The Avalanche team, which develops blockchain-powered apps including those involving decentralized finance or DeFi, says it’s been working to ensure Avalanche has “a successful, decentralized launch” while offering a great user experience.
The developers at Avalanche, which is led by Cornell computer science professor Emin Gun Sirer, note that platform users should expect to see significant improvements with the launch of “a feature-filled” mainnet release candidate, called Everest. This marks the last stage of testing before the mainnet goes live.
The AVA Labs team notes that they’ve made a small but key improvement to their AVAX token address format (details available here).
AVA Labs states:
“[The launch of Everest] marks a key step for our project and community as [it] has all of the core features of Avalanche. [However,] … Everest does not reflect the state of the mainnet release that will follow soon after. This means Everest will not show token balances for the Avalanche Token (AVAX) sale participants, grant recipients, or testnet rewards.”
Some of the new features added to Everest include improved smart contract utility. AVA Labs notes that they’ve upgraded the Avalanche Virtual Machine so that it can support AVAX asset transfers between all chains on the default sub network (subnet), including transfers performed between Avalanche’s default asset chain (X-Chain) and its Ethereum Virtual Machine implementation (C-Chain).
There’s also support for non-fungible token (NFT) support, which allows users to create, transact, and use wallet custody services (specifically for NFTs).
(Note: For more details on other updates, check here.)
The AVA Labs team claims that Ethereum developers won’t have to learn new coding or programming skills if they want to take advantage or enjoy the new features offered by Avalanche.
Avalanche’s C-Chain is reportedly compatible with “all of the key Ethereum tooling that has fueled decentralized finance’s (DeFi) growth to-date,” which includes MetaMask, Web3.js, Remix, Truffle Suite, and Embark Platform. Ethereum based apps may easily try Avalanche–Solidity smart contract programming.
Kevin Sekniqi from Ava Labs stated:
“Everest showcases the best of Avalanche, and marks the next step toward a new era of decentralized finance defined by velocity, efficient use of capital, and innovation in new products and services for people around the world.”
As confirmed in a release shared with CI:
“Since exiting stealth mode last year, Avalanche has completed and publicly released three test networks, attracted contributions from a large pool of developers, awarded significant grants for engineers to build infrastructure and applications through its accelerator, and integrated with firms like Chainlink, Polyient, and Tor.us.”
In another update, Ava Labs confirmed that they’re working with Quantstamp, a blockchain security company, in order to improve Avalanche’s security. The two companies revealed that they had enhanced the security of the Avalanche network by “auditing the protocol and recommending improvements.”
Avalanche has also integrated with Torus to support decentralized finance (DeFi) apps, following a $42 million Reg D 506c public sale.