Avalanche, a layer-1 blockchain launched in 2020 that's now the tenth-largest by total value locked (TVL), activated its highly anticipated Avalanche9000 upgrade Monday, marking the ecosystem's biggest technical changes to date.
The network has been prepping for these changes for months, with new features that will cut the costs for sending transactions, operating validators and building applications on the network.
Leaders at Avalanche have previously told CoinDesk that part of the goal with the upgrade is to attract developers to Avalanche and encourage them to create customized blockchains using its technology, known as subnets, or “L1s".
The upgrade, also referred to as the Etna upgrade, consisted of seven improvement proposals. The two biggest changes that were implemented were known as ACP-77 and ACP-125.
ACP-77 is a proposal that introduces a new type of validator, so users can launch their own subnets. These new nodes are less costly to operate, with the aim of therefore bringing in more people to spin them up and create their own Avalanche-based networks.
ACP-125 lowers the base fee on Avalanche’s main network that runs smart contracts, known as the C-chain, from 25 nAVAX (about $0.00000098) to 1 nAVAX ($0.00000004.) The goal is to make it cheaper to compute on that network. One nAVAX equals one-billionth of one AVAX. (Avalanche has two other main chains:the P-chain, where users can stake AVAX and operate validators; and the X-chain, which is used for sending and receiving funds.)
The Avalanche Foundation announced that ahead of the upgrade, it raised $250 million in a token sale, led by Galaxy Digital, Dragonfly and ParaFi Capital.