The Avalanche Snow Report: May 2023

Welcome to The Avalanche Snow Report! This monthly newsletter brings you highlights from across the Avalanche ecosystem, including DeFi, Enterprise & Institutional, NFTs & Culture, Gaming, and Infrastructure & Enablement.

Have feedback or want to learn more? Please contact luke.chmiel@avalabs.org.

Network Highlights

Monthly Active Addresses on Avalanche Reach New All-Time High

Last month in April 2023, Avalanche set an all-time high record with 840,000 monthly active addresses. This month Avalanche has once again exceeded the previous record and set a new all-time high with more than 1,000,000 monthly active addresses.

Crypto metrics platform Artemis noted that activity has stemmed from the increase in stablecoins, which now account for 32% of on-chain users, up from 6% YTD, along with growth in DeFi, which as a category now constitutes 33% of DAUs.

Source: [1]

New X-Chain Explorer Debuts

The X-Chain (Exchange Chain) is the default asset blockchain on Avalanche and enables the creation of new assets, exchanges between assets, and cross-Subnet transfers. The X-Chain also implements the Avalanche consensus protocol.

The latest major upgrade to the Avalanche X-Chain Explorer lets you analyze all X-Chain activities, including transactions, assets, UTXOs, blocks, and more. Verify your transaction details, dive deep into Avalanche X-Chain address details, or learn how to navigate generic chain information here.

DeFi

Circle Launches EUROC Natively on Avalanche

Circle, a global digital financial technology firm and the issuer of USDC and Euro Coin, announced the launch of Euro Coin on Avalanche, the first in a series of expected multi-chain launches for the fully reserved Euro-backed stablecoin to help deliver faster, more efficient payments and financial services for developers and their users.

Bringing Euro Coin natively to Avalanche can help increase Euro liquidity and provide optionality to global users who wish to transact in Euros with Euro Coin, as well as in U.S. dollars with USDC. Avalanche developers who support USDC in their apps may find it easier to integrate Euro Coin as the two Circle-issued stablecoins are based on similar smart contract designs. Learn more here.

MELD Leverages Avalanche’s Subnet Technology to Enhance its DeFi Offerings

MELD is launching its suite of financial and Web3 products as an Avalanche Subnet in an effort to bridge the gap between crypto and traditional finance and empowering financial independence in the DeFi ecosystem.

By launching as an Avalanche Subnet, MELD will have more control over its security infrastructure, opportunities for customization, and increased scalability and performance without sacrificing interoperability. The MELD Subnet will use the MELD token to pay for transaction fees. Learn more here.

Voltz Launches SOFR Rate Market on Avalanche

Voltz announced the first ever TradFi rate trading venue in DeFi, with the launch of a SOFR rates market on Voltz Protocol on Avalanche.

DeFi users on Avalanche now have access to a permissionless environment within which to hedge, speculate, or build products off the key TradFi benchmark rate. This marks the first time TradFi rates established by the Federal Reserve can be hedged by those outside of TradFi — bringing TradFi off-chain rate hedging and speculation to DeFi. Learn more here.

Enterprise & Institutions

Alibaba Cloud and its Partners Unlock Rapid Metaverse Deployment on Avalanche for Millions of Cloud Clients

Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, together with its partners, has built a launchpad for businesses to rapidly deploy metaverses on the Avalanche public blockchain. Cloudverse is a one-stop, end-to-end solution for businesses to seamlessly customize, launch, and maintain their own metaverse space, creating new dimensions for engaging customers. All of Cloudverse’s blockchain elements – including digital land, wearables, and other digital assets – are built on Avalanche. Depending on their scope, metaverse spaces can be ready for businesses as soon as one month from initial outreach.

Fireblocks Launches Support for Avalanche Spruce Subnet

Fireblocks has launched support for Avalanche’s subnet, Spruce, an EVM-based testnet built for institutional blockchain deployments. Spruce is intended to be used by buy and sell-side institutions looking to experiment with blockchain infrastructure in a low-risk environment. Institutional participants have already begun onboarding onto the testnet, and will be using it to evaluate the advantages of executing and settling trades on-chain for different assets and applications.

Introducing Avalanche on Kaleido: Enterprise-Grade Nodes and Subnets

Kaleido announced its integration with Avalanche. The Blockchain Business Cloud now supports the Avalanche network, including Avalanche Subnets providing enterprises, gaming companies, institutions, and governments with turnkey solutions to accelerate development with these technologies.

Gaming

Avalanche Summit a Huge Success for the Gaming Community

Summit showcased demos from over 12 games playable throughout the event like Providence, Battle for Giostone, and Fableborne.

With over 25 panels dedicated to gaming and side events every evening, this summit was a coming together party for an extremely dedicated group of builders within our ecosystem that enabled significant relationship growth. Find the recordings of all our summit panels here.

Battle for Giostone Launches Gaming NFT alongside Widely Viewed Tournament

BFG is targeting an esports audience with all the benefits that blockchain can bring, from prize pool and payment transparency to true ownership over in-game assets. This NFT launch is a way for early participants to get deeply involved in their ecosystem, and it also marks the first gaming NFT launch on Avalaunch’s new Peek launchpad. The livestream tournament accompanying the NFT launch surpassed 100k views.

NFTs & Culture

Avaissance Initiative Selects Inaugural Class of Artists & Mona Lisa DAOs

The Artists in Residence program, part of the larger Avaissance campaign, has selected over 70 artists to participate in its inaugural class. These artists will be given a stipend, mentorship from five industry veterans and guidance from the Avalanche team. The artists participating can be found here.

Additionally, another foundational part of Avaissance, the Mona Lisa Initiative, announced the initial group of participating DAOs and tastemakers. These approved organizations and individuals may now request NFTs for collection on their behalf by the Avalanche Foundation. The list of selectees can be found here.

The Professional Bowlers Association to use Avalanche NFT for Awards

The professional Bowlers Association (PBA), parent company of Bowlero, and Layer 3 Labs have launched The League of Bowler Certification (LBC) Awards Program, a new NFT initiative on Avalanche. The LBC Awards will be distributed to approximately 300,000 participants from Bowlero center leagues as soulbound tokens, meaning they cannot be traded or sold.

Bowlero Corporation is the world’s largest ten-pin bowling center operator, with a multi-billion dollar market cap and publicly listed shares on the New York Stock Exchange. The PBA intends to expand the program beyond Bowlero center leagues, with plans to offer physical products and real-world benefits alongside digital rewards for bowling achievements. Learn more here.

Infrastructure & Enablement

Ava Labs Launches 'No-Code' Web3 Launchpad AvaCloud

We are proud to announce the launch of AvaCloud, the Web3 launchpad for deploying and scaling no-code, fully managed custom blockchains. Creating your own blockchain gives builders complete control of network customizations, increasing scalability and performance without sacrificing interoperability. With AvaCloud, businesses can slash both time-to-market and overhead, launching fully supported networks without the need to hire a robust engineering team. AvaCloud is already supporting a variety of projects, ranging from global enterprises to small teams of Web3 developers.

The AvaCloud product suite has four key components: Automated Blockchain Builder, Managed Validators, Comprehensive Data Tools, & Chain Interoperability. AvaCloud also comes with a dedicated team of experts, serving as your trusted guides for building in Web3. The team is made up of implementation and business veterans, offering specialized consulting for launching and scaling your custom blockchain.

Avascan's Explorer Continues to Improve

With Avascan's new Trustless Explorer, you can connect your node's RPC for secure viewing of blocks, transaction searches, and native balance checks. This gives anyone the ability to spin up an explorer from the devnet stage of subnet development. Check it out here. 

Analyzing multi-chain data also just got easier as Avascan now includes a sidebar for specific chain chart selection, alongside the aggregated version. Dive deep into individual chain data, and make more informed decisions here.

ICYMI: Avalanche Sessions