What is Avalanche (AVAX)?
AVAX is the native asset of Avalanche, a smart contract platform built by Ava Labs, the company co-founded by Cornell computer scientist Emin Gün Sirer. The mainnet went live in September 2020 after a public token sale. Its C-Chain runs the Ethereum Virtual Machine, so Ethereum-style wallets and contracts work on it with little change.
- Type
- Layer-1 smart contract platform coin
- Launched
- 2020
- Consensus
- Proof of Stake (Avalanche consensus)
- Max supply
- 720 million AVAX
- Swap network
- Avalanche C-Chain
- Sector (Messari)
- Layer-0
How Avalanche works
Validators agree on blocks with the Avalanche family of consensus protocols, in which each node repeatedly polls small random samples of other validators until the network settles on one outcome. Running a validator requires staking AVAX, and teams can launch their own independent Avalanche L1 chains that plug into the wider network.
What AVAX is used for
Every transaction on the C-Chain is paid for in AVAX, and holders stake it with validators or delegate it to earn rewards. It is also a common trading pair and collateral asset in the DeFi apps and games deployed on Avalanche.
AVAX supply
Supply is capped at 720 million AVAX, half of which was created at genesis. New tokens are minted only as staking rewards, while all transaction fees are burned, which slows the approach to the cap.
Before you swap AVAX
Make sure you are sending native AVAX on the C-Chain, the network with 0x addresses; the X-Chain and P-Chain use different address formats. Keep a little AVAX aside so you can pay gas for any later transfers on Avalanche.