentioned in the Text

Primary Network

It is Avalanche’s base network. P-Chain, C-Chain, and X-Chain are parts of this structure. It can be thought of as the core network layer in the Avalanche ecosystem.

Validator

It is the actor that participates in the validity of transactions and blocks on the network. Validators provide the security of the network. They play a critical role in the healthy operation of a blockchain.

Consensus

It is the mechanism that allows participants in the network to reach a common decision about which transactions are valid. It is one of the fundamental processes that keep the blockchain secure and consistent.

EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine)

It is the execution environment where Ethereum-compatible smart contracts run. A network being EVM-compatible means it can work more easily with Ethereum tools and the developer ecosystem.

Permissionless

It refers to a structure in which participation does not require prior permission. In theory, anyone can join the network, use the application, or take on a role by meeting certain conditions.

Permissioned

It refers to a structure in which participation is controlled. Who can access, who can transact, or who can be a validator can be determined in advance.

Interoperability

It means that different networks or systems can communicate with each other.

Throughput

It describes how many transactions a network can process within a certain period of time. High throughput means that more transactions can be carried at the same time.

Further Reading

1. Avalanche – Motivation behind Avalanche9000

2. Avalanche – Validator Manager Contracts

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The latest Nansen snapshot covering June 12 to July 12 shows roughly 87.8 million monthly transactions, 1.7 million active addresses, and transaction costs that remain close to negligible. At the same time, BlackRock’s BUIDL fund reached approximately $902.7 million on Avalanche, sAVAX continued to accumulate inside the BENQI staking system, and Avalanche L1 economics became increasingly accessible following Avalanche9000.

This is not a retail-driven expansion built around memecoins or rapidly rising DEX volume. In fact, trading activity remains one of the weaker areas of the current snapshot. It is an institutional and infrastructure-led expansion, supported by tokenized assets, liquid staking, stablecoin liquidity, and specialized Avalanche L1s.

Avalanche is not simply processing more activity. It is becoming a home for larger, more specialized, and more capital-intensive use cases.

All onchain figures in this article are based on the Nansen ecosystem analysis covering June 12 to July 12, 2026. This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice.

Network adoption is broadening

The adoption story is larger than a single weekly wallet figure. Avalanche added 707,000 new C-Chain addresses during Q2 2026, compared with 118,000 during Q1. That represents nearly six times as many new addresses quarter over quarter. The latest monthly snapshot also shows approximately 1.7 million active addresses and an estimated 87.8 million transactions.

Those figures suggest that Avalanche is reaching more users while maintaining the low cost environment required for consumer applications, payments, gaming, and high frequency onchain activity. The report places the median transaction fee near $0.00001, approximately 96 percent lower following recent network upgrades.

Raw address growth should still be interpreted carefully. A newly created address is not automatically a retained user, and activity can include automated wallets, one-time interactions, or incentive-driven behavior. The more important confirmation will be whether these addresses continue transacting and begin using applications across C-Chain and Avalanche L1s.

The direction, however, is encouraging. Avalanche is onboarding meaningfully more addresses while keeping transaction costs almost invisible to the end user.

BUIDL has become the clearest institutional signal

The strongest development in the current dataset is BlackRock’s BUIDL fund.

Nansen tracked approximately $902.7 million of BUIDL on Avalanche as of July 12. The balance more than doubled during the preceding week after a new holder received approximately $500 million on July 10.

This was not a gradual increase spread evenly across thousands of wallets. It was a concentrated institutional deployment. The new address alone represented roughly 55 percent of the BUIDL balance tracked on Avalanche, while the asset had seven holders and three active addresses during the period.

That concentration should be acknowledged, but it does not reduce the significance of the deployment. It shows that Avalanche can support regulated financial products at a scale approaching $1 billion for a single tokenized fund.

The important part is simple: Avalanche is already being used to move and hold institutional capital at a serious scale.

It also shows that Avalanche is being used for more than trading and consumer apps. More institutional products are starting to use the network as part of the plumbing for tokenized assets.

Capital flows are mixed

The latest flows do not tell one simple story. WAVAX saw about $3.1 million move onto exchanges over seven days, but that was only 0.7 times its usual level. Fresh wallets added roughly $378,900, while Top PnL wallets added another $44,900. Nansen did not pick up any meaningful whale or Smart Money activity during the period.

So there is some exchange side pressure, but nothing that looks particularly aggressive.

USDC is more interesting. Around $70.8 million moved into exchange wallets over seven days, about 2.6 times the average, while Top PnL wallets added another $5.2 million.

It is too early to know what that USDC will be used for. It could sit on exchanges, move into trading or market making, or eventually find its way back onchain. For now, it simply tells us that a meaningful amount of stablecoin liquidity is being repositioned.

That is why the case for Avalanche right now is less about AVAX buying pressure and more about what is happening around the network: institutional assets, new users, staking and infrastructure.

sAVAX continues to attract participation

Liquid staking is still one of the more consistent parts of the Avalanche ecosystem. The BENQI sAVAX contract added roughly 775,800 sAVAX over 30 days, including 238,700 in the latest week. Fresh wallets also added around $412,300 of sAVAX over seven days, about 2.8 times the normal level.

At the same time, the Aave related sAVAX pool fell by approximately 451,800 sAVAX over 30 days.

That suggests staking demand is holding up even as some sAVAX is being pulled out of lending or leveraged positions. In other words, people are still choosing to keep AVAX productive, but they may be taking less risk with it.

That is an important distinction. sAVAX lets holders stay exposed to AVAX and staking while keeping their capital usable across DeFi.

BTC.b is still an important part of Avalanche DeFi

BTC.b remains one of the larger pools of non native capital on Avalanche.

The latest snapshot shows around 30,809 holders, a $179.8 million market cap, and $43.6 million in seven day volume. About $1.5 million of BTC.b left exchange wallets during the week.

At the same time, Top PnL wallets reduced their BTC.b positions by roughly $5 million.

So there are two things happening at once. Some BTC.b is moving away from exchanges, while profitable traders are cutting exposure. Neither move is large enough on its own to define the trend.

Bitcoin liquidity is still active on Avalanche and continues to be used across lending, liquidity and other DeFi markets. BTC.b gives the ecosystem another source of capital beyond AVAX and stablecoins.

DeFi has not caught up with the institutional story yet

The report puts Avalanche application TVL at around $3.1 billion, down 5.6 percent over 30 days. Monthly DEX volume came in at $899.5 million, down 64.7 percent, while application fees fell 30.4 percent to $5.2 million.

So while institutional assets and infrastructure are moving forward, the broader DeFi market is still quieter.

More addresses are coming in, RWA activity is growing and network costs remain extremely low, but those gains have not yet translated into stronger trading activity or broader DeFi usage.

The next step is seeing whether that new activity starts spreading through the rest of the ecosystem.

An expansion led by infrastructure

The strongest parts of the current Avalanche story are becoming easier to identify.

New C-Chain address creation accelerated sharply during Q2. sAVAX continues to attract deposits. Transaction costs remain extremely low, and Avalanche9000 has made it much easier to launch specialized Avalanche L1s.

The growth is still concentrated. One address accounted for roughly $500 million of the BUIDL balance, DEX volume has fallen sharply, and WAVAX flows do not yet show broad accumulation.

But the direction of travel is different from a typical speculative cycle.

Avalanche is seeing more activity around tokenized assets, staking and dedicated blockchain infrastructure. The next test is whether that starts bringing deeper liquidity, returning users and more sustained activity across Avalanche L1s.

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More than 15 million academic records are now live on Avalanche’s C-Chain. The Kenya National Examinations Council projects the total will reach roughly 35 million as that rollout continues. KNEC and Avalanche announced the deployment on Monday, and it’s already one of the largest government-backed deployments on the network to date.

The headline numbers:

• 15 million-plus records already integrated onto the C-Chain, the figure KNEC and Avalanche confirm as currently live

• 35 million records projected as the rollout continues

• Records dating back to 1989, covering KCPE, KCSE, diploma, and teaching certification data

• Close to 1 million KCSE 2025 certificates already distributed exclusively through the new e-certification system

The problem this solves

Kenya has struggled with certificate fraud for years. Thousands of forged academic documents surface annually, ranging from fabricated diplomas to altered exam results, and the damage runs deep. Employers hire unqualified staff, universities admit students on fake transcripts, and legitimate graduates end up competing against paper that was never real. Verifying a certificate the old way meant a slow, manual back-and-forth with KNEC, often taking weeks. None of that scaled to a system managing exam records for a country of more than 50 million people.

What KNEC built

The system converts each historical and current examination record into a blockchain-secured asset on Avalanche’s C-Chain, built in partnership with local technology provider LegitDoc. That creates a registry institutions can query instantly, replacing manual confirmation from examination authorities. Every certificate becomes independently verifiable, so an employer or university can confirm it against the onchain record directly, without needing to trust whoever is holding the physical copy.

What this unlocks:

• Employers, universities, and government agencies can verify a certificate’s authenticity directly through the verification portal, without contacting KNEC

• No paperwork trail for fraudsters to exploit, since the source record lives onchain, not in a filing cabinet

• Every newly issued certificate now follows the same onchain path, starting with the 2025 KCSE cohort

• Verification that used to take weeks now happens in seconds through the verification portal

The rollout also fits into a wider push by the Kenyan government toward digital identity infrastructure. KNEC has been involved in earlier pilots covering digital credential wallets and verifiable credentials for public services, and this deployment builds directly on that groundwork.

Why C-Chain, and not a dedicated Avalanche L1

KNEC anchors verification proofs, not full certificate data or personal records, to Avalanche’s C-Chain using a Merkle-tree structure. That distinction matters for the infrastructure decision. A dedicated Avalanche L1 makes sense when an application needs custom execution rules, a private validator set, or throughput a shared chain can’t offer. KNEC’s workload doesn’t hit those limits. Verification proofs are small and don’t demand the transaction volume that would justify standing up dedicated validators.

The C-Chain gave KNEC three practical advantages instead. It’s public and permissionless, so any employer, university, or agency can query the registry without needing special access or KNEC’s cooperation. It’s already built out with explorers, indexers, and wallet support that a new L1 would need to recreate from scratch. And the Etna upgrade cut C-Chain base fees by roughly 25 times, making it cheap to anchor tens of millions of records without the ongoing validator costs a dedicated chain would carry. For a government registry meant to be checked openly by the public, those trade-offs favor the shared chain.

Why this matters for Avalanche

Putting records onchain changes what tampering requires. Altering a paper certificate or a siloed database entry can come down to bribing a clerk or forging a signature. Once a record is anchored to the C-Chain, an attacker has to break the cryptography instead, which is a far harder problem to solve.

For Avalanche, this is a live demonstration that its infrastructure can handle national-scale public records alongside its DeFi activity. It’s a use case built for permanence and verification, and it shows the C-Chain holding up under a workload most blockchains never get tested against: tens of millions of records tied to a country’s entire education system, with millions more added every year as new students graduate.

Why Kenya keeps choosing Avalanche

KNEC’s rollout doesn’t stand alone. It’s part of a broader pattern of governments turning to Avalanche for records that need to be fast, auditable, and resistant to tampering.

Other government deployments on Avalanche:

• California DMV: 42 million vehicle titles digitized to fight lien fraud

• Bergen County, New Jersey: 370,000 property deeds tokenized, representing $240 billion in real estate value, the largest blockchain-based land registry project in U.S. history

• Dantewada, India: 700,000 land records digitized, cutting verification times from weeks to under a day

• Kenya: 15 million-plus academic credentials, now added to that same trend line

Academic credentials are the latest sector where Avalanche is becoming the default choice for record integrity. The common thread across these deployments is the underlying need: institutions with millions of records that have to stay accurate, auditable, and resistant to tampering for decades.

What this means for builders

A national credential system running on the C-Chain gives Avalanche builders a concrete reference point for government-grade verification infrastructure.

Why it matters for anyone building in this space:

• Proof that public-sector deployments at this scale are workable on Avalanche today, not a future roadmap item

• A real deployment to study for anyone building identity, credentialing, or verification tools

• A live system already processing certificates for millions of students and institutions, with a clear growth path built in from day one

KNEC and Avalanche haven’t disclosed adoption figures yet, meaning how widely employers and universities are actually using the verification portal, but the infrastructure itself is live and running today. That’s the part builders can study right now.

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Today, we are Team1 Korea, building on Avalanche's amazing success in the country and empowering the community to get involved.

Our mission is to transform Korea into a primary builder and talent hub, and to support adoption across consumer, stablecoins, payments, etc. That means real programs, real pathways, and real outcomes.

• Local builder hubs, demo days, and investor connections

• Technical workshops for developers

• Founder support and direct access to Avalanche programs

• Community meetups and social events

• University tours across the region

Building the Foundation

Before launching an official Team1 chapter, we have been actively contributing to ecosystem growth and onboarding talent to Avalanche.

• 500+ builders and 12 teams onboarded through Demo Days

• 200+ developers activated across university tours

• 80+ founders connected at founder connect events

• 2,000+ attendees at side events during Korea Blockchain Week

Team1 Korea now runs across six verticals: Operations, DevRel, Growth, Creative, Research, and External Relations. Some are engineers at companies you would recognize. Some run their own startups. Others are students leading their university blockchain clubs. Our members are busy, and they joined Team1 Korea out of love for the game.

Korea Is Already Onchain

The country operates at a level many markets are still only discussing. Real production infrastructure is live and moving real money.

To put it plainly, Korea is already running production-level onchain systems, while other communities are still chasing vanity metrics.

Our Strategy: Build the Standard

Our north star for Korea is simple: make this the place where builders ship real products on Avalanche.

We are here to support the people building on the network, and every program we run has to move someone closer to that. If it doesn’t, we don’t run it.

That work starts with our culture, long before anyone writes a line of code. The AMRC, our Avalanche Morning Run Club, meets on weekend mornings in Seoul. People show up, run, and grab a coffee. A clear head and a strong body make for sharper builders, and many of the people building with us today started their journey with AMRC.

After this, it’s time to get our hands on the keyboard. Builder workshops run on a regular schedule, and each one ends with participants shipping something real instead of sitting through a lecture.

We are translating the Avalanche Builder Hub into Korean to eliminate language barriers that impede deployments, and we will publish tutorials and research in Korean so our developers can learn from the best available material in their native language.

And what gets built here should not stay here. Through the Team1 global network, Korean builders now plug into chapters across the US, Brazil, Vietnam, Türkiye, and India. These networks provide mentorship and collaboration on a global scale, further solidifying the successful path ahead.

Measure What Gets Built

Team1 Korea is for people who want their work to exist after the room empties.

We will measure our success through our expanding network and the quality of products we build with it.

Welcome to Team1 Korea.

Follow our journey: X (Twitter) | Telegram

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Blockchains talk about value all the time, but few measure it, and the Avalanche Foundation (Foundation) is doing blockchain’s hardest math in public.

Economics of Blockchain is the Foundation’s ongoing research series, and the premise behind it is simple. Strengthening an economy starts with seeing it clearly. To do this, the research team led with measurement, building tools to track what the Avalanche ecosystem produces, then asking how to route that value back to the token that secures the network.

The agenda runs on three steps: measure the value the ecosystem creates, capture part of it at the protocol level, and route it to AVAX and the Avalanche ecosystem. The sequence is relatively easy to talk about but much harder to deliver.

Each step anchors on a problem nobody in crypto has solved, and the Foundation is upfront about which one matters most today. The gap between ecosystem activity and AVAX is the weak link, and closing it is the point of the whole agenda.

Much of this work sits with Eric Lu, the Foundation’s Lead Economist. Two pieces of the measurement puzzle he is working on are Gross Chain Product (GCP) and Gross Chain Income (GCI) - a way to size an onchain economy using the same accounting logic that governments use for GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and GNI (Gross National Income).

Where GCP measures what the ecosystem produces, GCI measures what it earns, including income that originates outside the onchain economy but flows to people and balances inside it. He ran GCP against the Avalanche C-Chain from January 2025 through March 2026, and together the two metrics turn a vague question - how much is this ecosystem worth - into auditable numbers published openly. Every other piece of the agenda builds on that measurement.

We asked Eric the questions the community keeps raising, ranging from what the series is to the one on everybody’s mind: how does value accrue back to AVAX and the ecosystem?

His answers follow:

Why Publish This in Public

For someone seeing a piece in the “Economics of Blockchain” series for the first time, what problem does this series exist to solve, and why does the Foundation think it’s worth doing the research in public rather than internally?

The series is closely related to the work from the Economic Research and Ecosystem team at the Foundation. It will be the main outlet for the research projects. So you can expect to see articles in the series on topics and questions laid out in our research roadmap, which has been published recently as well.

As you may have seen, the first couple of articles are about measuring how much value there is in the ecosystem, and where it is. In the next couple of months, you can expect to see articles around how we will capture these values for the protocol to ensure alignment between network security and ecosystem growth.

The Logic of Measure, Capture, Distribute

The agenda is built around a framework of Measure, Capture, Distribute. Can you walk through why measurement has to come first, and what the industry gets wrong when it skips straight to incentives and TVL?

In my view, Measure, Capture, Distribute is really a first-principle type of thinking: we cannot capture anything until we know how much value there is and where it is; and we cannot distribute any value if we haven’t already captured any value. So you can see the whole thing starts with measurement. I also wouldn’t say this is something that the industry gets wrong. It’s more about having the right measurement to support the actions we need to take. Metrics like TVL, active accounts, transaction counts, etc., all serve some kind of purpose. But here, since we are trying to improve the value accrual issues for the protocol, we need more informative measures, and this is where GCP and GCI come in.

Sizing the Economy: Gross Chain Product

Gross Chain Product (GCP) borrows from national GDP accounting. In plain terms, what does GCP show you about Avalanche’s economy that existing metrics miss, and has anything in the January 2025 to March 2026 data surprised you?

The whole GCP framework has at least three important improvements over the existing metrics: 1) it measures the economic value creation on the blockchain, which is a natural base for potential value capture, 2) it is applicable across pretty much any verticals, as long as you want to measure the onchain value creation, and 3) it allows you to disentangle the changes in real activities from the changes just due to price changes, which is particularly informative given the high level of fluctuation in crypto market.

Beyond Production: Gross Chain Income

GCP measures production, but you’re also working on Gross Chain Income (GCI). What does GCI capture that GCP doesn’t, and why do you need both to get a complete picture of the ecosystem’s value?

You are exactly right: GCP measures production, but that also hints at its limitations, because not all value in an economy exists in its productive output. GCI is a natural extension of GCP that fills this gap. Just like an open economy, some value in the Avalanche ecosystem originates from outside. Think of it like a multinational corporation that generates profit abroad and repatriates it to its home country. An obvious example of value that is included in GCI but not GCP is the yield generated by assets backing Real World Assets (RWAs) or stablecoins on Avalanche. This yield accrues to on-chain users or token issuers, both of which are integral parts of the ecosystem. GCI complements GCP by clarifying the sources and scale of the value base, further informing how we capture that value.

Closing the Gap Between Activity and AVAX

The Economics of Blockchain research agenda names the connection between ecosystem value and AVAX as the most important gap today. How do you think about closing it, and what would “value reaching AVAX” concretely look like a year or two from now?

This is really a core problem that the Foundation and my team are trying to address. Conceptually, we would close the gap via two actions talked about extensively in the research agenda: Capture and Distribute. Capture gives us the value that can possibly be connected to AVAX, and Distribute establishes the ownership of the value stream at the protocol level by AVAX holders. There is a lot of work to be done here to figure out how to effectively take out the two actions, and most of it has no working precedents.

To name a few fundamental challenges: for Capture, most of the general-purpose Layer 1s (L1s) like Avalanche heavily rely on transaction fees for protocol revenue; some add Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) profit and stablecoin yield. I would argue that all these common capture mechanisms do not provide sufficient exposure for the protocol to ecosystem value. So we need to explore alternative revenue sources and capture mechanisms with better alignment with ecosystem growth. This is also where the GCP/GCI framework comes in.

For Distribute, most of the chains rely on either direct burn or buyback and burn to distribute protocol revenue. However, even basic corporate finance theory would tell us that direct distribution is not the value-maximizing distribution policy in many circumstances, even though direct distribution might have the lowest agency cost. It remains to be studied what the optimal distribution policy is that strikes a good balance between value maximizing through all kinds of productive activities and agency cost minimization through direct distribution.

Where Capture Actually Comes From

Protocol revenue is mostly Primary Network fees right now, which you’ve called a narrow base. Which capture mechanisms (e.g., fees, MEV, L1 and app revenue sharing) look most promising, and how do you expand that base without taxing the activity that creates the value?

I do want to emphasize that we are not overlooking any potential revenue base, including fees, MEV profit, L1 and app revenue, and corresponding capture mechanisms. One of the key tradeoffs we consider when we are prioritizing the research into these revenue sources is the magnitude and the feasibility of capture. So if a revenue source has a large scale and a feasible path to capture, it will be on our top priority list. For such a revenue source, the research work would mainly involve measuring the size of the source, designing the mechanism for sustainable capture, and assessing the impact on protocol revenue and ultimately network security.

You used the term “taxing” above, which is what value capture eventually achieves. But I do want to point out a key design principle we are trying to follow: we always explore voluntary value capture first, which we believe is mutually beneficial for the protocol and the source of revenue, and the only sustainable mechanism in the long term, in contrast to a real tax imposed by a sovereign state, which is almost always compulsory.

Validator Economics After Issuance

Today, validator rewards come mostly from new AVAX issuance, the fresh tokens the protocol mints as staking rewards, and that budget is finite. As it winds down, fees have to cover more of the security budget. What does that transition look like in practice, and what has to be true for validators to keep staking for the long term?

The issue you point out about validator rewards is very well embedded in our research agenda. Specifically, a good distribution policy would need to allocate protocol revenue to validators. So eventually, validator rewards will be more and more funded by real protocol revenue instead of emissions.

Intuitively, the level of rewards needs to be higher than some kind of opportunity cost of staking for validators to validate. So we need to have an understanding of their opportunity cost, which is the supply side of validation. At the same time, validation is a public good with strong positive externalities, which means it is typically under-supplied in a competitive market. So we also need to have an understanding of the user and the “social” benefit from validation, or really the security provided by validation, which is the demand side of validation. If I had to really imagine, we would need a market mechanism to reveal the validators’ cost of validation and the network’s demand for validation, and then supplement it with some protocol-level subsidy to compensate for the externalities, to really have a long-term sustainable staking rewards mechanism.

Distribution as a Design Choice

Once value is captured, distribution is a design choice: burns, validator-directed revenue, other routes. How are you weighing those options, and how should AVAX holders track whether this is working over time?

As I briefly touched on above, the distribution policy is ultimately a delicate balance of these different channels. Again, taking basic intuitions from corporate finance, when the industry is booming and there are a lot of high-potential projects, it might make sense to reinvest more and distribute less, whereas in a slow market, direct distribution may be demanded by the stakeholders to reduce wasteful investments. Just like a corporation needs to adjust its policy depending on all kinds of conditions, our protocol needs to. Our research agenda doesn’t really give a fixed prescription on how to do the best distribution policy, but rather provides an understanding of the different tradeoffs and forces, so we know how to make adjustments under different conditions to drive long-term network growth and security.

Where Outside Researchers Fit In

You opened a $50,000 research grant program on Avalanche network economics. What approaches are you seeing researchers take, and are there any early insights you can share?

It is too early to share any concrete insights at the moment, as we are still reviewing the proposals. Once the winners are selected, they still need to actually execute the proposals to reach any concrete findings and policy prescriptions. What I can share is that we received close to 200 submissions in total, and we have seen a lot of high-quality proposals.

In terms of research topics, we see about one-third in validator incentives and economics, where the research questions surround validators’ cost of capital, required return, and long-term sustainable incentives. Another third is around cryptoasset pricing, where the questions are mostly about how to incorporate the key different features of a cryptoasset into a unified equilibrium-based asset pricing model. The rest are scattered across multiple different topics such as emission policy, transaction fee optimization, L1 mechanisms, and MEV economics.

Join the work

If you research economics, finance, computer science, or a related field, the Foundation is funding original work on Avalanche network economics through its research grant program, with up to $50,000 available and applications reviewed on a rolling basis. You can read the criteria and apply here.

Read the full series

Economics of Blockchain is an ongoing body of work, and each piece builds on the last. If you want the complete picture behind this interview, start here:

• The Avalanche Foundation Unveils its Economic Research Agenda

• From Gross Chain Product to Gross Chain Income: Where the Value Goes

• Measuring Blockchain Economies: Introducing Gross Chain Product

• From Static Constants to Dynamic Variables: What Three ACPs Say About Where Avalanche’s Economics Are Headed

• The Avalanche Foundation Opens Up to $50,000 in Research Grants on Avalanche Network Economics

• How Do Avalanche Validators Actually Think About Staking Rewards?

• Why Avalanche Validator Economics Need a Redesign

• Value Accrual as Equilibrium: How We Think About AVAX Tokenomics

Who is Eric?

Siyu (Eric) Lu is a cryptoeconomist and data scientist with a PhD in Financial Economics, bringing over a decade of experience across traditional finance and digital assets. His expertise spans quantitative modeling, machine learning, tokenomics, and large-scale data systems.

At the Avalanche Foundation, Eric works closely with Matias A., and the ecosystem team on research across protocol design, including liquidity dynamics, staking economics, and token models - helping to support data-driven, sustainable growth across Avalanche.

Previously, Eric served as a Cryptoeconomist and Senior Data Scientist at TRM Labs, where he led the development of on-chain analytics and risk-scoring models for regulators and institutions, and as a Financial Economist at Cornerstone Research.

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In 2026, Team1 Brasil underwent a period of rapid expansion scaling the local chapter team, while driving nationwide brand awareness, and accelerating Web3 adoption across South America’s largest market. By bridging mainstream cultural moments with deep technical education, the chapter has solidified its role as a primary engine for regional community growth, developer onboarding, and institutional alignment.

Below is a comprehensive look back at our key activations, strategic partnerships, and structural milestones from this recent leg of our journey.

Team1 Brasil Chapter Recap: Expanding LATAM’s Builder Ecosystem

Key Highlights:

• Cultural and Consumer Activation: Executed a nationwide campaign alongside Bitget Wallet during the World Cup, turning World Cup excitement into real, hands-on wallet setups.

• Regional Builder Labs and Executive Gatherings: Co-hosted the flagship Brasília Builder Lab with KAST and SheFi Brazil, a Leadership Breakfast in São Paulo with MetaMask, and Café Cursor in Salvador.

• Institutional Depth and Developer Pipeline: Recorded an extensive technical workshop series on Real World Assets during Team1 Brasil Weekend and onboarded software engineers at Oracle through Web3 Experts Brazil.

• Academic Horizon: Secured official commitments with 3 leading Brazilian universities to launch the Team1 University Connect initiative in August.

1. Merging Culture and Web3: World Cup Watch Party Series with Bitget Wallet

Bridging the gap between Web3 infrastructure and consumer adoption in Latin America requires localized, high touch community engagement. To capture this momentum, Team1 Brasil partnered with Bitget Wallet to launch the Team1 Brasil and Bitget Wallet Watch Parties Series.

Spanning 5 distinct event activations across key Brazilian cities during national team matchdays, the series served as a dual purpose initiative: a high energy cultural hub for crypto enthusiasts and a practical onboarding gateway for non crypto natives. Over 350 downloads and 700 attendees in total after all the events.

Each session featured live product demonstrations, self custody wallet setups, and interactive educational quizzes about Avalanche’s low latency network performance, demonstrating how seamless Web3 UX can integrate into everyday consumer experiences.

2. Empowering Builders: Flagship Activations in Brasília, São Paulo, and Salvador

To drive technical innovation and foster high level strategic alignment, Team1 Brasil targeted key regional tech hubs across the country:

• Brasília Builder Lab (co-hosted with KAST and SheFi Brazil): Held in Brazil’s capital, this intensive hands on lab focused on decentralization, financial inclusion, and ecosystem diversity. Co organized with payment protocol KAST and educational platform SheFi Brazil, the event guided local developers through building production ready applications, leveraging custom subnets, and optimizing cross chain liquidity.

• Breakfast with Metamask (São Paulo): Gathered prominent regional founders, venture builders, and institutional stakeholders in São Paulo. The closed door roundtable focused on Latin American market expansion, local fiat onramp solutions, and multi chain wallet infrastructure tailored for Brazilian enterprise adoption.

• Café Cursor (Salvador): Activated the local ecosystem in Salvador by onboarding developers and vibecoders directly into the Avalanche ecosystem through rapid prototyping discussions and developer tooling walkthroughs.

3. Technical Masterclasses: Real World Assets and Oracle Developer Activation

As institutional interest in tokenized assets continues to accelerate across Latin America, Team1 Brasil prioritized developer education and technical content creation:

• RWA Workshop Series (Team1 Brasil Weekend): During an intensive team retreat, Team1 recorded a comprehensive series of technical modules focused on Real World Asset tokenization. The curriculum breaks down legal frameworks, smart contract security, compliance architecture, and sub second asset settlement on Avalanche.

• Web3 Experts Brazil @ Oracle São Paulo: Partnering with tech titan Oracle, Team1 Brasil hosted a technical workshop designed to transition enterprise software engineers into Web3 builders. Participants were introduced to Avalanche C-Chain deployment, AvaCloud enterprise tooling, and EVM smart contract optimization.

4. Looking Ahead: August University Connect Campaign

With strong momentum across consumer, builder, and enterprise sectors, Team1 Brasil is expanding its developer pipeline directly into higher education.

Starting in August, Team1 Brasil will launch its University Connect Campaign, having already secured collaborations with 3 top academic institutions: FIAP Rio de Janeiro, SENAI CIMATEC and UNIJORGE. The program will bring accredited blockchain modules, developer hackathons, and direct mentorship to Brazilian university campuses, training the next generation of engineers to build scalable, decentralized solutions on Avalanche.

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The session was supposed to be over.

One hundred and sixty students, a university lecture hall, a slot on AI agents and Avalanche, the kind of format where you expect a third of the room to drift out early and the rest to stay out of politeness. We had reached the end of what we had prepared. We thanked them.

Nobody moved.

Then the questions started, and they did not stop for another two hours.

That afternoon confirmed something I had been circling for a while: the barrier between people and Web3 was never really technical. It was the order of the conversation. We had spent years walking into rooms and opening with the answer, blockchain, to a question nobody in the room had asked yet.

That day we did the opposite, almost by accident.

We did not go there to talk about blockchain

The brief was simple: show students what AI and AI agents make possible, and show them where infrastructure fits once they start building something real.

So we started where they already were. AI can generate an application, automate a process, hold a conversation with a user. An agent can take that further and act on its own. Fine. Then you try to ship it, and a different class of problem shows up: how does this thing handle a payment? How does it touch a digital asset? How does an agent execute a transaction without a developer wiring every component from scratch?

That is the moment Avalanche entered the conversation as an answer to a question the room had arrived at on its own.

When you lead with the chain, you are asking people to care about your infrastructure. When you lead with what they are building, they ask you for it.

The question that stayed with me

Somewhere in those two extra hours, a student asked how technologies this complicated were already running inside companies like Toyota and FIFA, as things that work, used by people who have no idea they are using them.

Underneath that question was a better one: if the user never notices the blockchain, does the user need to understand it?

No. And that single answer should reorganize how this entire industry talks about itself.

The goal was never to turn everyone into a blockchain expert. The goal is to make the technology simple enough that someone with a good idea can use it without learning every layer underneath it. We spent a decade selling comprehension. We should have been selling irrelevance, the good kind, the kind where the complexity disappears into the product.

The most surprising questions that day were not technical at all. Several students asked whether the education they were in the middle of would still be worth anything given how fast AI is moving. That is not a question about tools, but a question about where you can still contribute in an environment that reshuffles itself every six months. They were not asking us to teach them a technology. They were asking us to help them locate themselves.

I did not have a clean answer, to be honest I am not sure a clean answer exists, but it is the reason I think these conversations belong inside universities and not only inside conferences full of people who already agree with each other.

How I ended up in that room

Giacomo Barbieri, Team1 Italy Lead, asked me to join the community because of what I had done before, community work with ETHNA, Binance, Coinbase. I said yes assuming I already knew the job.

I had the mechanics right. I had the shape of it wrong.

What struck me immediately about Team1 was how international and how genuinely mixed it is: different countries, different professional backgrounds, different levels of technical depth, and a default behavior of sharing what you know instead of protecting it. Four events later, as speaker, as mentor, as organizer, I have a fairly specific idea of what this community is for.

It is not for organizing events, because events are only the pretext.

It is for engineering the situations in which people meet, ask the question they were slightly embarrassed to ask, and discover that a technology they had filed under “too complex” or “not for me” is actually within reach.

AI is the catalyst

Almost nobody walks into our events for the blockchain. They walk in for AI. That is the technology everyone is experimenting with, arguing about, trying to fit into their work.

And then, reliably, the same sequence unfolds: someone describes what they are building, someone else asks how value moves through it, how payments are handled, how an agent transacts, what infrastructure a developer would need so that none of this has to be rebuilt from zero.

That is where people discover Avalanche, as something that complements what they are already doing, not as a competing worldview they have to convert to.

The friction was never the technology alone. It was the terminology, the fragmentation, the sheer number of tools and protocols that make it impossible for a newcomer to know where to start. Our job as a community is to reduce that friction to the point where the first question is not “do you understand blockchain?” but “what are you trying to build, and can this help you build it?”

The event is the pretext, the drink is the event

During a workshop, someone asks a technical question, clean, well-formed, safe.

Two hours later, over a drink, the same person tells you what they are actually working on: the limitation they hit last month, the product idea they have not told anyone about, the problem they genuinely do not know how to solve.

Those conversations are consistently worth more than the presentation that produced them. The distance collapses, people become honest about what they do not know, which is the precondition for learning anything.

That is also why I have stopped measuring an event by how it goes and started measuring it by what happens afterwards: a student meets a developer, a founder meets someone with a completely orthogonal skill set. Somebody building with AI figures out how to plug in Web3 payments. Somebody who has never touched a chain realizes they can use one without becoming a specialist. Those connections outlive the room by months.

Three roles, one lesson

Speaking, mentoring and organizing look like different jobs. As a speaker you explain what we are building and why it matters. As a mentor you drop the general case and work on one person’s specific problem. As an organizer you see the unglamorous machinery it takes to make a spontaneous-feeling conversation possible.

They share one thing: you leave knowing more than you arrived with. I like meeting people whose experience does not overlap with mine. I like hearing how someone from another discipline attacks a problem I thought I understood. And I like that the exchange runs both ways, we are not there only to explain Avalanche, we are there to hear what people actually need. Communities stay relevant exactly as long as they keep listening to the people inside them.

What Team1 actually is

Being Team1 does not mean talking to crypto people.

It means making complex technology accessible to people who have no intention of specializing in it. It means helping someone excited about AI see where Web3 fits into what they are already building, and showing students that the technologies shaping their careers are available to them today. It means helping developers find the tools and the people they need, and giving someone with an idea a place to start.

People describe communities as families a little too easily, and usually they mean everyone thinks alike. Here it is the opposite: it works precisely because the perspectives do not match and people share them anyway. When I need to understand something outside my own competence, there is a group of people I can ask.

Four events is not a track record, I know, but it is a good starting point.

There are still students trying to work out what AI means for their future. Founders building AI products without knowing what Web3 infrastructure could add. Developers with ideas and no obvious first step. People who simply want to understand what is happening to them.

I want Team1 to keep building the rooms where those people meet.

Because the interesting part was never explaining the technology, but what comes after.

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Bringing U.S. stocks onchain requires more than blockchain infrastructure. Companies must also navigate securities regulations, custody requirements, and investor protection rules. That has made tokenized equities one of the more challenging real-world asset categories to bring onto blockchain networks.

Dinari’s latest announcement marks an important milestone.

The company has launched access to 724 tokenized U.S. stocks for eligible U.S. investors and businesses through its tokenized securities platform. Supported by a partnership with Circle, the launch enables investors to use USDC to purchase tokenized equities, receive dividend payments, and manage these assets through self-custody wallets.

The available catalogue includes every company in the S&P 500 alongside hundreds of additional U.S.-listed equities.

From Global Access to the U.S. Market

When we previously covered Dinari, the focus was on how the company tokenizes U.S. equities through its dShares model and why Avalanche was chosen as part of its blockchain infrastructure. dShares represent tokenized versions of traditional equities backed by underlying securities, giving holders access to shareholder rights associated with those assets.

This latest announcement focuses on a different milestone: expanding access to eligible U.S. investors.

Access is currently available to U.S. users who complete Dinari’s onboarding process, including identity verification and applicable compliance requirements before purchasing tokenized securities.

Dinari Securities, LLC is registered with the SEC as a broker-dealer and is a FINRA member, providing the regulated securities infrastructure behind the platform.

What’s New With Dinari?

The biggest update is scale.

Eligible investors can now access 724 tokenized U.S. stocks, including the full S&P 500, using USDC from self-custody wallets.

The launch introduces several new capabilities:

• USDC-based investing: Investors can purchase dShares using USDC as the settlement asset.

• USDC dividend payments: Cash dividends are distributed in USDC to eligible investors’ self-custody wallets, allowing them to hold, transfer, or reinvest those funds onchain.

• Broader financial integrations: Businesses can use Dinari’s APIs to integrate tokenized equities into their own products.

The Circle partnership is an important part of this expansion. USDC provides the digital dollar infrastructure connecting tokenized securities with onchain financial applications, allowing investors to interact with equity products using a widely adopted stablecoin.

Infrastructure for Financial Institutions

Dinari’s launch is not only designed for individual investors.

Through its APIs, broker-dealers, banks, fintech companies, wallet providers, and other financial platforms can integrate tokenized U.S. equities into their own applications.

This allows financial companies to add tokenized securities without building the underlying systems for issuance, custody, compliance, and servicing themselves. For institutions exploring blockchain-based financial products, this creates a path to combine traditional securities with features such as self-custody, programmable assets, and onchain interoperability.

Avalanche’s Role Behind Dinari

Dinari supports multiple blockchain networks, including Avalanche, Ethereum, Base, and Arbitrum. Avalanche, however, plays an important role in its architecture.

Dinari Financial Network (DFN) is an Avalanche-powered Layer 1 infrastructure layer designed to support Dinari’s tokenized securities ecosystem.

Meanwhile, the Avalanche C-Chain provides a public smart contract environment where dShares can interact with wallets, decentralized exchanges, lending protocols, and other DeFi applications.

This gives Dinari dedicated infrastructure for tokenized financial products while allowing dShares to connect with Avalanche’s broader ecosystem.

Why Tokenized Equities Are Entering a New Phase

Tokenized real-world assets have grown rapidly in recent years, with tokenized Treasuries becoming one of the earliest successful categories.

Equities have required more infrastructure because they involve additional considerations around custody, ownership records, compliance, and investor protections.

Dinari’s expansion brings tokenized stocks closer to mainstream financial applications by combining securities infrastructure with blockchain-based distribution.

For investors, it introduces a new way to access equities through self-custody wallets. For financial institutions, it provides infrastructure for building products around tokenized securities.

For Avalanche, it reinforces the network’s growing role in real-world asset applications, supporting both dedicated financial infrastructure and public blockchain applications.

Dinari’s latest launch shows that the next phase of tokenized equities will depend not only on blockchain technology, but also on the infrastructure needed to connect digital assets with traditional financial markets.

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Helicon activated on the Fuji Testnet on July 28, 2026, at 11:00 AM ET, bundling six Avalanche Community Proposals into the most significant single upgrade to Avalanche’s staking economics since Genesis. Building on Octane and Granite, it also brought Continuous Execution, formerly known as Streaming Asynchronous Execution, to the C-Chain.

What’s happening

Helicon shipped six ACPs at once, split across two goals. Four of them, ACP-236, ACP-267, ACP-273, and ACP-285, rework how validators commit capital and get paid. The other two, ACP-194 and ACP-283, rework what the C-Chain can actually do with that validator set.

Staking economics

• ACP-236 introduces auto-renewed validator staking. Instead of committing to a fixed end date and manually re-staking every period, validators set a cycle duration and an auto-compound ratio, and the network handles renewal automatically as long as uptime holds.

• ACP-273 drops the minimum staking duration from 336 hours (two weeks) down to 48 hours, opening validation to allocators who cannot lock capital for extended periods.

• ACP-267 raises the uptime requirement for rewards from 80% to 90%, applying only to validations whose staking period starts on or after Helicon activation. Validations already running when Helicon activates continue to be evaluated against the 80% threshold.

• ACP-285 recalibrates the reward curve, lowering the minimum consumption rate from 10% to 7.5% over a 90 day rollout that is now underway, restoring the premium for longer-duration staking that had been flattening over time.

C-Chain execution

• ACP-194 decouples consensus from execution on the C-Chain. Blocks are continuously accepted into a queue while a separate executor processes them in parallel, removing the bottleneck created when the two processes had to take turns.

• ACP-283 replaces the C-Chain’s fixed 1 wei minimum gas price with a validator-governed floor that adjusts based on real network conditions, closing a spam vector that fixed pricing left open.

Three new P-Chain transaction types make auto-renewed staking work:

• AddAutoRenewedValidatorTx registers a validator with a cycle duration and auto-compound ratio instead of a fixed end date.

• RewardAutoRenewedValidatorTx is issued automatically by the network at the end of each cycle, requiring no operator signature.

• SetAutoRenewedValidatorConfigTx lets an operator update the cycle duration or auto-compound ratio, taking effect only at the next cycle boundary.

Delegations, notably, do not auto-renew and must fit inside a single cycle.

All six ACPs are now live on Fuji. Mainnet activation has not happened yet; that will follow once Fuji has run clean for long enough to verify.

Why it matters

The staking changes solve two real problems at once. Validators running multiple nodes have long dealt with the operational overhead of manual re-staking at every period boundary, plus the reward gaps that come from missing a renewal window. Auto-renewal removes that entirely. At the same time, institutional allocators whose redemption cycles move faster than a two-week lockup have effectively been priced out of validating. The shorter minimum duration, combined with auto-renewal, now lets them stay continuously staked in short, recurring cycles instead of choosing between liquidity and participation.

The reward curve recalibration matters because making short-term staking easier could have flattened the incentive to stake longer even further. A two-week stake had been earning roughly 84 to 85 percent of the one-year rate, and the spread between the shortest and longest durations had fallen from about 1.9 percentage points at Genesis to around 1 point. ACP-285 protects the incentive to stake longer by steepening the curve, widening that spread from about 1 percentage point back toward 2.3, while pulling the minimum-duration annualized reward rate from about 5.4% down to 4%. The maximum rate for a full 365-day commitment is untouched, at roughly 6.4%.

On the C-Chain side, Continuous Execution addresses a real throughput ceiling that existed before this upgrade. Consensus and execution no longer wait on each other, so the chain can process more in the same amount of time. The tradeoff worth knowing: a transaction’s effects finalize a moment after block acceptance rather than instantly, which matters for infrastructure like block explorers and bridges that read receipts immediately after acceptance.

The dynamic gas price floor closes a gap that had made spam protocols like XEN profitable on Avalanche, at a cost the network had been absorbing at several AVAX a day under the previous stopgap.

How to get involved

The Fuji Testnet activation is live now. Builders and validator operators can pull the release build from the AvalancheGo GitHub releases page and start testing against Fuji today. The Helicon Devnet Resources repository is built specifically for spinning up a node and testing the new auto-renewed staking transaction types firsthand.

Anyone running C-Chain infrastructure with receipt-dependent logic should test against the new acceptance-to-settlement gap now, ahead of mainnet activation. Anyone estimating gas costs in an application should move away from any hardcoded minimum gas price assumption, since that floor is now governed dynamically by validators rather than fixed.

Discussion on all six ACPs is open on the Avalanche Foundation’s GitHub.

The full technical breakdown

This overview covers the headline changes, but Helicon touches on a lot of technical detail: the new P-Chain transaction types behind auto-renewed staking, exactly how the reward curve math works, what changed for tooling under Continuous Execution, and how the dynamic gas price mechanism is governed. I wrote up the full technical deep dive, including code examples and implementation notes for builders, on my Substack.

Resources

• Helicon upgrade announcement, Avalanche Builder Hub

• ACP-194: Continuous Execution

• ACP-236: Auto-Renewed Staking

• ACP-267: Increase Validator Uptime Requirement

• ACP-273: Reduce Minimum Staking Duration

• ACP-283: Dynamic Minimum Gas Price

• ACP-285: Reduce Minimum Consumption Rate

• Continuous Execution documentation

• Helicon Devnet Resources, GitHub

• AVAX Staking for Professionals

• AvalancheGo Releases

• Join the ACP discussion on GitHub

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July 2026 was Avalanche’s production moment. Hyundai Card and Hyundai Motor Company moved their cross-border stablecoin remittance system into production on Avalanche. Tokenized value on the network grew from $1.6 billion to $1.9 billion in a single month, pushing Avalanche’s overall RWA market past $13.5 billion and moving it from seventh to fifth on RWA.xyz’s rankings. BlackRock’s BUIDL fund surpassed $900 million in AUM, up 105% in a week, while tokenized US Treasuries climbed 76% to $843 million.

On the builder side, Team1 launched Accelerator and Mini Grants, named a ten-person grants committee, and approved its first grant to YourGrails.

Helicon Activates on Fuji Testnet:

Helicon activated on Fuji Testnet, bringing Continuous Execution to the C-Chain. [Helicon]

Staking Participation Climbs to 41.5%:

41.5% of all AVAX is now staked, with the network’s dual mechanism paying stakers in newly minted AVAX while burning every transaction fee. [Staking]

Foundation Unveils Economic Research Agenda:

The Avalanche Foundation published its Economic Research Agenda, laying out the questions guiding its ongoing work on tokenomics and network economics. [Research Agenda]

Distributed Asset Value Hits New ATH:

Avalanche’s distributed asset value reached a new all-time high of $2.1 billion this month. [ATH]

ACP-285 Discussed Across Community and Ecosystem Calls:

The community caught up on ACP-285 throughout the month, covering the proposed reduction to the minimum consumption rate. [Recording] | [Call Recap]

Team1 Onboards New Collaborators:

Emails went out to new Team1 collaborators after the community reviewed more than 3,000 applications from over 80 countries submitted the previous month. [Collaborators]

Accelerator Grants Committee Named:

A ten-person committee spanning Team1, Ava Labs, the Avalanche Foundation, and the wider community was announced to review Accelerator Grant proposals monthly. [Committee]

New Team1 Member Portal Launches:

Team1 launched a member portal built as a one-stop shop for updates, resources, member contributions, and events, with new features set to roll out on an ongoing basis. [Member Portal]

Team1 Chapters Bring the Community Together Worldwide:

Chapters kept builders connected on the ground all month: Team1 Vietnam and CrackedHQ brought a 30-day Hacker House residency in Da Nang and continued its university tour with a stop at HUTECH with 120+ students.

Team1 Kenya ran its first Mini Hack cohort and hosted a DEKUT University Connect, Team1 Nigeria brought a developer workshop to Ibadan. Team1 Africa and Bitget Wallet hosted a World Cup Final watch party, Team1 India held its first Team1 Connect with more than 40 builders.

Team1 showed up at RareEvo in Las Vegas alongside other stellar events that happened across the globe. The month of July was a global one for Team1, reaching builders across continents in a single month.

Team1 Builder Grants Launches:

Team1 introduced Builder Grants with two tracks: Accelerator Grants offering up to $30,000, and Mini Grants offering up to $10,000 building on the earlier success of Mini Grants across gaming, community tools, and developer tooling. [Grants Launch] | [Foundation Support]

First Accelerator Grant Goes to YourGrails:

The committee approved $30,000 for YourGrails, a tokenized trading card platform bringing graded cards onchain, closing out a strong month for the project. [Grant Approved]

Giraffe Collection Goes Live on Salvor:

The giraffe collection was revealed this month, with holders able to view their giraffe on Salvor. The project also marked the Fourth of July with a surprise airdrop of 14.69 AVAX each to 10 random giraffe addresses. [Reveal] | [Airdrop]

YourGrails Beta Volume Climbs Through the Month:

YourGrails crossed $600,000 in closed beta volume early in July with more than 8,000 packs opened, 700+ battles, and 30,000+ transactions. [Milestone] | [Beta Numbers]

ORO Helps Users Navigate DeFi in Plain Language:

ORO, an AI companion built to help users explore DeFi on Avalanche through natural language, expanded its Fluency campaign with interactive lessons and rewards for eligible participants. [ORO]

Blerify Brings AI- and Quantum-Resistant Digital Identity:

Blerify partnered with Avalanche to enhance digital identity, offering a secure alternative to passwords and biometric authentication built to tackle AI-driven fraud. [Blerify]

GoKiteAI Joins as the Payments Collective’s First Agent-Focused Member:

GoKiteAI joined the Avalanche Payments Collective as its first agent-focused member. [GoKiteAI]

BlackRock’s BUIDL Tops $900M:

BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund BUIDL surpassed $900 million in AUM on Avalanche. [BUIDL]

Securitize Tokenizes Its Own Stock:

Securitize, which manages more than $4 billion in AUM, became the first public company to bring its own stock onchain on day one, and closed the month with more than $700 million in RWAs tokenized on Avalanche. [Securitize] | [$700M Milestone]

NEC Partners on Biometric-Verified Blockchain Identity:

NEC, which has deployed biometric identity systems across more than 70 countries, began working with Ava Labs on an architecture for biometric-verified blockchain services. [NEC]

UK Tokenization Taskforce Adds 53 Firms:

BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Ripple, and 49 other firms joined the UK’s tokenization taskforce to develop live tokenization use cases across financial markets. [Taskforce]

FIFA World Cup Ticketing Powers 100K+ Fans:

FIFA Collect used Avalanche to provide World Cup ticket access, with more than 100,000 people accessing tickets and over 80,000 fans attending watch parties through the same rails, scanned in like any other event. [Ticket Access] | [Watch Parties]

Deloitte and Avalanche Publish Stablecoin Playbook:

Deloitte and Avalanche released a playbook covering adoption strategies, regulation, and execution for institutions integrating stablecoins, with the Foundation framing stablecoins as a settled part of how money will move. [Playbook] | [Integration]

Hyundai Moves Into Production on Avalanche:

Hyundai Card and Hyundai Motor completed a $20,000 USDT remittance in about seven minutes and became the first major South Korean company to use Avalanche for live cross-border transfers. [Pilot] | [Production]

Tokenized Treasuries and RWA Market Climb Through the Month:

Tokenized US Treasuries on Avalanche rose steadily through July, ending the month at $843 million, up 76%. [Treasuries] | [Market Growth]

Progmat Migrates $3B in Digital Securities:

Japan’s Progmat completed the migration of more than $3 billion in regulated digital securities from Corda to an Avalanche L1, with no disruption to issuers or participating institutions. [Migration]

Bridgetower Tokenizes $11B+ in RWAs:

Bridgetower brought more than $11 billion in RWAs onto Avalanche, moving the network to the top spot by net inflows on RWA.xyz. [Bridgetower]

OceanRwaFinance Completes First Secondary Trade:

OceanRwaFinance completed the first institutional secondary trade of tokenized private credit on Avalanche, collateralized by trade receivables from SGX-listed Oceanus Group. [Trade]

Plume Brings Credit Receivables Onchain:

Plume’s nOPAL vault, issued by Blackopal, gave allocators access to FX-hedged Brazilian credit card receivables generating yield as those payments settle. [nOPAL]

Aave V4 Goes Live on Avalanche:

Aave launched its V4 deployment on Avalanche, with incentives live for suppliers of USDC and USDT and borrowers of AVAX. [Aave V4] | [Incentives]

Kraken Adds USDe Support:

Kraken added support for USDe deposits and withdrawals on the Avalanche network. [Kraken]

Primit Launches Onchain Perps:

Primit went live on Avalanche with a fully onchain central limit order book, sub-second finality, native funding rates, and tiered fees. [Primit]

Foundation Launches Economics of Blockchain Series:

Built on the research agenda it published earlier in the month, the Avalanche Foundation launched Economics of Blockchain, a series making its economic work public, covering findings, open questions, and the concrete actions they lead to. [Series]

Summit Speaker Lineup Grows:

Avalanche Summit’s September lineup filled out through the month with speakers including Kevin Miao of Tare, Christine Moy of Apollo, Meltem Demirors of Crucible, Maxwell Stein of BlackRock, Stani Kulechov of Aave, Rob Krugman of Broadridge, Francesco Abbate of FIFA Collect, Mag Rodriguez of EVEN, and Nick Mussallem of AvaCloud.

Avalanche Summit Early Bird Sells Out:

[Summit]

Tokenization Lead Breaks Down the Payments Collective:

[Fintech Adoption] | [Payments Collective]

Stani Kulechov on Why Aave Chose Avalanche:

[Discussion] | [Layer One]

Morgan Krupetsky on Demand, Distribution, and Flexibility:

[Hyundai Speed] | [Private or Public]

What stands out most about July is not any single number. It is the pattern underneath all of them.

Institutions did not just announce interest this month, they moved live money through Avalanche and kept doing it. Builders did not just wait for support, they got a committee, a grants program, and a first check written. Even the community’s own economic questions got a proper public home in the Economics of Blockchain series, instead of staying behind closed doors.

September’s Summit is going to have a lot to talk about.

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Every time two institutions trade digital assets, there is a step that happens after. One party has to send funds. The other has to receive them. Accounts have to reconcile. And until that process finishes, both sides are sitting with risk they cannot fully see or control.

That process is called settlement. And for a long time, there was no clean, regulated, real-time way to do it in the digital asset market.

The networks that existed for that purpose inside traditional banking either collapsed or were shut down. What replaced them was mostly silence.

Lynq Network was built into that silence. Here’s a closer look at what Lynq Network is and why it matters.

The Company That Made It Possible First

Before we talk about Lynq, we need to talk about Tassat.

Tassat is a company that builds blockchain payment systems for regulated financial institutions. Most people outside of traditional finance have never heard of them. But their track record is one of the more significant in the space.

Tassat built the payment infrastructure that powered Signature Bank’s Signet network, one of the first always-on, real-time dollar settlement systems built specifically for the digital asset market. Before Signature Bank collapsed in 2023, Signet had processed over $2 trillion in transactions. Tassat also built TassatPay, which multiple U.S. banks used for real-time tokenized payments.

More than 650 institutional clients had already connected to the Tassat API before Lynq launched, including firms that came in through earlier Signature Bank or Customers Bank deployments. That same operational history is what Lynq was built on top of, rebuilt for the digital asset market, and eventually moved onto a public blockchain.

About Lynq Network

Three companies built Lynq together: Tassat, which handles the blockchain layer; Arca Labs, the innovation arm of a digital assets investment management firm; and tZERO, a regulated broker-dealer. Development took roughly 18 months and included direct input from the institutions that would eventually use the platform.

The platform is operated by tZERO Securities, LLC, which is registered with the SEC as a broker-dealer. Digital asset custody is handled by tZERO Digital Asset Securities, one of only two SEC-registered special-purpose broker-dealers in the United States.

Every participant on the network undergoes KYC and AML verification before accessing any assets, and these assets are held in segregated accounts, meaning each client’s funds are separate rather than pooled. Proof of reserves for the network is publicly visible on Snowtrace, Avalanche’s blockchain explorer, at any time.

Lynq officially launched on July 16, 2025, completing its first on-chain transaction and its first peer-to-peer transfer on the network. From there, adoption built steadily. Fireblocks integrated, Crypto.com completed its integration in January 2026, and Aquanow, DV Chain, GSR, Nonco, and Wintermute became the first to post off-exchange collateral that same month.

Assets on the platform surpassed $89 million in February 2026, with more than 30 institutional partners onboarded by that point, and EDX Markets joined as a second exchange partner.

The network also launched Collateral Lock, upgraded to a dedicated Avalanche L1 in April 2026, grew TFND assets to $90 million, distributed over $235,000 in interest, and was named a founding member of the Avalanche Payments Collective, cementing its role in advancing institutional payments and settlement on Avalanche.

Lynq Network as an Avalanche L1: What the April 2026 Upgrade Actually Changed

This part is easy to skim past if you are not already familiar with how Avalanche is built, so it is worth slowing down on.

Stage one, July 2025: Lynq launches on Avalanche’s C-Chain
The C-Chain is Avalanche’s main public chain. It is shared by many different projects at once, all secured by the same broad set of validators. When Lynq launched, its first transaction and the TFND fund shares were recorded directly on this shared, public chain.

Stage two, April 2026: Lynq moves to its own dedicated Avalanche L1
An L1 on Avalanche is a separate, standalone chain that is still part of the wider Avalanche network but is not shared with unrelated projects. Tassat chose to run Lynq on one of these dedicated chains instead, which means Tassat decides who validates transactions on it, how it is configured, and who can see what data on it.

The chain still connects back to the public C-Chain, so assets issued elsewhere on Avalanche can still interact with Lynq, but the settlement activity itself now runs on infrastructure built specifically for Lynq’s clients.

Why go through the trouble of migrating instead of just staying on the C-Chain?

Regulated institutions need predictable performance and control over who can access their data before they will use something at real scale. A dedicated L1 gives Tassat that control directly, while a shared public chain does not. Tassat has described the move as being completed with full state continuity, meaning existing client positions and integrations carried over without disruption.

Standout Features

1) Yield-in-Transit

This is what Lynq is probably best known for inside the institutional space. Tassat holds a U.S. patent for it.

When funds sit in a settlement account waiting for a transaction to clear, they normally earn nothing. With Lynq, however, interest accrues every two seconds, at the block level, even while funds are in motion. That is money that would otherwise sit idle, now earning while the settlement is still happening.

2) Collateral Lock

Added in March 2026, this feature lets a participant lock assets as collateral for a counterparty directly on the platform. Those assets stay locked, continue earning interest, and get released when the off-platform action is done. No third-party escrow. No moving capital across multiple accounts and venues just to post a margin requirement.

3) SOC II Compliance and On-chain Transparency

Lynq runs on SOC II-certified technology, a recognized compliance standard requiring independent audits of data security and availability. For institutional clients, this is a standard internal requirement before any platform gets cleared for use. All proof of reserves is on-chain and verifiable by anyone at any time.

Who Can Use Lynq?

Lynq is built for institutional participants, not individual retail users. Its target users include market makers, OTC desks, proprietary trading firms, exchanges, and custodians. Some of the institutions using the network include B2C2, FalconX, Galaxy, Wintermute, Crypto.com, Fireblocks, and EDX Markets.

Onboarding starts with an application through the Lynq website, followed by KYC and AML verification through tZERO, funding a brokerage account, and then settling transactions in real time while earning yield through TFND. Firms that previously connected to Tassat through Signature Bank or Customers Bank can recertify their existing API connection rather than starting over.

Lynq’s Role in the Avalanche Payments Collective

In June 2026, Lynq became a founding member of the Avalanche Payments Collective, a group of 28 organizations building payment infrastructure on Avalanche. The Collective brings together companies across settlement, stablecoins, custody, cross-border payments, and treasury management to support faster and more efficient global payments.

Within that group, Lynq serves as an institutional settlement layer, connecting more than 30 institutional participants and supporting over $2.5 trillion in transaction volume. Collectively, members of the Avalanche Payments Collective support payment flows across 150+ countries, 96 currencies, and approximately 22 billion payout endpoints.

Commenting on the announcement, Lynq CEO Jerald David said the company chose Avalanche because it provides the global reach and institutional-grade reliability needed to power the future of payments.

Final Thoughts

Lynq was built with Avalanche from the beginning. Ava Labs was named a consortium partner months before the platform launched, and the network’s TFND fund combines Avalanche’s public C-Chain with its Layer 1 to support regulated, interest-bearing settlement.

Less than a year after launch, Lynq has grown to $90 million in assets and become a founding member of the Avalanche Payments Collective alongside Franklin Templeton, VanEck, and 25 other organizations.

The network has grown quickly since launch, and its reported metrics will be worth watching over the coming quarters.

To learn more, follow @Lynq_Network on X, explore the Avalanche Payments Collective, and visit the Avalanche website for more updates on the ecosystem.

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On July 15, 2026, Aave rolled out its V4 lending protocol on Avalanche, marking the first deployment of its redesigned architecture outside Ethereum. The move follows V4’s Ethereum debut in March and signals Aave’s plan to expand chain by chain, tailoring each deployment to ecosystems where it already has traction rather than replicating the same setup everywhere.

For Avalanche, being chosen as the first expansion beyond Ethereum reflects the network’s combination of an established Aave lending market and a fast-growing ecosystem for tokenized real-world assets such as Treasuries and corporate bonds.

What Is Aave?

Aave is one of the largest decentralized lending platforms in crypto. Unlike a bank, it isn’t run by a company holding your money and approving loans behind closed doors. It runs on smart contracts, self-executing code on a blockchain, that let people lend crypto to earn interest or borrow against crypto they own, without a middleman.

Aave has facilitated more than $1 trillion in cumulative loan volume since launching, making it one of the most established lending protocols in decentralized finance.

From Monolithic Pools to Hub and Spoke

The biggest change in V4 is architectural.

Previous versions relied on a single shared pool of funds per network. That was efficient, but it also concentrated risk: a problem with one asset could affect the whole pool.

V4 introduces a Hub and Spoke model. The Hub works like a central vault, holding reserves and managing liquidity across the network. Spokes work like individual branches, each with its own collateral rules, risk settings, and liquidation parameters, while drawing on liquidity from the Hub through controlled credit lines.

Different markets can share liquidity while the impact of problems in any single Spoke stays contained. That structure supports ordinary crypto lending, liquid staking, stablecoin markets, and eventually tokenized real-world assets, all on the same underlying capital.

Why Avalanche?

Aave first launched on Avalanche in 2021 via V2 during the Avalanche Rush incentive program, before Avalanche became one of the early networks to support Aave V3 in 2022. Since then, Aave has processed more than $15 billion in all-time cumulative inflows across V2 and V3 deployments on Avalanche. Today, the V3 market supports 18 assets, with stablecoin utilization running above 90%.

That track record made Avalanche a natural candidate for V4’s debut beyond Ethereum. Avalanche has also spent the past few years positioning itself around institutional finance, tokenized assets, stablecoins, and enterprise blockchain use, a direction that aligns with V4’s modular design as lending extends beyond crypto-native assets.

What Launched on Avalanche

The deployment includes one Core Liquidity Hub connected to three markets:

• Main market: General-purpose lending and borrowing, expected to hold most of the deployment’s liquidity.

• AVAX Correlated market: Built for liquid staking. Users can supply sAVAX, a token representing staked AVAX, at a 95% collateral factor and borrow wAVAX exclusively.

• Forex market: Stablecoin strategies involving EURC, USDC, and USDT, with conservative caps on EURC given its thinner liquidity.

As with Ethereum’s V4 launch, risk limits start conservatively and can expand as usage grows.

The Bigger Opportunity: Tokenized Assets

The feature Aave has promoted most isn’t live yet: a dedicated market for borrowing against tokenized Treasuries, money market funds, private credit, and corporate bonds.

Founder Stani Kulechov described Avalanche as a natural fit given its established lending market and growing tokenized asset ecosystem. Ava Labs President John Wu made a similar point: institutions adopting tokenized assets will need infrastructure that allows those assets to become more useful, not simply remain held onchain.

The network has already attracted tokenization efforts spanning industrial assets, Japanese financial products, and tokenized cash funds. The next challenge is making these assets more productive once they are onchain. Aave’s planned RWA market could provide lending infrastructure that allows tokenized assets to eventually be used as collateral, giving them access to Avalanche’s liquidity while maintaining separate risk parameters through the Hub and Spoke design.

Incentives Built for the Long Term

Avalanche has committed up to $15 million in incentives tied to milestones like total value locked, borrowing volume, and protocol revenue, rather than unconditional rewards.

Earlier DeFi incentive programs often saw users deposit funds temporarily to farm rewards before leaving once emissions slowed. Milestone-based incentives are structured to align rewards with sustained usage instead.

New Mechanics Under the Hood

V4 also changes how lending itself works.

Borrowing costs now include a dynamic risk premium, meaning safer collateral receives better borrowing terms while riskier assets carry higher rates.

Liquidations are also more adaptive. Instead of a fixed penalty, the incentive scales up as a position deteriorates, easing pressure on borrowers early while still prompting timely action from liquidators.

A More Competitive Landscape

The AVAX Correlated market puts Aave in direct competition with BENQI, which has built a strong position around Avalanche lending and liquid staking, particularly in the sAVAX ecosystem.

The added competition deepens liquidity and widens the options available to Avalanche users.

The Bigger Picture

Aave treats Avalanche as a template for future V4 expansions, not a one-off. For Avalanche, the network has spent years building toward institutional finance and tokenized assets, and V4 adds the credit layer those markets will eventually require.

The RWA market has not launched yet, so this deployment mostly proves the architecture rather than the final use case.

By making Avalanche the first network outside Ethereum to run V4, Aave is signaling where it expects the next generation of onchain lending to grow. If tokenized assets become a meaningful part of global finance, this launch may be remembered for the foundation it laid on Avalanche as much as for what shipped on day one.

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Avalanche is entering a different kind of growth phase.

The latest Nansen snapshot, covering June 12 to July 12, shows 87.8 million monthly transactions, 1.7 million active addresses and transaction costs that remain close to negligible. At the same time, BlackRock’s BUIDL fund reached $902.7 million on Avalanche, sAVAX continued accumulating within the BENQI staking system, and the economics of launching dedicated Avalanche L1s became significantly more accessible following Avalanche9000.

This is not primarily a retail-driven expansion built around memecoins, speculative trading or rapidly rising DEX activity. In fact, decentralized exchange volume remains one of the weaker areas of the current dataset. The stronger signals are appearing elsewhere: regulated tokenized assets, stablecoin positioning, liquid staking participation, lower infrastructure costs and specialized networks designed for specific financial or consumer markets.

That distinction matters because Avalanche is not simply processing more transactions. It is becoming infrastructure for larger, more specialized and more capital-intensive use cases. At one end, BlackRock’s BUIDL fund demonstrates the network’s ability to support institutional capital and tokenized financial products. At the other, FIFA Blockchain demonstrates how the same underlying architecture can support consumer experiences for a global audience.

The emerging Avalanche thesis is therefore broader than growth in a single metric. It is the development of an onchain infrastructure layer capable of supporting both regulated financial markets and mass-consumer applications.

Network adoption is broadening

Avalanche added approximately 707,000 new C-Chain addresses during Q2 2026, compared with 118,000 during Q1. That represents nearly six times as many new addresses quarter over quarter. The latest monthly snapshot also shows 1.7 million active addresses and an estimated 87.8 million transactions across the network.

These figures suggest that Avalanche is reaching more users while preserving the low-cost environment required for payments, gaming, consumer applications and other forms of high-frequency onchain activity. According to the report, the median transaction fee is now close to $0.00001, following an estimated 96 percent reduction after recent network upgrades.

Low fees don’t automatically create adoption, but high fees guarantee failure for mainstream apps. When infrastructure gets this cheap and invisible, developers can focus on building actual products without forcing users to worry about gas markets.

The address data should still be interpreted carefully. A newly created wallet is not necessarily a retained user, and rising activity can include automated addresses, incentive-driven behavior or one-time interactions. The stronger confirmation will come from cohort retention: whether new addresses continue transacting, use multiple applications and move between C-Chain and Avalanche L1s over time.

Even with that limitation, the direction remains constructive. Avalanche is onboarding significantly more addresses without sacrificing the low-cost environment required for consumer-scale activity.

BUIDL has become the clearest institutional signal

The strongest institutional development in the current dataset is the growth of BlackRock’s BUIDL fund on Avalanche.

Nansen tracked $902.7 million of BUIDL on the network as of July 12. The balance more than doubled during the preceding week after a new holder received $500 million on July 10.

This was not a gradual increase distributed across thousands of users. It was a concentrated institutional deployment. The new address alone represented roughly 55 percent of the BUIDL balance tracked on Avalanche, while the asset recorded only seven holders and three active addresses during the measured period.

That concentration needs to be acknowledged because it changes how the number should be interpreted. BUIDL’s growth does not yet represent broad distribution or widespread retail demand. It represents the arrival of a small number of large institutional positions.

However, concentration does not make the deployment insignificant. It demonstrates that Avalanche can support the issuance, transfer and maintenance of a regulated tokenized fund at a scale approaching $1 billion. For institutional infrastructure, the number of holders may initially matter less than the value being settled, the reliability of the network and the ability to meet the operational requirements of regulated financial products.

The most important conclusion is therefore not that BUIDL has already achieved broad adoption. It is that meaningful institutional capital can operate on Avalanche infrastructure.

That places the network in a different competitive category. Avalanche is no longer competing only for crypto-native traders, gaming applications and DeFi liquidity. It is increasingly competing to become infrastructure for tokenized funds, regulated securities, treasury products and other forms of onchain financial settlement.

The capital-flow picture remains selective

The broader capital-flow data is more measured and prevents the institutional thesis from becoming overly bullish.

WAVAX recorded $3.1 million in exchange inflows over seven days, but this was only 0.7 times its normal level. Fresh wallets added $378,900, while Top PnL wallets added another $44,900. Some WAVAX moved toward exchanges, but the amount remained below average and there was no clear evidence of aggressive whale distribution or strong accumulation.

USDC showed a much larger positioning change. Exchange wallets received $70.8 million over seven days, around 2.6 times the average level, while Top PnL wallets added approximately $5.2 million.

This does not prove that the capital will eventually move into AVAX or Avalanche-based applications. Stablecoins can be positioned for several reasons, including trading, market making, treasury management, collateral deployment or liquidity provision. The eventual destination of those funds still needs to be monitored.

The current expansion thesis is therefore not based on immediate AVAX buying pressure or a broad speculative rotation into the ecosystem. It is based on institutional asset growth, increasing address creation, productive staking demand and improving infrastructure economics.

That is a slower and less visible form of expansion, but potentially a more durable one.

sAVAX reflects productive participation

Liquid staking remains one of the clearest signs of committed participation within Avalanche.

The BENQI sAVAX token contract added 775,800 sAVAX over 30 days, including 238,700 during the most recent week. Fresh wallets added $412,300 of sAVAX over seven days, around 2.8 times the normal level.

At the same time, the Aave-related sAVAX pool declined by almost 451,800 sAVAX over 30 days.

Together, these movements suggest two different behaviors. Demand for liquid staking remains active, while some leveraged or lending-based exposure involving sAVAX is being reduced. Users appear willing to maintain productive exposure to AVAX even as parts of the DeFi leverage layer unwind.

This distinction is important. Purely speculative demand often disappears when incentives decline or market conditions weaken. Liquid staking is more closely connected to the underlying network because it combines validator participation with onchain liquidity. Holders can contribute to network security while retaining the ability to use their capital across lending markets, liquidity pools and other applications.

The movement into sAVAX does not guarantee long-term conviction, but it represents a more productive form of participation than idle token holding or short-term trading activity.

BTC.b remains meaningful, although flows are mixed

BTC.b continues to extend Avalanche’s capital base beyond native AVAX liquidity.

The latest snapshot shows 30,809 BTC.b holders, a market capitalization of $179.8 million and $43.6 million in seven-day volume. Exchange wallets recorded $1.5 million in outflows, which can be consistent with self-custody or deployment into DeFi.

However, Top PnL wallets reduced BTC.b exposure by approximately $5 million over the same period.

The signal is therefore mixed rather than uniformly bullish. Some Bitcoin liquidity is leaving exchanges, while profitable wallets appear to be reducing exposure. Nevertheless, the size of the holder base and the level of trading activity indicate that BTC.b remains an active component of Avalanche DeFi.

Its strategic importance extends beyond the token itself. BTC.b allows Bitcoin capital to participate in lending, liquidity provision and other onchain financial activity without requiring users to rely exclusively on native AVAX liquidity. A broader capital base can make Avalanche applications more useful and reduce the ecosystem’s dependence on a single asset.

The challenge is turning that liquidity into sustained productive activity rather than temporary movement between exchanges, wallets and incentive-driven markets.

Avalanche9000 changed the economics of expansion

Avalanche9000 materially changed the cost structure of launching and operating a dedicated Avalanche L1.

According to the report, L1 deployment costs declined by approximately 99.9 percent, while C-Chain fees fell by roughly 96 percent. The previous requirement for every L1 validator to stake 2,000 AVAX was also removed, significantly lowering the operational barrier for teams building specialized networks.

These changes expand the range of organizations that can realistically operate their own execution environments. Financial institutions, gaming studios, marketplaces, payment providers and regulated applications can design networks around specific technical, commercial or compliance requirements without forcing every use case onto a single general-purpose chain.

Projects such as Dexalot, DeFi Kingdoms, GUNZ and Henesys illustrate how Avalanche L1s can be configured around very different markets. Some prioritize gaming and consumer activity. Others focus on financial infrastructure, trading or application-specific execution.

Lower costs, however, should not be confused with automatic success. Making L1 deployment easier may increase experimentation, but it may also produce networks with limited users, weak economic activity or insufficient long-term demand.

The next meaningful metric is therefore not simply the number of Avalanche L1s launched. It is how many retain users, attract developers, generate recurring transactions and build sustainable business models.

Avalanche9000 reduced the cost of entry. The ecosystem must now prove that lower entry costs can translate into durable network activity.

BlackRock and FIFA reveal the two directions of the Avalanche thesis

The clearest way to understand Avalanche’s current expansion is to examine two deployments serving fundamentally different audiences.

BlackRock’s BUIDL fund represents the institutional direction. It demonstrates that Avalanche can support regulated financial products, tokenized assets and large capital deployments approaching $1 billion.

FIFA Blockchain represents the mass-consumer direction.

Built as a dedicated, EVM-compatible Avalanche L1, FIFA Blockchain supports FIFA Collect, digital ownership and emerging fan experiences. More than 85,000 addresses were reportedly created following its launch, providing an early indication of how a globally recognized organization can onboard users into an onchain environment without making blockchain the central part of the experience.

The difference between these two adoption paths is important.

Institutional adoption is likely to arrive through settlement, tokenized funds, securities, treasury products and regulated financial infrastructure. Consumers are more likely to arrive through products they already understand: entertainment, access, identity, loyalty, collectibles and ownership.

The 2026 World Cup provides a practical example of the consumer model. FIFA Collect’s Right to Buy and Right to Ticket assets connect verifiable digital ownership with access to official match tickets. Users are not being asked to adopt blockchain as an ideology or learn how network infrastructure operates. They are interacting with a recognizable product connected to one of the world’s largest sporting events.

This is where FIFA fits within the wider Nansen analysis.

The increase in active addresses and the reduction in transaction costs show that Avalanche is becoming technically capable of supporting broader consumer activity. FIFA provides a real-world example of what that direction could look like. BlackRock, meanwhile, shows how the same underlying infrastructure can serve the opposite end of the market: concentrated institutional capital operating through regulated tokenized assets.

BlackRock brings financial institutions onchain, while FIFA puts blockchain beneath everyday consumer products. Together, they prove the Avalanche L1 model can support both capital-heavy markets and mass-market applications.

That may become Avalanche’s most important competitive advantage.

Expansion remains real, but uneven

The cleanest verdict is infrastructure-led expansion with institutional momentum and uneven onchain breadth.

BUIDL has grown to approximately $902.7 million on Avalanche. New C-Chain address creation accelerated sharply during Q2. Liquid staking demand remains visible through sAVAX. Transaction costs remain extremely low, while Avalanche9000 has made specialized network deployment materially more accessible.

FIFA Blockchain also demonstrates that Avalanche’s infrastructure thesis is not limited to institutional finance. The same architecture can support global consumer products in which blockchain operates beneath the experience rather than becoming the experience itself.

At the same time, the weaknesses in the dataset should not be ignored.

A single address accounts for roughly $500 million of the BUIDL balance. DEX volume has declined substantially. WAVAX flows are neutral rather than strongly accumulative. Smart Money and whale activity remain limited, while Top PnL wallets reduced their BTC.b exposure.

This means Avalanche has not yet converted its infrastructure progress into uniformly strong activity across every part of the ecosystem. Institutional assets are growing, but holder distribution remains concentrated. Address creation is accelerating, but retention still needs to be demonstrated. L1 economics have improved, but individual networks must prove that they can generate lasting demand.

These are not reasons to dismiss the expansion. They define its next stage.

Avalanche has shown that it can attract large institutional deployments, support productive staking, reduce the cost of launching specialized networks and provide infrastructure for global consumer brands. The challenge now is converting those foundations into retained users, deeper liquidity, active applications and recurring economic activity across the wider ecosystem.

The network is moving beyond a consolidation story, but it is not yet experiencing expansion everywhere at once.

Its progress is being led by infrastructure first: tokenized assets, specialized networks, low-cost execution and productive capital. Broader market activity may follow, but it has not fully arrived yet.

That is what makes the current phase significant.

Avalanche is not relying on speculation to manufacture the appearance of growth. It is building the infrastructure that could support the next generation of tokenized markets and consumer-scale onchain applications.

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Identity tells an agent who a counterparty is. Reputation tells it whether to trust them. But the event that actually closes the loop is payment, and once agents pay each other hundreds of times an hour, the chain underneath stops being a detail.

Months ago I pointed an autonomous browser agent at Snowtrace.io to take a tedious data-collection job off my hands. It worked through the pages with a strange patience, clicking buttons and reading tooltips, slow but steady, until it froze on a dropdown menu and failed the task one step from the finish line.

So I asked our front-end team at Routescan for a small, non-invasive change to the interface the agent kept tripping over. They shipped the fix the next day. I reran the task, the agent cleared the dropdown, and it handed me the files I needed. A few days later it hit me what we had actually done: that commit was the first change we had ever shipped on Snowtrace for a machine instead of a human. I had spent months with our UX team on microcopy and user journeys, and almost without noticing we wrote our first iteration for machine experience instead of user experience.

That is a small story about a dropdown. It is also the leading edge of a larger reordering, and the part that gets the least attention is money.

The Piece Everyone Skips

Two recent Team1 blog posts map this territory well.

Chris Fusillo of XKOVA framed ERC-8004 as a trust layer - focusing on identity, reputation, and validation to answer whether to trust an agent.

Meanwhile, Giacomo Barbieri (Jack) made the concept concrete by deploying an identity for his agent, Eva, on the C-Chain and pricing tasks in AVAX, answering who an agent is and what its track record says.

Identity and reputation are the discovery half of the problem. They tell an agent which counterparty to pick. But picking is not transacting. Between “I trust this agent” and “the work is done and paid for” sits a settlement event, and that event is the one that has quietly broken the open web for thirty years.

HTTP has had a status code for it since 1997. 402 Payment Required has sat unused the entire time, because there was never a settlement layer cheap and fast enough to invoke it. Card networks have fixed fees that make sub-dollar payments absurd. PayPal and its cousins demand accounts and KYC. First-generation blockchains had fees too high and throughput too low to settle anything granular. So the web aggregated instead: monthly subscriptions, bundles, paywalls. We pay for the month because nobody could bill us for the minute. That is a workaround for a settlement problem, not a design anyone loved.

Agents do not tolerate the workaround, because they do not transact like us.

Why Avalanche Fits Agentic Payments

1. The fee math only works at the floor

A human signs maybe one payment a day. An agent composing a pipeline (query five data sources, screen twelve documents, buy the three worth reading, run an inference, validate the output) signs hundreds of micro-payments an hour, each worth fractions of a cent, each needing to clear before the next step runs. Jack’s pricing makes this concrete: tasks at 0.005 to 0.025 AVAX only make sense if moving that money costs well below the value of the task. Sub-second finality and a low fee floor are not nice-to-haves here. Cheap repeated writes are the product.

2. x402 turns the request itself into the payment

Every web request already carries a status code, one of those quiet numbers the browser reads and you never see. 200 means “here you go.” 404 means “not found.” Back in 1997 the people who wrote the web reserved one more, 402 Payment Required, for a day when a request could pay for itself. That day never came, so the code sat unused for decades.

x402 is that code finally switched on. The flow is simple: an agent asks a service for something, the service answers 402 with a price attached, the agent re-sends the request with a payment authorization, and the service verifies it and delivers. No account, no checkout, no card on file. The request and the payment are the same motion. None of it works, though, without a chain that can settle those tiny amounts for fractions of a cent in milliseconds, which is exactly the load profile Avalanche is built to absorb.

3. The protocols stack instead of competing

It helps to keep the layers separate, because they get conflated constantly. MCP and A2A are how agents talk: capability description, task coordination, skill advertisement. ERC-8004 is how they discover and trust. x402 is how they settle. An agent’s ERC-8004 registration file can list its MCP endpoint, its A2A address, and the wallet that receives its x402 payments, all pointing at one portable identity. Stack them and you get the full machine-experience pipeline: discover a counterparty, read its terms, pay per request, receive the output, verify it where stakes demand, update reputation.

4. Programmatic volume is healthier volume

Every step in that pipeline is a transaction: a registration, a validation, a payment, a reputation update. At scale that is sustained programmatic volume, uncorrelated with whether the token is having a good week. It is a different and frankly healthier load profile than speculative trading, and it accrues to a chain that has made the per-call cost low enough that an agent does not think twice about spending.

What This Unlocks

Bind identity, trust, and settlement together and a few concrete primitives appear:

• Pay-per-call automation where agent work is priced and billed like an API endpoint, no account or subscription in between

• Composable pipelines assembled across providers with no pre-negotiated contracts, paid step by step

• Routing by price and track record, where an agent picks a counterparty on reputation and switches on the next call if a cheaper or more reliable one appears

• Portable settlement history tied to the same ERC-8004 identity that carries reputation, readable by any app

• Recourse that survives the transaction, because a paid-and-undelivered task leaves a permanent public record

Honest Limitations

Chris and Jack are both clear that the standard is only rails, and payments inherit every open question while adding their own. A settlement that clears in milliseconds and reverses never is unforgiving of a task that was paid for and not delivered. A working agent-payment economy still needs:

• Indexing and discovery, because a priced agent nobody can find earns nothing

• Sybil resistance, so reputation that gates payment cannot be farmed

• Verifiable execution, so the buyer pays for work that actually happened

• Dispute resolution, with refund and arbitration paths for failed tasks

• Legibility, so that what happened onchain reads as “this agent, this task, this price, this counterparty, paid, verified or not,” and not as raw calldata

That last one is where the dropdown comes back. The agent that got stuck on Snowtrace was failing at the easiest version of this problem: just seeing the chain through an interface built for someone else. The fix was one commit. Making an entire settlement economy readable, to the machines spending in it and the humans on the hook for it, is the version we are actually building toward.

Bottom Line

ERC-8004 gives agents an identity. Reputation and validation make them trustworthy. Avalanche’s transaction economics make it practical to pay them at the granularity their workflows demand, which is the step that turns a trusted counterparty into a completed transaction. The standard is the starting point. The payment rail is what makes the standard do work, and the legibility layer on top is what decides whether agentic payments become durable infrastructure or another thin metadata layer.

We started building that layer, almost by accident, the day we shipped a change for a machine instead of a person. I suspect we will be shipping those for a long time.

About Danilo

Danilo Giudice is an onchain researcher and CMO at Routescan, the team behind Snowtrace and Avascan. He works on turning raw onchain activity into something legible, and increasingly on what that legibility means when the things reading the chain are no longer human.

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There’s a concept in blockchain called the Trilemma. First framed by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, it describes a trade-off that every blockchain network has to navigate: you can optimize for security, decentralization, and scalability, but achieving all three at once is extraordinarily hard. Make something fast and secure and you often end up more centralized. Make it decentralized and secure and it tends to run slowly.

Avalanche was designed from the ground up to challenge that trade-off. Its consensus mechanism, its subnet architecture, and its focus on speed are all aimed at the scalability corner without giving up on the other two. But scalability isn’t just about consensus speed. There’s a quieter bottleneck that doesn’t make headlines: data management.

Every blockchain, at some point, runs into the same problem: the faster it grows, the harder it gets to store and retrieve all that data. Transactions pile up, state grows, and the database underneath has to keep up. Most networks just inherit whatever general-purpose database tools exist and hope for the best.

Ava Labs decided to build something better. That something is called Firewood.

What Is a Blockchain Database?

When a blockchain processes transactions, it needs to store the state of the network: who owns what, what contracts exist, what balances look like right now. That data has to be organized in a way that can be quickly read, verified, and updated thousands of times per second.

Most blockchains, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, use a data structure called a Merkle Tree to organize this. The idea is sound. The problem is that the databases they run on top of (tools like LevelDB and RocksDB) were built for entirely different purposes. They’re general-purpose tools being asked to do a very specific job, and the mismatch shows up as wasted disk space, unnecessary processing, and a constant need to clean up and reorganize data.

That cleanup process is called compaction. It’s a bit like defragmenting a hard drive, except it happens constantly, eats up resources, and slows everything down at exactly the wrong moments.

The bottom line: Firewood does the same job as the traditional stack, but in fewer steps, with less wasted work, and with performance that stays consistent whether the chain has been running for one month or ten years.

Firewood Skips Compaction Entirely

You don’t need to understand the code to understand why this matters. Think of it like a postal sorting center that organizes packages by address: zone, district, street, number. The warehouse system, though, was built for a furniture retailer and only understands product SKUs. So every package arriving gets a SKU stamped on it. Every package leaving gets that SKU decoded back into an address. Then every night, the overnight crew reshuffles the entire floor to reclaim shelf space, while the morning shift is already backing up at the loading dock. The mail gets delivered. Most of the building’s energy, though, goes into translation and reshuffling, not sorting.

The Firewood database isn’t a small tweak. It’s a different philosophy about how blockchain storage should work.

Firewood was built from the ground up specifically for blockchain state storage. It doesn’t sit on top of a generic database. Instead, it stores data the same way the blockchain actually thinks about it: as a tree of nodes, written directly to disk in that shape.

The result: Eliminating the need for manual compaction. Firewood manages free disk space the same way traditional memory management works, reusing space from expired data automatically and efficiently. When the old state is no longer needed, it gets cleaned up. When a new state comes in, it takes that reclaimed space.

For a network like Avalanche, where throughput is already high and the goal is to push it higher, this capability is fundamental to the architecture.

What Changes for the Avalanche Ecosystem

The real-world impact touches validators, developers, and eventually every user on the network.

Validators run leaner. Validator nodes are the backbone of the network. They process transactions and maintain the state of the chain. With Firewood, those nodes spend less time on database overhead and more time doing the actual work. That translates to lower operational costs and more headroom for throughput.

Developers get better infrastructure. Anyone building on Avalanche, whether that’s a DeFi protocol, a gaming application, or a real-world asset platform, benefits when the underlying storage layer is more reliable and faster. Firewood was first built with the EVM (the engine behind Avalanche’s C-Chain) in mind, but its design works for any blockchain that needs a verified, authenticated state.

The network scales more cleanly. One of Avalanche’s core promises is high-throughput, low-latency transactions. That promise gets harder to keep as the network grows and state balloons. Firewood is designed to keep performance stable even as the chain gets larger. That matters a lot for anyone building applications that depend on consistent speed.

Open Source, Open to Everyone

Ava Labs open-sourced Firewood from day one. It was a deliberate choice that reflects how seriously they take community-driven development.

The full Firewood codebase is available on GitHub under an Ecosystem License. Ava Labs has committed to releasing reproducible benchmarks comparing Firewood’s performance against other blockchain databases, so the community can see the numbers for itself.

This matters because the best infrastructure gets better when people can examine it, challenge it, and contribute to it. The open-source release is an invitation for developers, researchers, and validators across the ecosystem to be part of what comes next.

Firewood is currently in beta (the latest release is v0.3.1, from March 2026), so the API is still evolving. But the architecture is in place, and integration into Avalanche’s core components is on the roadmap.

The Bigger Picture

There’s a version of blockchain infrastructure where every network just layers tool on top of tool, inheriting debt from systems never designed for this use case. And there’s a version where someone stops and builds the right thing from scratch.

Firewood is the second version. It won’t make headlines the way a token launch does. But for the Avalanche ecosystem, it’s the kind of work that determines whether the network can actually deliver on its ambitions at scale.

The foundation matters. Ava Labs just made it stronger.

Want to explore?

Head to the Firewood GitHub repository and star the project. For a deeper look at what Ava Labs is building across the Avalanche ecosystem, visit avax.network.

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