AVALANCHE: A REVOLUTIONARY CONSENSUS PROTOCOL

Consensus protocol is a key element in blockchain and other distributed systems as it enables the achievement of agreements between nodes bringing about distributed payments. Avalanche is an hybrid of the best properties of pre-existing families of protocols which are the classical consensus protocol and the Nakamoto consensus protocol. The classical protocol relies on all to all communication; it has low latency, high throughput but low scalability. The Nakamoto protocol on the other hand relies on proof-of-work mining with the longest chain rule; it has high scalability, but has a low throughput, requires constant energy outlay for security and suffers from high confirmation latencies.

Avalanche combines the best properties of both families and comes about with a revolutionary consensus protocol which has low latency, a high throughput, avoids the constant energy overlay by not making use of the Proof-of-work mining, and a high scalability ranging from thousands to millions of participants thereby yielding a lightweight protocol.

Comparative chart between the families of consensus protocols

The family of consensus protocols used by the AVA platform is referred to as the Snow* family. There are three concrete instantiations, called Avalanche, Snowman, and Frosty.

THE AVA PLATFORM

AVA is a high performance, scalable, secure and customizable blockchain. AVA aims to provide a unifying platform for the creation, transfer and trade of digital assets. The AVA platform is an open-source platform for launching Decentralized finance (Defi) applications and enterprise blockchain deployment in one interoperable, highly scalable ecosystem. Developers who build on AVA can create powerful, reliable and secure applications and also custom blockchain networks.

AVA simply improves on the shortcomings of previous decentralized protocols.

Comparing AVA with existing technologies

FEATURES OF AVA

1. Scalable: AVA is designed to be massively scalable, robust, and efficient. The core consensus engine is able to support a global network of potentially hundreds of millions of internet-connected, low and high-powered 25 devices that operate seamlessly, with low latencies and very high transactions per second.
2. Secure: AVA is designed to be robust and achieve high security. Classical consensus protocols are designed to withstand up to f attackers, and fail completely when faced with an attacker of size f + 1 or larger, and Nakamoto consensus provides no security when 51% of the miners are Byzantine. In contrast, AVA provides a very strong guarantee of safety when the attacker is below a certain threshold, which can be parametrized 30 by the system designer, and it provides graceful degradation when the attacker exceeds this threshold. It can uphold safety (but not liveness) guarantees even when the attacker exceeds 51%. It is the first permissionless system to provide such strong security guarantees.
3. Decentralized: AVA is designed to provide unprecedented decentralization. This implies a commitment to multiple client implementations and no centralized control of any kind. The ecosystem is designed to avoid 35 divisions between classes of users with different interests. Crucially, there is no distinction between miners, developers, and users.
4. Governable and Democratic: $AVA is a highly inclusive platform, which enables anyone to connect to its network and participate in validation and first-hand in governance. Any token holder can have a vote in selecting key financial parameters and in choosing how the system evolves. 40
5. Interoperable and Flexible: AVA is designed to be a universal and flexible infrastructure for a multitude of blockchains/assets, where the base $AVA is used for security and as a unit of account for exchange. The system is intended to support, in a value-neutral fashion, many blockchains to be built on top. The platform is designed from the ground up to make it easy to port existing blockchains onto it, to import balances, to support multiple scripting languages and virtual machines, and to meaningfully support multiple deployment 45 scenarios.

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