In 2017, Ethereum became the most popular public chain. At that time, many projects called out to challenge Ethereum. After 3 years, some of these projects were slow in development, and some were stagnant. Fang is still the most ecological public chain at present. But the time comes to 2021, and a large number of public chains are called Ethereum competitors, one of which is the avalanche agreement in this article.

What is the avalanche agreement (Avalanche)?

The English name of the avalanche protocol is Avalanche, and the token is AVAX. The Avalanche Protocol is an open source blockchain platform designed for decentralized finance (DeFi), which has the characteristics of enterprise-level collaboration and high scalability.

In addition, the Avalanche Protocol is also the first smart contract platform to achieve confirmation within 1 second. The platform supports all Ethereum development kits and allows millions of independent validators to participate as miners.

In addition to supporting sub-second confirmations, the throughput of the avalanche protocol is several orders of magnitude higher than that of existing blockchains (4,500 transactions per second), and the security threshold is much higher than the 51% standard of other blockchains.

A key difference between the Avalanche Protocol and other networks is the consensus mechanism. Many people have always misunderstood the blockchain network: they believe that the blockchain is slow and low in performance. The reason is that the lack of existing blockchain performance has caused a rigid impact on the public. The Avalanche Protocol uses a new consensus method. This consensus can guarantee security, fast confirmation, and high throughput without sacrificing decentralization.

Consensus mechanism

In the 45-year history of distributed systems, there are three ways to reach consensus: the traditional method, the Nakamoto consensus, and the avalanche agreement.

The Satoshi Nakamoto consensus has the advantages of decentralization and robustness, and the classical method has the advantages of high speed, scale, rapid confirmation and energy saving. So, is there a way to combine the advantages of the two?

Avalanche gave the answer.

Inspired by the above, the Avalanche Protocol merges the two methods into a brand new protocol. On the basis of a decentralized network, this protocol has scale, security, and high speed. The figure below shows the differences between several protocols.

![194aec6cf0c69b245d5fe60283e657ff_1610681702.jpeg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmc3yPqAAD85pto4BPGF1ikdD6LZS6rMRU13f6QLjgVAoE/194aec6cf0c69b245d5fe60283e657ff_1610681702.jpeg)

Source: Avalance official website

After a transaction is broadcast to the network, if the transaction is valid, the verifier of the avalanche protocol will undergo a process called "repetitive random sampling". In other words, the system will randomly select one from all verifiers. Batch verification nodes participate in block verification.

Each node will randomly select a fixed number of adjacent nodes to inquire. If most nodes have the same description of the event, then it is judged to be true. If most nodes give different answers, the content of the event will be switched and repeated sampling will be repeated Proceed until convergence is reached.

Through repeated sampling, until there are enough nodes to confirm that the probability is correct, the confirmation is completed.

Different from the existing consensus mechanism, the verifier of the avalanche network does not need expensive, professional hardware equipment, and the computer or scrap computer you use can also run a node. In addition, the node is only used to verify transactions, and does not waste too many resources.

Avalanche Protocol Architecture

The Avalanche Protocol has innovated at all levels of the existing blockchain. The first is a breakthrough in the consensus mechanism, and secondly, virtual nodes are also a major innovation.

Unlike other networks that enforce uniform terms and conditions for network participation throughout the system, Avalanche enables individuals and businesses to easily create powerful, reliable and secure applications and custom blockchain networks with complex rule sets, or Construct cases on existing private or public networks suitable for their use.

The Avalanche Protocol is composed of three architectures: X chain, C chain, and P chain.

The X chain, also known as the transaction chain, mainly deals with the point-to-point creation and transaction of assets between individuals. Unlike traditional blockchain transactions that accumulate at block height, Avalanche directly uses a non-cyclic graph (DAG).

DAG links a single transaction to other transactions instead of waiting for transaction blocks to be merged and verified together. By optimizing for a large number of transactions, DAG has significant advantages in scalability. The C chain is the smart contract chain. The C chain is a default smart contract blockchain that can execute the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) super fast. It can be compatible with Solidity language smart contracts and Ethereum development tools, so that Ethereum developers can seamlessly port applications to the avalanche protocol. Since the X chain is a DAG, the C chain uses a repaired version of the avalanche consensus protocol, which allows the traditional blockchain to have smart contracts. The P chain, also known as the platform chain, is mainly responsible for staking tokens, coordinating network verifiers, and creating custom subnets. Each verifier of the avalanche protocol participates in verification in the P chain to help ensure network security, and these verifiers can also create dynamic or private sub-networks. In these subnets, validators can fully control the network through data, economic models, and virtual machines. This means that a group of validators can be transplanted from other networks to virtual machines, effectively replacing the underlying consensus and optimizing network performance.

AVAX price and trend

According to the big data of the BiXiaobao blockchain, AVAX tokens will be launched on major exchanges in September, and can currently be traded on Binance, OKEx, Huobi, and bitfinex.

![Screenshot_2021-01-15-12-57-13-342_com.android.chrome.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmcfWcc2Cvtwoz9jfhWhHbLzqiqqGE5m8Dhy1kDEjP5Hv2/Screenshot_2021-01-15-12-57-13-342_com.android.chrome.png)

After going online, AVAX fluctuated greatly. After reaching a low of US$2.8 in December, it began to move up steadily. By the end of Bi Xiaobao’s posting, AVAX closed at US$8.4, an increase of about 200% compared to the historical low.

According to the data, the total circulation of AVAX is 720 million, of which 360 million are issued by the genesis, and the remaining part will be released within 20 to 100 years.

Founders and investment institutions

Avalanche was co-founded by Cornell University professor, IC3 co-founder Emin Gün Sirer, computer scholar Kevin Sekniqi Facebook Libra protocol HotStuff consensus first author Ted Yin in 19, and officially launched the mainnet on September 22, 20.

Professor Emin Gün Sirer is not only an academic and researcher, but also a typical geek and pioneer in cryptography. As early as 2001, the Karma virtual currency system developed by it was the first network to use the PoW workload proof mechanism. As of now, the papers published at that time are currently the most cited.

Another founder, Ted Yin and CPO (Chief Portocol Architect) are third-year PhD students at Cornell University, a member of the 2012 ACM class at Shanghai Jiaotong University, and a Ph.D. from Professor Emin Gun Sirer. He is also one of the authors of Hotstuff, the Facebook Libra consensus protocol.

And another co-founder, Kevin Sekniqi, is a fourth-year doctoral student at Cornell University.

The founder BD VP Lydia C and some employees come from Sureview Captial/Sego. This investment company is a family investment office that focuses on technology and alternative investments. It has received strategic investment from Blackstone Group and participated in two IPOs of Thunder Bridge. .

Chief Economist Amani Moin is a fifth-year doctoral student in economics at Cornell University.

The team currently has 48 official members displayed on the official website.

At the same time, the Avalanche blockchain platform developed by AVA Labs is based on a revolutionary consensus algorithm-a digital payment and computing platform constructed by Avalanche. This consensus enables distributed ledgers to ensure decentralization, high-concurrency processing and fast confirmation of transactions, while achieving historical record reduction and on-chain governance. Its code is open sourced in March 2020.

In terms of investment, as early as 2019, Avalanche has acquired Andreessen Horowitz; Polychain, an investment institution in charge of more than one billion US dollars, Nervos, Cosmos and many other star projects; the former CTO of Coinbase Balaji Srinivasan, Metastable, Initialized and the founding of Abstract Ventures Investment from institutions and investors such as Ramtin Naimi.

The US$12 million private equity round of financing was completed in May 2020. The investment was led by five U.S. heavyweight crypto investment banks Galaxy Digital, Bitmain, Initialized Capital, NGC Ventures, and Dragongly Capital. Continue Capital, Fundamental Labs, SNZ, IOSG Venture, Youbi and other institutions and individuals followed suit. A horizontal comparison between the financing amount and some overseas high-quality projects shows that the advantages are also obvious.