This morning, Bitcoin briefly fell below $42,000 and hit $40,400, with a 24-hour drop of 4.79%. Mainstream tokens such as ETH and SOL all fell to a certain extent. However, the native token of the public chain Avalanche, AVAX, went against the market trend, with the price rising to $35.55, a 24-hour increase of 8.8%. Driven by the price, the Avalanche ecosystem saw a general rise. For a time, "What is the Avalanche ecosystem hype about?" became a hot topic in the community.

"Solana Substitution" Resurrection

In the last bull market, Solana, Avalanche and Terra, as the three most widely adopted L1 public chains, together shaped the "new public chain" narrative, and "Solunavax" became a popular meme on CT.

Solana is known for its high throughput and low transaction fees, and Avalanche is known as the financial Internet in order to build a bridge between the blockchain and traditional finance. Another major public chain, Terra, has introduced blockchain technology into traditional payment scenarios such as e-commerce and retail, allowing ordinary people to interact with the Web3 economy without realizing it. Soundwise founder Natasha Che once believed that Solana and Avalanche are like Android and iOS in the Web 3 world.

In the last bull market, Solana led the "public chain narrative", followed by Luna, Avalanche, Polygon and other public chain tokens that broke new highs. In the 2021 bull market, both Solana and Avalanche began to exert their strength in early July. SOL rose to a high of $266 around November 1, while AVAX ushered in a second round of increases in November, catching up with Solana in price and market value, and reached a high of $147 on November 15.

The above picture shows the price trend of SOL, and the picture below shows the price trend of AVAX; Source: TradeView

In the recent rally, Avalanche seems to have followed Solana again under the logic of "Solunavax". In this wave of market rally, Solana has been steadily advancing all the way and continuously setting new highs for the year. LUNA followed the "bankruptcy coin" sector and also had a 24-hour increase of nearly 70%. The increase rotation also came to Avalanche. According to CoinGecko data, Avalanche's public chain ranking rose to sixth place, and its token AVAX's market value ranking also rose to 11th place.

On December 11, according to CoinGecko data, as of the time of writing, the price of AVAX, the native token of the Avalanche ecosystem, was $35.55, with a 24-hour increase of 8.8%, a 7-day increase of 57.4%, and a 30-day increase of 149.6%.

Chain Ranking; Source: CoinGecko

What are you speculating on Avalanche?

With the sharp rise in Solana ecosystem prices and the recent rise in the popularity of the Avalanche ecosystem, the crypto community has also begun to actively look for "alternative projects" for the Ethereum and Solana ecosystems in the Avalanche ecosystem. At present, the market's popularity is mainly concentrated in the fields of meme, DeFi leaders, and GameFi.

meme

The most hyped token in the Avalanche ecosystem is still meme tokens. According to the official website of Dex Screener, most of the tokens of projects updated recently are meme tokens in the Avalanche ecosystem. Among them, COQ, HUSKY and BEAR are the most popular.

Recently updated token projects; Source: DEX Screener

COQ is a meme project launched by @WojakSatoshi on December 8. The current price is $0.000000422, up 56% in 24 hours. Less than a week after its launch, it has become the most popular meme coin on Avalanche.

COQ is called PEPE on Avalanche by the community, just like when the Solana ecosystem meme craze was going on, RBT was called PEPE on Solana.

The first "dog" on Avalanche, the early meme coin project HUSKY, has also seen a large increase recently. According to CoinGecko data, it has risen by 280% in the past 7 days.

In addition, the meme coin BEAR, released on December 9, rose by 119% in 24 hours. It comes from the pet dog named BEAR of Avalanche co-founder Kevin, which reminds people of the meme coin project MYRO on Solana, which is also named after the pet of Solana founder @rajgokal.

New and old DeFi leaders

In addition to the newly launched meme coin project, the leading projects in the Avalanche ecosystem are not much different from before. For example, Trader joe, the largest DEX on Avalanche, Benqi, the largest lending agreement, and Pangolin are still the core of this round of increases.

Trader Joe is a comprehensive DeFi project on Avalanche. It was launched in July 2021 and is known as the most influential DEX on AVAX. Its businesses include spot Dex, decentralized lending (Banker Joe), NFT trading platform (Joepeg) and launchpad (Rocket Joe). Among them, spot trading is Trader Joe's current core business and its relatively leading business segment.

Since October, Trader Joe's TVL has been rising steadily and has now crossed the 10 million US dollar mark, rising to the billion dollar level. According to DefiLlama data, as of the time of writing, the TVL is 148 million US dollars. Trader joe's token JOE has risen by 53.1% in the past 7 days, and the price is 0.68 US dollars before writing.

On December 11, the token QI of the lending protocol Benqi rose dramatically. When a number of mainstream tokens encountered a spike, QI still rose against the trend. According to CoinGecko data, as of the time of writing, the price of QI was $0.03, with a 24-hour increase of 129.6%.

Benqi's total locked volume (TVL) hit a new high since 2023, exceeding $520 million, with a 7-day increase of more than 50%. However, it is worth noting that if AVAX is used as the unit of measurement, Benqi's TVL is actually decreasing instead of increasing.

In addition, other popular DeFi projects in the community include GoGoPool and SteakHut. The native token GGP of Avalanche's native liquidity staking network GoGoPool is currently priced at $9.75, up 19.2% in 24 hours. The token STEAK of SteakHut, a Trader Joe's LP dynamic management + liquidity mining platform, is priced at $1.67, up 6.6% in 24 hours.

Games

In 2023, the number of game projects developed on Avalanche has soared.

The most noteworthy of these is Shrapnel, a sci-fi FPS game developed by Neon Machine. On October 25, Neon Machine announced that it had raised $20 million in Series A funding, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Griffin Gaming Partners, Brevan Howard Digital, Franklin Templeton, IOSG Ventures, and Tess Ventures.

And its game NFTs also performed well in the market, with Shrapnel Operators floor price of 0.31 ETH, up 140% in the past 30 days, and Shrapnel Sigma Containment Unit floor price of 0.022 ETH, up 100% in the past 30 days.

Cosmic Universe is a fantasy multi-planet world-building MMORPG developed on the Avalanche blockchain. Its game token MAGIC also rose by more than 75% in 24 hours and 192.6% in 7 days. As of the time of writing, the price was $0.05.

In addition, the following games in the Avalanche ecosystem have gained high popularity:

Off The Grid is another major game developer on Avalanche, Gunzilla Games, which is currently developing "Off The Grid" (OTG), a cyberpunk battle royale 2.0 game that is also very popular in the community. In June last year, Gunzilla Games completed a $46 million financing round led by Republic Capital, with participation from Griffin Gaming Partners, Animoca Brands, Jump Crypto and others.

HeroesChained is a mobile trading card RPG with PVP and PVE; open beta launched Dec 1. PlayProvidence is a survival exploration game with digital ownership, developed by @1DynastyStudios; raised $6.1M to date.

NFTs

JoepegsNFT is a native AVAX NFT marketplace created by the @TraderJoe_xyz team that is innovating the way to buy and sell NFTs.

BloodLoop is an MMO-NFT game, and its NFT BloodLoop is the #1 NFT on JoepegsNFT, with a floor price of 79 AVAX, up over 300% from before.

Dokyo World is a community-driven venture capital studio art collection with sales of over $6.4 million to date. The floor price of Dokyo is 41 AVAX, and the trading volume has increased by 319% in the past 7 days. It is called the Mad Lads of the Avalanche ecosystem by the community. In addition, the popular NFTs include the Woofy series, which has a floor price of 5AVAX and a trading volume increase of 334% in the past 7 days.

Popular NFTs in the Avalanche Ecosystem; Source: JoepegsNFT

Enterprise-level adoption, taking the RWA express, what has Avalanche been doing in the past six months?

This round of follow-up to Solana’s rise is not actually the first time that Avalanche has pulled up the market recently. As early as a month ago, Avalanche had taken the express train of RWA, and this is exactly what makes it different from Solana in this round of price increases.

On November 15, Avalanche officially announced that JPMorgan Chase’s digital asset platform Onyx and alternative asset management company Apollo have reached a cooperation to "demonstrate proof-of-concept (PoC)". This cooperation has also been included in the "Guardian Plan" launched by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in cooperation with the financial industry.

At the same time, the cooperation between the two will use the full-chain interoperability protocol LayerZero to connect Onyx to the licensed Avalanche Evergreen (Avalanche's subnet for institutional blockchain deployment) subnet, thereby facilitating the subscription and redemption of funds provided by the tokenized asset application Wisdom Tree Prime.

Related reading: "RWA strategy accelerates, Avalanche announces cooperation with JPMorgan Chase, AVAX rises more than 20% per day"

Avalanche Evergreen, which is connected to JPMorgan Chase Onyx, is a subnet specially deployed by Avalanche in April this year for institutional use. It is reported that the subnet will be a set of institutional blockchain deployment services and tools designed specifically for financial services. Institutions can launch their own Evergreen subnets for research and development and "production-ready use cases", and can implement blockchain strategies with known and approved counterparties in private, licensed chains, while retaining the ability to communicate with other subnets through Avalanche's native communication protocol Avalanche Warp Messaging (AWM).

Affected by the cooperation with JPMorgan Chase, Avalanche ecological tokens have previously seen a general rise. According to Coingecko data, on November 16, AVAX rose 77.1% in 7 days and is now quoted at US$23.70; JOE rose 37.2% in 7 days and is now quoted at US$0.4344; BENQI rose 54.0% in 7 days and is now quoted at US$0.0096.

In the official introduction of the ecological project released by Avalanche, it mentioned that it has reached cooperation with the following 8 enterprises and institutional applications, all of which are the mainstays of Internet finance.

Deloitte is a secure platform built by Deloitte using Avalanche technology to help institutions manage the life cycle management of disaster relief grants spent by FEMA; AWS and Avalanche cooperate to deploy AVAX validators with one click to help expand the adoption of blockchain by enterprises, institutions and governments. SK Planet, Ponta and other companies have worked with Avalanche to rebuild blockchain loyalty rewards programs for users; Shopify and Avalanche have worked together to support millions of online merchants on the platform to directly sell and mint Avalanche chain NFTs, without having to direct customers to NFT markets such as OpenSea or Magic Eden; Lemonade and Avalanche Collaborated to build a low-premium insurance product to serve subsistence farmers in Africa.

In addition, Avalanche has also cooperated with Tencent and Alibaba to deploy AVAX nodes, and customers can also use other plug-and-play infrastructure products of Alibaba Cloud.

Related reading: "After cooperating with Tencent Cloud and Alibaba Cloud, Avalanche aims at the Indian encryption "red ocean market""

In fact, Avalanche did not directly target Ethereum in the early days. Its positioning was a commercial decentralized financial platform that could provide customizable blockchain services for B-end and C-end. Therefore, this recent wave of cooperation with institutional financial entities is a path that Avalanche had envisioned a long time ago.

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