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Avalanche (AVAX) Explained: From Stone-Money Origins to Subnets—And What’s Really Driving Today’s Trend
Avalanche didn’t come out of nowhere. Its design philosophy goes all the way back to a very old idea about shared belief and consensus—the same idea that underpins money itself. Below is a crisp, human-readable primer you can publish as a feature on your English blog. I’ve refreshed the narrative with 2024–2025 developments and trimmed outdated claims.
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1) Why start with Bitcoin—and even older “money”?
Economists love the Yap island “stone money” story because it shows how a community’s shared ledger of who owns what can exist even if the stones sink to the bottom of the ocean—value survives if the record survives. Bitcoin took that lesson and replaced elders’ memory with a global, machine-verifiable ledger.
Avalanche’s origin myth nods to the same principle: build faster, probabilistic consensus while keeping decentralization and finality as first-class citizens. The foundational paper—published pseudonymously by “Team Rocket” in 2018 and later archived on arXiv—describes a family of metastable, leaderless BFT protocols (“Snowflake → Avalanche”). It’s the intellectual jump that inspired Ava Labs to commercialize the stack.
2) What Avalanche actually fixed
Legacy chains tended to be monolithic—one chain doing execution, consensus, and settlement. As usage spiked, they hit throughput/fee walls. Avalanche split responsibilities and added customizable L1s (formerly called Subnets) so apps don’t compete with each other for blockspace.
Two milestones to know:
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Avalanche9000 / Etna (Dec 16, 2024): the project’s largest upgrade. Key proposals (e.g., ACP-77, ACP-125) cut costs for custom L1s, lower C-Chain base fees, add dynamic fees/warp sig interface, and generally make launching app-specific L1s far easier. Multiple sources reported the focus on making Avalanche a “network of L1s.”
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Cost/latency claims: third-party write-ups and Ava Labs comms framed Avalanche9000/Etna as delivering order-of-magnitude cost reductions and low-latency UX for app chains. (Treat vendor numbers as directional but the thrust—cheaper L1s, faster finality—holds.)
3) “Subnets” (now: Avalanche L1s) in the wild
The promise: you get your own sovereign L1 with tailored VM/fees—still connected to the broader ecosystem.
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SK Planet (Korea) – UPTN: a dedicated Avalanche network bringing loyalty, collectibles and wallet rails to millions of users. It’s a clean, tangible enterprise case and a useful talking point for Korean readers.
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Gaming push: Avalanche has long pitched itself to game studios. In 2024 the team showcased a large games exhibit at GDC. (Important update below on Shrapnel.)
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Shrapnel update (2025): contrary to old articles predicting a breakout Avalanche moment via Shrapnel, the FPS project announced a move to Gala Games in 2025. It’s a reminder that L1 competition for studios is fluid; don’t anchor a thesis to one title.
4) The fee spike everyone remembers (and what it meant)
In late 2023 Avalanche saw an inscriptions wave (Avalanche’s ASC-20-style mints), sending daily fees parabolic for a few days as users minted/moved inscription assets—$13.8M in fees in five days by one count. Fees normalized afterwards, but the episode validated that Avalanche’s stack can handle surges, and that non-DeFi narratives (mints, collectibles) can drive on-chain revenue.
Those moments, plus the 2024 Etna upgrade messaging, underpinned AVAX’s late-2023/early-2024 strength. Coverage at the time tied rising Token Terminal fees and daily tx to the upgrade runway.
5) 2025: what’s different right now
A few fresh trendlines that change the older story:
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Visa settlement expansion: in 2025 Visa said it expanded its stablecoin settlement pilots to include Avalanche alongside Stellar, adding PYUSD and Global Dollar support with Paxos. Merchant usage is early, but it’s the kind of trad-fi bridge that matters in a risk-off macro.
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$1B “crypto-treasury” vehicles: Financial Times reported the Avalanche Foundation is working on two U.S. vehicles targeting ~$1B combined to buy AVAX at a discount—one via a Hivemind-led private investment, the other via a Dragonfly-backed SPAC. The goal: bolster Avalanche’s bid as a capital-markets ledger. It’s controversial optics but, if executed, could be a non-trivial demand sink.
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Enterprise & IP pipelines: Avalanche and partners have continued to tout enterprise/game L1s (Deloitte, Gunzilla, MapleStory Universe, SK Planet, etc.). The pitch remains “many L1s that feel like one network.” Execution here—new L1s going live with usage—is what to watch.
6) Why AVAX rallied hard before—and what can do it again
Past catalysts (and why they worked):
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Sudden on-chain demand: inscription manias create fee spikes; fees are paid in AVAX (and a portion is burned), which tightens supply during bursts.
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“Build your own L1” story: when big names launch on Avalanche (not just announce), the market extrapolates multi-app demand for AVAX as gas/collateral across the network’s L1 mesh. The Etna/Avalanche9000 cycle made that story concrete.
Forward-looking triggers to monitor:
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New L1s with real DAUs/TPV (SK Planet expansions, MapleStory Universe progress, any regulated capital-markets pilots); 2) Payment rails (Visa settlement pilots expanding beyond demos); 3) Treasury vehicles actually closing and buying AVAX at scale; 4) Any repeat of mint/inscription crazes that lift on-chain fees.
7) FAQs about Avalanche
Is Avalanche still “fast & cheap” after all the upgrades?
Yes—that’s the design goal. Independent analyses and vendor material around Avalanche9000/Etna indicate materially lower costs for app-specific L1s and lower C-Chain base fees, plus improved dev ergonomics. Actual user experience depends on what you’re doing and when (bursts can still push fees up).
What about the gaming angle if Shrapnel left?
It weakens one near-term proof point, but the platform thesis stands or falls on pipelines (MapleStory Universe, Gunzilla, etc.) and whether Avalanche converts announcements into playable, sticky titles.
Is enterprise adoption real or just PR?
SK Planet’s UPTN is live and branded; that’s tangible. The broader 2025 capital-markets push (the treasury-vehicle plan) is an attempt to make Avalanche relevant to RWA/settlement narratives too.