Amazon Partners with Ava Labs

One of the keys to the growth and long-term sustainability of the blockchain sector is disseminating this technology across all sectors of society, from casual DeFi enthusiasts to large multinational organizations. This mission has received a huge boost with the announcement that Ava Labs, the main developer of the Avalanche blockchain platform, has officially launched a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud computing platform controlled by e-commerce giant Amazon.com. AWS is the world's largest provider of cloud infrastructure.
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The goal of this partnership, as the Ava Labs team put it on its official Twitter account, is “to bring scalable blockchain solutions to enterprises and governments.”
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The Amazon/Ava Labs partnership promises to extend the influence and technological capabilities of both organizations: Amazon will be able to better serve clients that are interested in cryptocurrency and blockchain platforms, while Ava Labs expects to bolster its user base, and number of active nodes, by a substantial margin. This is made possible largely due to application-specific blockchains on the Avalanche network called Subnets, which enable users to launch their own custom chains with ease.

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The Uses of Subnets

Avalanche Subnets open up a whole world of possibilities for users of Amazon Web Services, by providing organizations with a number of powerful features that facilitate blockchain transactions for a variety of business purposes. 

On Avalanche, every Subnet acts as an independent blockchain, with its own customized rule sets, membership restrictions (such as geographic limitations), and security procedures. A Subnet can even contain multiple blockchains. These features make it possible to create a Subnet for a specific use case that isn’t properly served by a shared Layer 1 blockchain. At the same time, Subnets are interoperable, enabling easy communication and digital asset transfer from one Subnet to another.

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In addition, Subnets help to supply the Avalanche platform with the scalability necessary to accommodate very high levels of network activity. Because Subnets are isolated from one another, a load spike affecting one will not interfere with the functionality of the others. As a result, the Avalanche network can support a vast number of Subnets while maintaining the high throughput that has become associated with the platform.

The AWS-Ava Labs partnership ensures that users of Amazon Web Services, including the FedRAMP-compliant AWS GovCloud, will have ready access to the tools and infrastructure needed to get the most out of their blockchain projects launched on Avalanche Subnets. The partnership officially marks the beginning of several other exciting developments impacting both organizations, such as:
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• Ava Labs is now a member of the AWS Partner Network (APN), thereby making Avalanche services available to partners in over 150 countries.
• Ava Labs has also joined AWS Activate, an Amazon program that provides startups with various solution templates and other resources. Developers can use AWS credits for their Avalanche projects.
• AWS users can now launch an Avalanche Validator Node—which aids in securing the Avalanche network by participating in the authentication of transactions—with convenient one-click deployment.

Furthermore, Ava Labs intends to implement Subnet deployment as a managed service on the AWS Marketplace in the near future. Collectively, these developments bring Ava Labs closer to its goal of eventually digitizing all the world’s financial assets.

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How Avalanche Brings Value to the Partnership

With help from Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), AWS users ranging from large enterprises to everyday people have the resources they need to launch public and private Avalanche blockchains that conform to their precise specifications. These custom blockchains benefit enormously from the unequaled power and flexibility of the Avalanche smart contracts platform.

Avalanche offers several important advantages to blockchain developers, such as:

Fast time-to-finality - On Avalanche, transaction finality is almost instantaneous (often under one second). In fact, the Avalanche platform’s TTF rivals that of than any other blockchain network active today.

Flexible design options - Avalanche Virtual Machines (VMs) supply the tools needed to create decentralized applications (dApps) and smart contracts that meet the demands of specific use cases.

Minimal hardware requirements - It doesn’t take a massive investment in computing gear to get started on Avalanche. Most users find that ordinary off-the-shelf hardware is enough to enable them to participate fully in the Avalanche ecosystem. 

Eco-friendliness - Avalanche uses a version of the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, which includes a proprietary method of random subsampling of nodes, to verify transactions without the vast expenditure of energy that certain other protocols require. This dramatically reduces the environmental footprint of the Avalanche network.

Low gas fees - Avalanche’s unique consensus mechanism and use of Subnets to reduce the overall energy burden of the main network enable the platform to bring transaction fees far below the industry standard. 

Easy asset transfer - As a fundamental part of Ava Labs’ mission to create a truly global digital economy, the Avalanche network is designed for interoperability with other blockchains. Users can easily transfer digital assets to and from other chains via the Avalanche Bridge.

The agreement made by Amazon and Ava Labs to join forces should bolster the continuing growth of the crypto sector, expanding access to tools and services that developers can rely on to take full advantage of the potential of decentralized blockchain technology.