Thread by @el33th4xor

Avalanche surpassed one million total transactions on its smart contract chain, with the vast majority in just the last 7 weeks.

In honor of this milestone, here some thoughts on why I’m bullish on Avalanche and how it is becoming the most advanced public-goods layer-1.

First and foremost, for all its flaws and quirks, the Ethereum Virtual Machine is the dominant engine in DeFi. If a project does not natively support the EVM, I do not see it as being a strong competitor in the layer-1 space.

From the moment Avalanche’s mainnet launched, the platform has supported the entirety of Ethereum’s smart contracting and tooling. No phases, years-away upgrades, or additional layers and complexity. Just feature completeness for what the market demands.

Multiple bridges enable assets to flow between the Avalanche and Ethereum ecosystems, putting users in-control of their DeFi strategies and exposure to fees.

Just six months after mainnet launch, this design and unique approach to interoperability is fueling the network’s first big wave of growth in users, applications, and assets.

Avalanche is one of two platforms acquiring significant DeFi activity as users look for new opportunities or are priced out with transaction fees. Binance, of course, is the other.

Since the launch of the Avalanche-Ethereum Bridge (AEB) on Feb 8, users on Avalanche have:

- Executed 970,000+ transactions involving smart contracts
- Created 58,000+ unique wallet addresses
- Transferred $110M in assets from $ETH to $AVAX

API Requests are also skyrocketing, demonstrating that it’s not just a few whales diving in, but a rapidly developing DeFi ecosystem on Avalanche. Just last week, Avalanche APIs received 792.65M requests, including a period of 46.6M in just 3 hours.

AEB is just one of several bridges, with more on the way spanning the full spectrum of trusted to trustless gateways to move between Avalanche and other ecosystems. For example, @AxelarCore is testing an $AVAX <> $BTC bridge

https://twitter.com/axelarcore/status/1375081945927970825?s=20

On the ecosystem front, more than 50 projects are building with and supporting the Avalanche community. This ranges from core infrastructure projects like @Chainlink and @bloqinc, to DeFi apps like @SushiSwap, @bZxHQ, and @Prosperpredict.

AMMs and Yield Farms on Avalanche are quickly growing. Projects like @PangolinDex, @officialzerodex, @ComplusNetwork, @throwsnowballs, and @YetiSwap account for $220M+ of total value locked (~6% of circulating $AVAX market cap)

Leading fiat-backed stablecoins like @TrueUSD to the absolute cutting edge of hybrid, algorithmic stablecoins like @fraxfinance. Onramps like @SimplexCC and @NashSocial for users to seamlessly turn fiat into AVAX and embrace a decentralized future.

Projects like @TrustSwap & @AvalaunchApp are helping the next crypto disruptors take their first steps, while @CopperHQ provides the infrastructure for the biggest financial institutions in the world to embrace $AVAX.

Avalanche is leading the way in creating entirely new crypto assets like Initial Litigation Offerings, which unleashes the $10B asset class of litigation financing from the clutches of a privileged class of investors and into an open, fair, and transparent marketplace.

Last week, we saw @cryptoseals & @southpolesanta1 launch as Avalanche-exclusive NFT projects. Not only did they capture the imagination of the Avalanche community (myself included), they also sold assets worth about 18,000 AVAX.

The Avalanche Community is still just scratching the surface. We grow stronger every day, as new users, developers, and validators join the community.

With 897 full, block-producing validators, Avalanche has disproven many myths about how blockchains are necessarily slow and centralized.

I should note, this influx of activity and validation of Avalanche’s technology has dramatically accelerated progress with institutions. Enterprises whose permissioned proofs-of-concepts hit roadblocks are looking to Avalanche subnets for digitizing services and assets.

These institutions have understood Avalanche’s unique suitability for complex and compliant use cases, but needed to see Avalanche in-production, handling real-world value to initiate liftoff. This is coming much sooner than even my most optimistic forecasts believed.

Finally, I’ll touch on a few popular upgrades Avalanche has implemented. While other chains are having difficulty implementing these ideas, Avalanche has embraced them since Day 1.

Sharding -- by separating unrelated transactions on the chain into different, independent data containers, blockchains can achieve higher scale. Avalanche's subnets serve exactly this purpose.

Signature-separated transaction format -- By separating signatures from the rest of the transaction, Bitcoin made it easier for nodes to manage crypto data that isn't necessary after a tx has been verified. AVAX transactions use an analogous scheme.

Bech32 addresses -- AVAX addresses are error detecting, relatively compact, and easier to share over a phone, minimizing the likelihood of funds sent to unrecoverable addresses. AVAX has had full support for Bech32 since Day 1.

Burning transaction fees -- Creates a virtuous cycle that benefits all participants in the Avalanche community. By burning fees, rather than adding them as an extra tip to reward block producers, the protocol creates a natural, organic demand for $AVAX.

Amazingly, more than $1.4M of $AVAX has been burned paying for smart contract fees on the platform since the bridge launch on 2/8. This is especially great for holders, as AVAX is a hard-capped, scarce asset like bitcoin. It will never exceed 720M coins.

There’s an unconscionable amount of blue sky for the cryptocurrency ecosystem to explore. Entirely new assets, applications, and products that have never been done before, and some that have never even been dreamt of yet.

I’m confident that Avalanche will be the premier destination for the developers and entrepreneurs pioneering the next great DeFi app, decentralized unicorn, or moonshot.

With @avalancheavax as a technical foundation, and this community’s passion for rallying around true innovation, anything is possible.