Avalanche is coming…
A journey in crypto: Past, Present, and Future
It is not easy to follow the crypto space.
Especially when you have missed the bitcoin and Ethereum revolutions :
- In 2010, the late teen / early twenties boy disregarded his computer science classmate who wanted to create a bitcoin mining rig using our engineering schools’ computers. The focus was more on socializing than dreaming of a better / fairer / tech-ier financial world.
- In 2014, the young data science exec did not research his friend and colleague’s claim about a “new revolutionary smart contract protocol”. The focus was more on building a stable situation.
Then came the 2016-2017 crypto mania, which ignited a curiosity to research (too many) projects, from collectable cats, to privacy focused MIT led new blockchains, or messaging/blogging apps promising to bring tens of millions of users to the crypto space. And the lot of tech revolutions, governance debates, savvy clashes. The great time of crypto — reality shows. Before the bubble exploding. And the SEC “kicking the anthill”. And showing the market was still in its infancy.
Some projects managed to stay on track, despite some drama, and most importantly stay true to their claims. Like Tezos ($XTZ) — even though adoption is still building. Its core ideas of on-chain governance, formal verification (guarantying institutional-grade contracts), true liquid Proof Of Stake and the economic principles did not flinch. And most importantly proved to be working 2 years after main net launch. With CBDC investigated across the globe and the need for auditability from institutional investors, it can offer a good deal if it manages to scale.
And today we are in 2020. The year of the COVID. The year of one of the most important US elections. The year of black swans. And the year of Avalanche protocol ($AVAX) going live. I rarely saw this kind of community building and feedback, coupled with new tech, competent leadership team, and delivery. There were some missteps, there will be in the future, but I want to share my journey to make sure these are learnings for a better and successful platform in the future. The below posts (both by community members and Avalabs team) are covering the following:
- Understanding the Avalanche History, team and milestones : How a team of CS PhDs managed to translate an “anonymous” whitepaper into a real-life platform.
- Understanding the Avalanche consensus mechanism : What makes the snow family consensus protocol stand out from the traditional or the nakamoto families of protocols?
- What sets Avalanche apart : What differentiates the platform of platforms from other chains?
- Understanding the value proposition of Avalanche for DeFi : Why Avalanche is built to create a real world decentralized finance platform.
- Understanding the Avalanche platform : What are the tokenomics of the platform? How to navigate in the X-Chain, P-Chain, C-Chain or create one’s own subchain? What is Athereum?
- Deploying a smart contract : How to use already existing tools to deploy a solidity smart contract on the C-Chain?
- The Avalanche Ecosystem is rapidly expanding : State of the Avalanche projects and ecosystem 4 months after the mainnet.
Finally, what makes me excited about the Crypto / Digital Assets world today?
First, I have strong confidence that Avalanche ($AVAX) will play a major role in the future. I see many synergies with both great L1 and L2 projects and very good ideas in the upcoming tech stacks and fundamentals.
Also, I believe the research in the digital assets and decentralized finance field mirrors our societal and economic struggles, brings together people from all continents and solves for a long time coming issue of making the financial world open not only to a happy few, but to each and everyone one (And believe me, when you come from Africa, it is not an understatement).
Useful links to start with Avalanche :
