Is Avalanche9000 really about 1000x cheaper L1 costs, or is there more?

A few months ago, Avalanche rebranded subnets to sovereign L1s, and now the entire Avalanche ecosystem is on fire because of the most-anticipated launch of Avalanche9000. With the mainnet launch on 16th December, Avalanche9000 is ushering in a new era of experience for developers and end users on Avalanche. While L1 cost efficiency is one of the important aspects of Avalanche9000, this upgrade is, of course, bringing many more highly feasible features for L1s building on Avalanche. The Avalanche9000 upgrade essentially focuses on offering a faster, cheaper, more scalable, more interoperable, and more customizable option to L1 builders.

Considering this, let’s deep dive into Avalanche9000, accumulating all the details about its comprehensive offering, not just the 1000x cheaper cost.

Key takeaways:

• The majority of Avalanche9000 is Etna upgrade, which that has brought ACP-77 implementation for Avalanche L1s.
• Avalanche9000 is designed to reduce Avalanche L1 cost by over 1000x.
• Layer1 building with Avalanche will enjoy Avalanche9000 L1 cost efficiency
• For 99.9% less deployment cost and more than 96% drop in C-chain fees.
• Facilitates rapid spin-up of L1 just like smart contract deployment.
• The launch of Avalanche9000 has significant improvement in Avalanche’s growth, making it 10th largest chain by TVL.
• Avalanche9000 creates an interoperable network through Interchain Messaging (ICM).
• Hundreds of innovative Layer1s are already on the testnet and a explosion of projects is set to happen on Avalanche.

A brief about Avalanche9000 & its Etna (ACP-77) upgrade
Avalanche9000 is the largest and most significant network upgrade on Avalanche till now. The key motive for this upgrade is to make L1 development easier, economically feasible, easier to customize to ensure faster time-to-market. On a ground level, Avalanche9000 is a solution to simplify the launch of independent L1s that remain connected with other L1s and liquidity hub (C-chain) through ICM or inter-chain messaging.

To achieve this, Avalanche9000 has brought Etna upgrade- the driving force behind Avalanche9000. Here’s everything Etna upgrade includes:

• ACP-77: Separates the L1 validators from primary network’s validators so that they can implement custom rules regarding the whole setup.
• ACP-20: Adds Ed25519 TLS certificate to enable p2p communication for the Avalanche ecosystem.
• ACP-103: Allows for dynamic fee mechanism for the primary chains, including the P-chain and X-chain.
• ACP-113: Supports a mechanism to create non-cryptographic, verifiable random number seeds.
• ACP-118: Proposes a unique format for AppRequest payload to simplify the wrap messaging (AWM) on Avalanche.
• ACP-125:Cuts down C-chain’s base fee– from 25 nAVAX to just 1nAVAX.
• ACP-131: Supports EVM opcodes for the C-chain and Avalance L1 EVM.

With all these next-gen features, Avalanche9000 offers cost-effiiency and removes all the tradeoffs that L1 developers faced with the previous Subnet model, which included both the integrated and the layered subnet architecture, such as-

Increased Congestion: Transactions on a network becomes slow when too many chains compete on a single ecosystem, leading to high congestion and low scalability, and gas spiker, all leading to poor UX. Now with independent L1 model, Avalanche is offering horizontal scaling technique to solve all these issues.

Technical Constraints: Lack of control and customization does not allow bjuilders to put their ideas into desired, practical application. Avalanche9000 offers endless customization to tackle this problem.

**Liquidity: **In the subnet model, liquidity and users lived on their own isolated ecosystem, hence the connectivity developers expect is often missing. As Avalanche9000 connects all the chains with each other and connects them all with a centralized liquidity hub, it solves all the problems related to low-liquidity and slippage issues.

How will Avalanche9000 benefit L1 builders?
99% reduction in Layer1 deployment cost and 96% in C-chain fees:
By introducing the Etna; ACP-77 upgrade, Avalanche9000 practically reduces the L1 deployment cost by 99% and C-chain gee by 96%. Such a cheaper L1 cost is possible due to eliminating the high-staking requirements that were previously mandatory for Subnets, i.e., 2000 AVAX. Instead, it introduces a new approach here L1 validators do not to validate the P-chain as they can independently work for their network only. This offers chains with more autonomy, cost efficiency, and high operational flexibility. Hence, gas fees on Avalanche is no longer calculated based on P-chain + Subnet validator. Instead, it is calculated as per L1 validators at a significantly lower cost.

As a result, Avalanche’s C-chain (primary chain) is now serving as one of the cheapest plus highly decentralized EVM. Here’s a Avalanche vs Ethereum overview:

However, note that the existing L1s do not necessarily need to upgrade their pre-Etna validators to the new L1-only-validators model; they can operate as it is.

*Seamless interoperability enabled by ICM- Interchain messaging: *
Under the new architecture powered by Avalanche9000, sovereign Avalanche L1s will be connected with each other, and also to a central, unified Liquidity layer. This seamless inter-chain interaction is enabled through Interchain messaging (ICM) technology. This makes the diverse network of L1s fees like one and allows each of them to be interoperable to share assets and arbitrary data and benefit from the shared liquidity hub. Each new L1 launching with Avalanche9000 can use the collective offering of the ecosystem due to interoperability. Plus, the shared liquidity also enables L1s to launch instantly and tap into the economics of the unified network.

However, existing Avalanche L1s will still achieve interoperability with Avalanche ICM or Avalance Wrap Messagging and Teleporter (ICM contracts) regardless of their architecture or the time when they were created.

Full customization for gas, staking, tokens, economics, etc:
Building with Avalanche9000 allows L1 developers to customize their chain the way they want, be it for the staking mechanism, economics, protocol tokens, gas fee model, and other critical aspects. Also, builders have the freedom to customize the existing virtual machine or use a different VM (we’ll discuss this later).

Customization for compliance and geo-restrictions:
Avalanche L1s building with Etna upgrade will have their own built-in compliance, geo-restrictions, and permissions to fulfill their specific regulatory requirements and accessibility parameters. For built-in compliance, L1s can implement various laws such as data such as data protection regulations (e.g., GDPR, CCPA), financial compliance (e.g., anti-money laundering laws), and industry-specific standards. Whereas, L1s can achieve geo-restrictions through IP geolocation and GPS data.

Quick L1s spin-up using C-chain:
Under the previous Subnet model, developers had the challenge to set up their own infrastructure, resources, and other essentials to deploy their custom subnet. With Avalanche9000, L1 builders can simply tap into a powerful C-chain’s infrastructure, a complete set of pre-built tools, as well as high-quality documentation to quickly spin up a new chain with a unique virtual machine, tokenomics, permissions, etc.

Here’s an overview of how quickly developers can configure the virtual machine, chain ID, and token for their L1. In the next step, they can deploy an interoperable layer with a single command.

Increased decentralization with open & permissionless validator set:

With Avalanche9000, the entire ownership for the validator set and their management will be shifted from P-chain to the independent L1, where 1 Validator Manager smart contract will be accountable for managing the validators. There will be complete decentralization in the system, with no central authorities or gatekeepers, which can lead to censorship and security-related issues.

*Maximize performance through scaling any virtual machine: *
Avalanche9000 is VM-agnostic, which means that L1s have the flexibility to choose any virtual machine suited for their project and scale efficiently with it. For example, L1s can choose to build with Avalanche virtual machine (AVM), Golans VMs, or Rust VMs.

Also, one of the biggest offering from Avalanche9000 is the Retro9000 grant program that offers exciting reward programs for developes to build innovative L1s. Here’s a tweet adding more details about the grant:

How Avalanche9000 is fueling Avalanche’s growth?
Avalanche9000 Layer1 cost efficiency, seamless inter-chain interoperability, and reduced entry barriers– all these are fueling tremendous growth to the Avalance network. Let’s understand the growth based on TVL and innovative new projects that are launching their Avalanche L1 to leverage the Avalanche9000’s benefits:

Notable fluctuation in TVL
The Avalanche foundation has aggressively prepared for the biggest Avalanche9000 for the past few months. All the buzz for this update has led to notable growth of Avalance TVL. Avalanche is now among the 10th largest chain by TVL. Here’s the stats showing this:

Also, if we do a TVL analysis based on the 6-month timeline, Avalanche has seen notable growth. As of June 24, Avalanche reported around $730M in TVL. Now, after the mainnet for Avalanche9000 has went live (on 16th Dec), Avalanche has 1.478B TVL. This shows an approx 49.2% of growth in Avalanche TVL in the past 6-months and this number is set to grow immensely going forward.

Source: Defillama

Projects- The above growth in Avalanche TVL has obviously resulted from a range of new projects building on Avalanche, leading to higher network effects, better liquidity, assets, etc. As announced by Avalanche team, hundreds of new projects have been deployed their L1 on testnet and many more are planning to build theirs. Let’s look at some of the most recent projects that have announced launch of their sovereign L1s after being inspired by the Avalanche9000 upgrade:

MeWe; Decentralized social network– MeWe; the prominent disrupter in social media space is now launching L1 on Avalanche. MeWe is focused on creating an network with zero ads, no manipulation of users’ data, and no targeting. Building Avalanche gives MeWe the flexibility to build their platform with complete privacy rights, retain ownership for the data, maintains better user control, and create a powerful reward-based economy where positive engagement are fairly incentivized.

*Vero labs; Community finance (CoFi) platform *— Vero Lans is building Avalanche L1 to power their innovative Comunity Finance (CoFi) model. By building an Avalanche L1, Vero lans is able to provide their creators all the essentials to connect with their fans and create more revenue streams. The integration of Vero’s platform on Avalanche further empowers their creators, sports franchises, as well as IP owners, maintaining a highly-resilient and fan-driven ecosystem.

Uplink; DePIN platform for internet connectivity– Next, in our list is Uplink that has registered more than 40k routers and 150k+ users since its launch. With Uplink’s DePIN L1, mobile network users can become providers and earn from their contribution. Powered by Avalache9000, Uplink offers better DePIN connectivity, enhanced security & data privacy, reliable uptime, easy cross-chain interaction, and more.

Note that these new chains are joining the Avalance L1 ecosystem where leading players already resides, such as Deloitte, Benqi Maple story, SK Planet, Gunzilla, DeFi kingdom, Sharpnel. Also, Avalanche L1’s advanced offering is making it a prime choice for gaming projects. Here’s a detailed article to explain it better:

Avalanche L1s: The fastest growing gaming epicenter Web3 can’t ignore

Launching your Avalanche L1? Setup Testnet at just $50 on Zeeve’s Cogitus
The next-gen features and amazing grant offering from Avalanche9000 is highly encouraging for startups, enterprises, and builders across the world. Be it for gaming, DeFi, RWA, DePIN, AI x crypto, or even general-purpose L1; Avalanche L1 is coming up as a perfect fit for each use case. Hence, if you are planning to build your Avalanche L1, Cogitus is offering a low-code, 1-click deployment tool to launch a fully functional, modular testnet at just $50. You do not need coding expertise or extensive technical knowledge to use Cogitus. With the fundamental idea of Avalanche and a clear vision of your project, you can launch the testnet with 40+ 3rd party integrations and a liquid staking platform powered by Benqi.

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