Avalanche Watch: February 2024

What’s New on Avalanche

Avalanche Ecosystem Gears up for Durango - On March 6th, 2024 the Avalanche network released the Durango upgrade, which enables interoperability among subnets. This interoperability will allow for rapid deployment of new subnets, communication between subnets, and a host of new possibilities for application development. Learn more here. 

Avalanche Ambassador Program - The Avalanche Foundation announced a new program that invites community members to promote Avalanche through varied means including hosting Avalanche events or creating digital content. Avalanche Ambassadors could receive a variety of benefits including professional development, merch, or even a free ticket to Avalanche Summit III in Buenos Aires. Learn more here. 

Avaissance Season 2 - The NFT artist development program has returned for a second season! During the first season, artists were paired with mentors and received a stipend to develop their NFT collections. Check out the announcement here. 

DeFi Saga Community - The Avalanche Foundation also launched a questing program in collaboration with Rep3, where Avalanche users will be rewarded with points and badges if they complete certain tasks related to using Avalanche ecosystem projects. The Avalanche DeFi Saga will be operated in waves, each lasting two weeks and spotlighting five distinct protocols with their unique quests. Every quest has 2 tiers to unlock and receive points. The first week will feature the first tier of every quest and the second week will unlock the rest of the quest. There will be a total of 2 waves and 10 quests spanning over 4 weeks. You can check out the tasks here or learn more about the program here. 

 Citi Tests Blockchain on Avalanche Network to Revolutionize $10T Private Asset Market - Citi's recent report details its testing on the Avalanche network's "Spruce" Subnet, focusing on leveraging blockchain to improve capital markets and financial services through tokenization and smart contracts, particularly in the private assets sector plagued by inefficiencies. The tests, involving major financial firms like Wellington Management, WisdomTree, and ABN AMRO, showcased the potential for blockchain to streamline operations, enhance transparency, and standardize processes in the $10T AUM private markets, suggesting a transformative impact on asset management and transaction mechanisms. Learn more here.

Avalanche Validators Increasing - The Avalanche network grew from 1665 to 1813 validators (+8.88%), suggesting that the Avalanche network is becoming further decentralized. 

This validator expansion is, in part, spurred by the growth of liquid staking protocols like Benqi Finance (+23.89%), GoGoPool (+33.47%), and Yield Yak (+30.80%).

Emin Gün Sirer releases project roadmap - Emin Gün Sirer (CEO of Avalanche) released the technical roadmap for Avalanche along with the progress of each development. These developments include restructuring the primary network, creating high-throughput virtual machines, and applying consensus optimizations. Check out the full roadmap here. 

The Past Month in Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

General DEX Volume growth across Avalanche - With the exception of WOOFI Swap, daily DEX volumes grew considerably, especially on Trader Joe. 

Dexalot’s Volume Growth Continues through Dexalot Incentive Program - Dexalot’s volume grew in February after lower volumes in late January. This growth is driven in part by the on-going Dexalot incentive program. Learn more here. 

Delta Prime’s TVL Skyrockets - Since November 10th, Delta Prime's total value locked on Avalanche has increased 464%. 

DeltaPrime provides on-chain undercollateralized lending up to 5x collateral for integrated DeFi protocols.  Borrowers' collateral gets stored in a smart contract, and depending on leverage and market conditions, the loan is assigned a health score. If the health score goes below a certain score, the collateral gets liquidated.

‍

The Past Month in Gaming (GameFi) 

Playa3ull Showing Growth in Active Addresses - Playa3ull is a web3 gaming development studio that has its own Avalanche Subnet called Playa3ull Games. 

‍

The Past Month in Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)

NFT Sales Cool After a Hot January - NFT sales cooled down in February after the biggest month in the blockchain’s history in terms of NFT volume through NFT marketplaces. Total NFT sales were 716,478 AVAX in February. While February still ranks among the highest months for Avalanche NFT sales, the cool down could be attributed to a change in the incentive structure on Hyperspace, the largest NFT marketplace by volume. Hyperspace’s Season 4 incentivized holding onto NFTs, rather than trading them. A total of $2.5m were distributed to platform users during Season 4. 

1. Dokyo (641,993 AVAX) - Dokyo has remained the most traded profile picture NFT collection on Avalanche. The launch of Dokyo minted out and coincided with the launch of hyperspace, mentioned above. 

2. Steady (14,665 AVAX) - Steady is a 2,500 piece PFP collection that prioritizes instilling a strong, fun, and original human element into digital identities. Steady launched in January.

3. Dokkaebi (11,338 AVAX) - Dokkaebi is a 3,333 piece PFP collection that highlights Korean culture and mythology. Dokkaebi’s mint also sold out in January. 

4. Akudo (6,721 AVAX) - Akudo strive to claim lost treasures buried deep inside Frostpeak. Join the tribe to begin your adventure of the story, community, and culture of Akudo World; both within and beyond the Web3 space.

5. BabySkullz (4,240 AVAX) - BabySkullz are the first inhabitants of Skullz City — a place where life is peaceful and neighbors are friendly — They take things slow, have a positive energy, a blessed soul, believe that the future is full of surprises, and that it holdz more than meets the eye.

Project Spotlight - Hubble Exchange

Hubble Exchange, a perpetual DEX, is revolutionizing the concept of order book exchanges by introducing a Decentralized Limit Order Book (DLOB). Unlike the traditional centralized order book exchanges, Hubble executes computation like order matching and liquidations on its decentralized set of validators. This approach combines the transparency of an Automated Market Maker (AMM) with the capital efficiency and precise pricing of an order book exchange.

This includes executing limit orders without slippage, maintaining tight spreads, and charging exceptionally low transaction fees.

The majority of network block count growth since December appears to be driven by the Hubble Exchange subnet.

Src: AvaScan

Also check out Frosty Metrics for a free data platform and follow @frostymetrics on X for the latest data-driven Avalanche insights and narratives! 

‍