App.shapeshift.com is reportedly becoming a one-stop shop for “all things DeFi.”
From being able to connect to our app with 200+ wallets (including Metamask, WalletConnect, and xDefi), to having the ability to buy and sell with the industry’s leading on and off ramps一now, it is “easier to use Avalanche seamlessly alongside some of your favorite chains.”
Using a “unique” consensus mechanism, Avalanche is “a relatively new, multi-blockchain network that offers our users lightning-fast transaction times and low fees while maintaining a robust network.”
Integrated with their user interface (UI) on their web app, users can now “interact with more than 5800+ tokens on 4 (and counting) chains.”
Unlike other DApps, you “won’t have to switch chains on your wallet to view the wide variety of opportunities available on our platform.”
All of the earning options can be “sorted and viewed regardless of what chain is active in your wallet, allowing you to have the ultimate multi-chain experience you deserve.” Upon selecting an opportunity, you will be “prompted to switch to the active chain (if required) before proceeding with transacting.”
If you do not have $AVAX in your wallet, then you will have the option to “on/off -ramp $AVAX with some of the best rates with [their] partners Gem and Banxa.” And thanks to their existing 0x integration supporting Avalanche, you can “swap your assets on our app and take advantage of some of the best rates available using 0x’s integrated SushiSwap, Pangolin, and TraderJoe liquidity.”
As covered, the Avalanche network is “a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) smart contract platform (side chain) for DApps.”
Whereas other chains (such as Ethereum and Bitcoin) use consensus mechanisms in the Classical or Nakamoto families, Avalanche “differentiates itself by creating and implementing a new consensus family known as ‘Avalanche consensus.’”
Following years of research and testing, the Avalanche mainnet launched in September 2020 and “featured the release of a multichain framework utilizing three chains (the P, X, and C chains).”
Each chain “plays a critical and unique role within the Avalanche ecosystem while providing the same capabilities of a single network.”
Avalanche is known “to be very performant and can process thousands of transactions per second with one to two second acceptance latency.”
Avalanche C-Chain is “used for all smart contract applications and was the subchain chosen for this integration.”
Avalanche X-Chain is “only used by native Avalanche wallets for sending and receiving AVAX, and the Avalanche P-Chain is the platform chain and serves users wishing to stake AVAX or serve as a validator.”
Neither the X-Chain nor P-Chain made sense “to support at this time given their user use-case, therefore, this integration does not include Avalanche X-Chain or P-Chain.”
As noted in the update, consensus is “the task of getting a group of computers to agree on a decision.”
Computers can “reach a consensus by following a set of steps called a ‘consensus protocol.'”
Avalanche is “a new consensus protocol that is scalable, robust, and decentralized. It has low latency and high throughput while being energy efficient and not requiring special computer hardware.”
Avalanche is “a general consensus engine that is probabilistically safe up to a safety threshold.”
That is, the probability that a correct node accepts a transaction that another correct node rejects “can be made arbitrarily low by adjusting system parameters.”
In the Nakamoto consensus protocol (as used in Bitcoin and Ethereum, for example), a block may be “included in the chain but then be removed and not end up in the canonical chain.”
This means “waiting an hour for transaction settlement.” In Avalanche, “acceptance/rejection are final and irreversible and take a few seconds.”
As mentioned in a blog post, Avalanche consensus is “a radical breakthrough in distributed systems and represents a significant leap forward from the classical and Nakamoto consensus protocols that came before it.”
ShapeShift says that it “couldn’t be more excited to continue driving toward [their] vision of supporting all wallets, all chains, and all protocols with [their] inclusion of Avalanche network and allowing [their] users to send, receive, and swap on Avalanche.”