The official Avalanche Blog has moved to a new home. Everything you need to know from the Avalanche Foundation, including Engineering, Platform, DeFi, Institutions, Gaming, NFTs and Enterprise News.

Head to the Avalanche Blog to find out more: https://www.avax.network/blog

The monthly Snow Report is also a great resource to keep up to date on the latest news across the Avalanche ecosystem.

Subscribe to the Snow Report: https://www.avax.network/email/subscription-form/subscribe-snow-report

Read the past Snow Report editions: https://www.avax.network/snow-report-archive

The Official Avalanche Blog Has Moved! was originally published in Avalanche on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

From Snowflake to Avalanche through consensus to the stars.

Getting Started Building on Avalanche

Avalanche is an open-source platform for building decentralized applications in one interoperable, highly scalable ecosystem. It is the first ecosystem designed to accommodate the scale of global finance, with near-instant transaction finality. That means that after issuing a transaction to the network it will be included in the chain within about two seconds and is immutable from there on. Ethereum has a finality of about 15 minutes and Bitcoin has a finality of about one hour.

Avalanche is a global financial network for the issuing and trading of all digital goods. The Avalanche network enables potentially millions of validators to process thousands of transactions per second using a protocol which is completely green and quiescent. This high-throughput and fast finality protocol has been paired with an architecture that can meet the needs of unique financial services and decentralized apps.

This is accomplished through the notion of Subnets. Subnets allow anyone, anywhere to spin up a taylor-made network with custom virtual machines and complex validator rulesets. Avalanche is a network of networks. It’s a platform of platforms where we invision thousands and thousands of public and private Subnets all emerging into this global marketplace which we call The Internet of Finance.

Unique Features

Avalanche has 3 unique features which set it apart from competitors. Consensus, Virtual Machines and Subnets.

Consensus is the process of getting a set of computers to agree on something and it’s a rich field of computer science dating back 40 years. Avalanche Consensus represents the 3rd major paradigm in the field of consensus and is a metastable consensus protocol inspired by epidemic protocols and gossip networks. Avalanche Consensus enables tens of thousands of transactions per second, with sub-second immutable and irreversible finality validated by potentially millions of validators globally. Here is an Avalanche Consensus Demo created by Ava Labs’ Ted Yin.

A Virtual Machine is the blueprint for a custom blockchain on the Avalanche network. VMs contain the application-level logic for your blockchain and are akin to a class in object-oriented programming. A VM can be instantiated into many different instances of blockchains — each completely independent and with it’s own state. VMs aren’t limited to existing blockchain tech use cases such as P2P payments or defi and can be any use case which requires decentralization and consensus. VMs can be implemented in any language which can implement a GRPC API which enables developers to leverage modern tools and workflows which they’re familiar with.

A Subnet is a dynamic set of Validators working together to achieve consensus on the state of a set of blockchains. Subnets can compose their constituent validator sets via powerful rulesets. Subnets can be permissioned or permissionless — public or private. Subnets are used for scaling by enabling developers to launch application-specific-blockchains on different Subnets as opposed to many apps sharing the same blockchain. Subnets can communicate via Avalanche Warp Messaging.

Consensus

As previously mentioned, Avalanche Consensus is the 3rd major paradigm in the field of consensus. The first was called Classical Consensus and it goes back to the 80s. Classical Consensus has low latency and very high throughput. It’s lightweight and green. However it isn’t very scalable nor robust and it performs poorly in adversarial conditions.

In 2008/2009 when Satoshi Nakamoto released Bitcoin the world was introduced to the 2nd major paradigm in the field of consensus, what ultimately became known as Nakamoto Consensus. Nakamoto Consensus is very scalable, robust and decentralized but it doesn’t have low latency, it takes around an hour to be sure your transaction is sufficiently settled that you won’t experience a reorg. It doesn’t have high throughput, Bitcoin only does a handful of transaction per second. It’s not lightweight or green, Bitcoin burns more energy each day than some nation states. Lastly, Nakamoto Consensus performs ok in adversarial conditions up to the famous 51% attack.

In 2018 a pseudonymous group going by the name “Team Rocket” released a white paper on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) describing a 3rd major paradigm shift in the field of consensus. This new breakthrough was known as Avalanche Consensus. Avalanche Consensus is the perfect storm of features from Classical and Nakamoto Consensus.

It’s very scalable, robust and decentralized. There are currently around 1500 full block and vertex producing validators on the Avalanche network. The protocol theoretically enables millions of validators so it’s very decentralized. Avalanche consensus has low latency with subsecond immutable and irreversible finality. There is no notion of a reorg on Avalanche. Within a literal blink of an eye your transaction has settled completely. Avalanche has high throughput with 10s of thousands of transactions per second. It’s very lightweight and green and can be run on a PC, a Macbook, a VPS droplet on the cloud and in the future on Internet of Things devices. And Avalanche consensus is parameterizable so it performs very well in adversarial conditions.

Virtual Machines

Traditional blockchain networks, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, consist of a single virtual machine and set of validators. Avalanche is a network of many different virtual machines all deployed on Subnets and communicating with each other as needed. This architecture leads to network effects on the individual blockchains and compound network effects between subnets and blockchains.

A Virtual Machine is a state machine. It specifies the blockchain’s state, state transition function, transactions, and the API through which users can interact with the blockchain. Every blockchain on Avalanche is an instance of a VM.

The way to think of a VM is like a class in OOP. A class is a description or an object. It’s a template from which you can instantiate as many objects as you wish. Each of these objects, though derived from a common template, are unique and logically separate entities with their own state. Similar to a class, a VM is a blueprint or template from which you can instantiate as many different instances of a blockchain as you wish. Each of these blockchains, though derived from a common template, are unique and logically separate entities with their own state.

As a developer when you write a VM, you don’t need to concern yourself with lower-level logic like networking, consensus, or the structure of the blockchain. Avalanche does this behind the scenes so you can focus on the thing you would like to build.

On Avalanche you can build your VM in any language that you choose. To see examples of existing Virtual Machines check out:

Golang

• Coreth An implementation of the EVM that powers the Avalanche C-Chain that supports Solidity smart contracts.
• Subnet-EVM An implementation of the EVM that can be deployed to a custom Subnet to support Solidity smart contracts
• SpacesVM An authenticated, hierarchical key-value store w/EIP-712 compatibility, state expiry, and fee-based metering
• BlobVM A content-addressable key-value store w/EIP-712 compatibility and fee-based metering
• TimestampVM A decentralized timestamp server
• XSVM An example of Avalanche Warp Messaging that implements Cross-Subnet asset transfers

Rust

The following VMs were built using Rust via the Avalanche Rust SDK

• TimestampVM RS A Rust implementation of TimestampVM
• SpacesVM RS A Rust implementation of SpacesVM

For more information on building VMs check out:

• How to Build a Simple Golang VM
• How to Build a Complex Golang VM
• How to Build a Simple Rust VM

Subnets

A Subnet is a sovereign network which defines its own rules regarding its membership and token economics. Subnets are independent, they specify their own execution logic, determine their own fee regime, maintain their own state, facilitate their own networking, and provide their own security. They don’t share execution thread, storage or networking with other Subnets including the Primary Network, effectively allowing the network to scale up easily while enabling lower latency, higher transactions per second (TPS), and lower transaction costs provided by the Avalanche Consensus.

A Subnet manages its own membership, it can create its own token economics and rules, and may require that its constituent validators have certain properties.

Independent Token Economics

Subnets can have their own token economics with their own native tokens and fee markets. They can launch their own blockchains with customized virtual machines.

Compliance

Avalanche’s Subnet architecture makes regulatory compliance manageable. As mentioned above, a Subnet may require validators to meet a set of requirements.

Some examples of requirements include:

• Validators must be located in a given country
• Validators must pass a KYC/AML checks
• Validators must hold a certain license

Application-Specific Requirements

Different blockchain-based applications may require validators to have certain properties. Suppose there is an application that requires large amounts of RAM or CPU power. A Subnet could require that validators meet certain hardware requirements so that the application doesn’t suffer from low performance due to slow validators.

Support for Private Blockchains

You can create a Subnet where only certain pre-defined validators may join and create a private Subnet where the contents of the blockchains would be visible only to those validators. This is ideal for organizations interested in keeping their information private. See here for more info.

Separation of Concerns

In a heterogeneous network of blockchains, some validators will not want to validate certain blockchains because they simply have no interest in those blockchains. The Subnet model allows validators to only concern themselves with blockchains that they care about. This reduces the burden on validators.

Tools and Resources

Following is a list of tools and resources to help developers onramp onto the Avalanche Platform. This should include running a node, sending it queries, SDKs for sending transactions, creating virtual machines and Subnets and the associated documentation.

Avalanche Docs

Here are the official Avalanche docs. These are the canonical Avalanche platform docs.

AvalancheGo

AvalancheGo is a full Avalanche node. It’s written in Golang and required for running local networks for development or for running a node and connecting to the Fuji testnet or the mainnet.

The minimum recommended hardware specification for nodes connected to Mainnet is:

• CPU: Equivalent of 8 AWS vCPU
• RAM: 16 GiB
• Storage: 1 TiB
• OS: Ubuntu 20.04/22.04 or macOS >= 12
• Network: Reliable IPv4 or IPv6 network connection, with an open public port.

Binary Install

Download the latest build for your operating system and architecture. The Avalanche binary to be executed is named avalanchego.

You can also build from source, install with apt and install with docker.

Connect to the Network

./path/to/avalanchego --http-host=my.http.host --network-id=fuji --public-ip=my.ip.address

By default avalanchego will connect to the mainnet which will require significantly more time to bootstrap than the fuji network. Configure which network the node should bootstrap by passing in the --network-id flag. You can get funds for the Testnet from the faucet.

To be able to make API calls to your node from other machines, when starting up the node include the --http-host= flag. In order to ensure your node is well-connected, make sure that your node can receive and send TCP traffic on the staking port (9651 by default) and that you started your node with config flag --public-ip=[YOUR NODE'S PUBLIC IP HERE]. Failing to do either of these may jeopardize your staking reward.

Starting a full node this way is fine if you’re doing short-term experimental work. For instances where you intend to keep your node online for longer you should set up a system service. The installer script can do that for you.

AvalancheGo is a core software component needed for developing dapps and VMs for Avalanche. It’s required for running an individual node and a local test network. More info: Github Repo.

Avalanche Network Runner

While AvalancheGo is useful for running a single node the Avalanche Network Runner (ANR) is a tool to run and interact with a local Avalanche network and is especially useful for development and testing.

Installation

To download a binary for the latest release, run:

curl -sSfL <https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ava-labs/avalanche-network-runner/main/scripts/install.sh> | sh -s

The binary will be installed inside the ~/bin directory. To add the binary to your path, run

export PATH=~/bin:$PATH

To add it to your path permanently, add an export command to your shell initialization script (ex: .bashrc or .zshrc). You can also build from source.

Run a 5 Node Local Network

The easiest way to run a local network with the ANR is to use the example script to fire up a 5 node network.

git clone <https://github.com/ava-labs/avalanche-network-runner.git>
cd avalanche-network-runner
go run examples/local/fivenodenetwork/main.go

[03-29|18:18:35.873] INFO fivenodenetwork/main.go:93 waiting for all nodes to report healthy...
[03-29|18:18:35.873] INFO local/network.go:631 checking local network healthiness {"num-of-nodes": 5}
[03-29|18:18:44.886] INFO fivenodenetwork/main.go:98 All nodes healthy. Network will run until you CTRL + C to exit...

You can now send curl requests to the nodes on localhost

curl --location '<http://127.0.0.1:9650/ext/info>' \\
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \\
--data '{
    "jsonrpc":"2.0",
    "id"     :1,
    "method" :"info.isBootstrapped",
    "params": {
        "chain": "X"
    }
}'

{
    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
    "result": {
        "isBootstrapped": true
    },
    "id": 1
}

More info on the ANR Github Repo.

AvalancheCLI

The Avalanche Network Runner is very helpful for launching a local network running the primary Subnet. This is great for interacting with the X, P or C-chains. However, if you want to deploy and test Subnets then you want to use AvalancheCli. Avalanche CLI is a command line tool that gives developers access to everything Avalanche. This release specializes in helping developers develop and test subnets.

Installation

The tool has been tested on Linux and Mac. Windows is currently not supported. To download a binary for the latest release, run:

curl -sSfL <https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ava-labs/avalanche-cli/main/scripts/install.sh> | sh -s

The binary will be installed inside the ~/bin directory.

To add the binary to your path, run

export PATH=~/bin:$PATH

To add it to your path permanently, add an export command to your shell initialization script (ex: .bashrc or .zshrc).

You can also build locally or install via docker.

Quickstart

After installing, launch your own custom subnet:

avalanche subnet create <subnetName>
avalanche subnet deploy <subnetName>

Shut down your local deployment with:

avalanche network stop

Restart your local deployment (from where you left off) with:

avalanche network start

More info on AvalancheCli in the Github Repo.

AvalancheJS

AvalancheJS is a JavaScript Library for interfacing with the Avalanche Platform. It is built using TypeScript and intended to support both browser and Node.js. The AvalancheJS library allows you to issue commands to the Avalanche node APIs.

The APIs currently supported by default are:

• Admin API
• Auth API
• AVM API (X-Chain)
• EVM API (C-Chain)
• Health API
• Index API
• Info API
• Keystore API
• Metrics API
• PlatformVM API (P-Chain)
• Socket

Installation

Avalanche is available for install via yarn:

yarn add avalanche

You can also pull the repo down directly and build it from scratch:

yarn build

Examples

AvalancheJS has dozens of example scripts in the examples/ directory.

ts-node examples/info/isBootstrapped.ts
true

More info on AvalancheJS in the Github Repo

Glacier

The Glacier API is a developer’s one-stop-shop for all enriched blockchain data from Avalanche and Ethereum and the official API service indexing Avalanche Subnets.

The Glacier API Beta gives developers a wide range of useful data for explorer and wallet services, token transfers and more. Originally created to power the Avalanche Subnet Block Explorer, Glacier also powers Core Wallet — providing balances, transfers, and associated metadata for native assets, ERC-20 tokens and NFTs.

With Glacier, application developers can easily build products that leverage real-time and historical transaction data — all served through highly performant APIs. Developers that join the Glacier API Beta will get access to the platform’s service for free and have the opportunity to shape future feature development.

Glacier’s capabilities as a powerful indexed blockchain data provider will expand to include additional raw and derived transaction data as user feedback helps guide this process.

There is a public Swagger UI for quickly testing out the Glacier API and customizing requests POST body and copying curl statements for easily sharing requests.

For example, first let’s GET the list of chains supported by the api. At the time of writing is 14 chains including the following:

• Avalanche C-Chain (Fuji and Mainnet)
• Ethereum
• DFK Subnet (Fuji and Mainnet)
• Swimmer Network Subnet (Fuji and Mainnet)
• Dexalot Subnet (Fuji and Mainnet)
• Loco Legends Subnet (Fuji and Mainnet)
• D-Chain
• WAGMI Subnet
• Green Dot Subnet

Request

/v1/chains

curl -X 'GET' \\
  '<https://glacier-api.avax.network/v1/chains>' \\
  -H 'accept: application/json'

Response

NOTE that the response is truncated after one chains object.

{
  "chains": [
    {
      "chainId": "43114",
      "chainName": "Avalanche (C-Chain)",
      "description": "The Contract Chain (C-Chain) runs on an Ethereum Virtual Machine and is used to deploy smart contracts and connect to dapps.",
      "platformChainId": "2q9e4r6Mu3U68nU1fYjgbR6JvwrRx36CohpAX5UQxse55x1Q5",
      "subnetId": "11111111111111111111111111111111LpoYY",
      "vmId": "mgj786NP7uDwBCcq6YwThhaN8FLyybkCa4zBWTQbNgmK6k9A6",
      "vmName": "EVM",
      "explorerUrl": "<https://snowtrace.io>",
      "rpcUrl": "<https://api.avax.network/ext/bc/C/rpc>",
      "wsUrl": "wss://api.avax.network/ext/bc/C/ws",
      "isTestnet": false,
      "utilityAddresses": {
        "multicall": "0xed386Fe855C1EFf2f843B910923Dd8846E45C5A4"
      },
      "networkToken": {
        "name": "Avalanche",
        "symbol": "AVAX",
        "decimals": 18,
        "description": "",
        "logoUri": "<https://glacier-api.avax.network/proxy/chain-assets/cb14a1f/chains/43114/token-logo.png>"
      },
      "chainLogoUri": "<https://glacier-api.avax.network/proxy/chain-assets/cb14a1f/chains/43114/chain-logo.png>"
    },
    ...
}

Next let’s take that returned chainId and get the latest blocks indexed for that chain.

Request

/v1/chains/{chainId}/blocks?pageSize=&pageToken=

NOTE that this request has 1 URL required URL parameter and 2 optional query string parameters.

• chainId string (path): A supported evm chain id. Use the /chains endpoint to get a list of supported chain ids.
• pageSize integer (query): The maximum number of items to return. The minimum page size is 1. The maximum pageSize is 100.
• pageToken string (query): A page token, received from a previous list call. Provide this to retrieve the subsequent page.

curl -X 'GET' \\
  '<https://glacier-api.avax.network/v1/chains/43114/blocks?pageSize=10>' \\
  -H 'accept: application/json'

Response

NOTE that the response is truncated after one blocks object.

{
  "blocks": [
    {
      "blockNumber": "27398610",
      "blockTimestamp": 1678738466,
      "blockHash": "0x15a9fa15115f43f41844a718ded08e959a237dc6168fdb29736489edded081bc",
      "txCount": 9,
      "atomicTxCount": 0,
      "baseFee": "25000000000",
      "gasUsed": "6544183",
      "gasLimit": "8000000",
      "gasCost": "400000",
      "parentHash": "0xf152746ab4aea61d8db992a1953e3d379633eaaac4291d29b56cf957f8be64e3",
      "feesSpent": "173650909164332187",
      "cumulativeTransactions": "222464194"
    },
    ...
  ],
  "nextPageToken": "eyJzayI6eyJTIjoiMDAwMDAwMDAwMWEyMTFiZiJ9LCJpc0Jsb2NrIjp7Ik4iOiIxIn0sInBrIjp7IlMiOiJCIzB4OGRhYjQwZTAxMDFhZTdkNzJhNmQyYjE1M2Q0ZWI5NWE4MDQyOGZjMzcwYmYwYzgyZjFkMjczM2M5NTI1NGM1YSJ9LCJibG9ja1NrIjp7IlMiOiJCIzAwMDAwMDAwMDFhMjExYmYifX0"
}

Postman Collection

Postman is an API platform for building and using APIs. Postman simplifies each step of the API lifecycle. The Avalanche Postman collection supports the full JSON RPC.

Installation

1. Download Postman
2. Import Avalanche Postman Collection. Import -> Upload Files -> Avalanche.postman_collection.json
3. Import the Example Avalanche Postman Environment. Settings -> Import -> Choose Files -> Example_Avalanche_Environment.postman_environment.json
4. Call any Avalanche RPC endpoint

Usage

curl --location '<https://api.avax.network/ext/info>' \\
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \\
--data '{
   "jsonrpc":"2.0",
   "id"     :1,
   "method" :"info.isBootstrapped",
   "params": {
       "chain": "X"
   }
}'

{
   "jsonrpc": "2.0",
   "result": {
       "isBootstrapped": true
   },
   "id": 1
}

Github Repo

~Written by Gabriel Cardona

Introduction to Avalanche: Kicking of the new Avax Developers Blog Series was originally published in Avalanche on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The L1, Beam, will streamline game deployment for developers — and aim to shape the future of Web3 gaming.

Merit Circle DAO, a gaming DAOs with 60+ partner games, will launch Beam, an Avalanche L1 tailored specifically to Web3 gaming development and gameplay. At or shortly after launch, Beam will offer existing Merit Circle products plus extensive new gaming-focused tooling, an NFT marketplace (Sphere), and three new games. Merit Circle plans for Beam to support dozens of Avalanche games.

Beam will be an independent, sovereign network catering to the range of gamers and game developers. Three of the first games slated for release on Beam are Trial Xtreme, Walker World, and Hash Rush.

Trial Xtreme is a thrilling racing game with 250M+ worldwide downloads. The flagship offering from the acclaimed Gameplay Galaxy, a studio aiming to develop a decentralized competitive gaming ecosystem, will launch down the road on Beam.

Powered by Unreal Engine 5, Walker World is a massive interoperable open-world experience where players and creators come together to own and build on their land, cooperate in heated game modes, and explore a vast universe filled with shared rewards.

Hash Rush, a pioneering Web3 MMORTS game, where players can explore the vastness of the Hermeian Galaxy. Gamers can build a base, marshall resources, enhance their strategies by recruiting heroes, and attempt to defeat enemies in epic battles.

In addition to games, Beam will have offerings allowing players to do more with their gaming assets and developers to launch games more seamlessly. For instance, an AMM will allow players to swap tokens linked to Beam dApps. Sphere, an NFT marketplace that devs can lego into their games, will enable players to buy in-game assets. Beam will also support native Avalanche SDKs, APIs, wallets, bridges, and analytics tools.

Merit Circle says that it chose Avalanche for its speed, quick settlement, security, and the open-ended possibilities that Avalanche L1s unlock for games and game developers.

“Beam is meant for gamers and game developers alike: to take away the complexity and still offer true ownership and easy control of that ownership,” said Brandon Aaskov, CTO Merit Circle DAO. “To get there, we’re incredibly excited to work with Ava Labs who have proven that scaling via Avalanche works effectively and efficiently. To keep transactions flowing and fees low, we’re optimizing Beam specifically for game-heavy workloads so that the ‘hard stuff’ with on-chain operations becomes an afterthought for everyone but Merit Circle.”

More exciting info on Beam will be spawning soon.

This post is based on materials provided by Merit Circle DAO. For more information, visit Merit Circle’s website. Also, please read this important notice.

Merit Circle DAO to Launch Gaming Subnet with Tooling, Three Games, and Many More to Come was originally published in Avalanche on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Initial institutional partners include T. Rowe Price Associates, WisdomTree, Wellington Management, and Cumberland.

The Avalanche L1 testnet in the Evergreen program, called “Spruce,” has been launched with an initial cohort of institutional partners that includes T. Rowe Price Associates, WisdomTree, Wellington Management, and Cumberland. Participating institutions will be using Spruce as a testnet for a variety of applications and assets to measure the benefits of on-chain trade execution and settlement.

“Participating in the Avalanche Spruce testnet presents a valuable opportunity to deepen our understanding and analysis of smart contract technology and the potential applications of public, permissioned blockchains in financial markets,” said Blue Macellari, Head of Digital Assets Strategy, T. Rowe Price Associates.

The Spruce testnet is meant to enable buy- and sell-side institutions to engage with public blockchain infrastructure in a low-risk, low barrier-to-entry manner. Using valueless tokens allows institutional participants to experience the full functionality of Avalanche’s L1 architecture without putting capital at risk.

Institutional partners will use DeFi applications on Spruce to execute foreign exchange (FX) and interest rate swaps, with other areas in active research and development. Future phases of Spruce will welcome additional third-party applications, assets, and processes, including the exploration of tokenized equity and credit issuance, trading, and fund management. Institutions will be key in providing ongoing feedback about Avalanche L1 architecture, integrations, and capabilities in order to ensure a successful and scalable mainnet implementation.

“We believe tokenization and blockchain will play an important role in financial services going forward,” said Will Peck, Head of Digital Assets, WisdomTree. “Avalanche Spruce provides an opportunity to further explore the potential efficiencies and benefits of on-chain trading and settlement with other financial institutions. We are looking forward to experimenting in this EVM-based testing environment.”

Upon onboarding, institutions’ wallets are issued non-transferable tokens (NTTs) indicating they’ve passed KYC/KYB checks; in addition, their wallet addresses are embedded in an allowlist, which monitors access at the chain level. Smart contract deployers who have integrated key infrastructure and applications also undergo the onboarding process for their activity on Spruce.

In a recent research report, executives from Uniswap Labs and Circle Internet Financial cited a 2022 BIS Triennial Survey indicating that “around one-third of deliverable FX turnover, around $2.2 trillion, is at risk on any given day, up from $1.9 trillion in 2019.” Potential benefits of on-chain FX and cross-border payments include payment vs payment transactions, atomic settlement, and reduced counterparty risk.

Said Mark Garabedian, Director, Digital Assets and Tokenization at Wellington Management:

“Avalanche L1s provide a potential settlement solution that enables financial transactions with enhanced operational efficiencies, reduced risks, and regulatory compliance without creating liquidity islands or reduced interoperability. We look forward to experimenting with this technology to determine its suitability for institutional workflows, and its potential to reduce costs thus adding value for our clients.”

Said John Wu, President of Ava Labs:

“This groundbreaking collaboration creates a secure, controlled, and exciting opportunity for the world’s financial institutions. We see Spruce, and more broadly, Avalanche Evergreen L1s, as a meaningful step in exploring the possibilities of digital finance.”

Spruce is a type of Avalanche L1s for institutional blockchain deployments. Avalanche L1s in the Evergreen program are EVM-based chains with a permissioned validator set and a custom gas token to power transactions. Ultimately, Spruce and Avalanche L1s aim to address many of the issues with permissioned DeFi precluding broader institutional adoption of public blockchain infrastructure.

Get in touch to launch your use case with Avalanche L1s, or to discuss further:

• Visit https://www.avax.com/evergreen
• Reach out to Morgan Krupetsky, Director of BD, Institutions & Capital Markets at Ava Labs: morgan.krupetsky@avalabs.org

About Avalanche

Website | Whitepapers | Twitter | Discord | GitHub | Documentation | Telegram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Reddit | YouTube

About Ava Labs

Ava Labs makes it simple to launch decentralized applications on Avalanche, the fast and secure smart contracts platform. We are empowering people to easily and freely digitize all the world’s assets on one open, programmable blockchain platform.

Ava Labs was founded by Cornell computer scientists who brought on talent from Wall Street to execute their vision. The company has received funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Initialized Capital, and Polychain Capital, with angel investments from Balaji Srinivasan and Naval Ravikant.

Website | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook

Financial Institutions Join Avalanche  Evergreen Subnet, ‘Spruce’, to Drive On-Chain Finance… was originally published in Avalanche on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Moongate, a platform aiming to revolutionize ticketing and membership by creating engaging, gamified, and immersive experiences through the use of dynamic NFTs, will be designing NFT campaigns for Avalanche developer Ava Labs. Moongate focuses on the “phygital,” meaning experiences giving the digital new dimensions of value in the physical world.

How exactly do Moongate NFTs shoot to drive further engagement?

Moongate’s NFTs allow event attendees to unlock or earn upgradable rewards and access based on real-life interactions. Moongate offers a no-code solution for businesses to easily create these NFTs and weave them in their events and other operations.

Moongate’s end-to-end platform is tailored to users of all crypto knowledge levels, from OG to relative newbie. Key features include email/social-based self-custodial wallets, support for cash payments, and tools to facilitate IRL integration. The platform also prioritizes post-NFT-minting management, opening the door to creative and engagement possibilities beyond those of Web2 ticketing and membership platforms.

With Moongate’s easy end-to-end solution and Avalanche’s speed, security, and reliability, the integration will enable businesses to launch NFT campaigns that drive engagement while providing a richer, more efficient ticketing and membership system.

For instance, Moongate and Ava Labs recently launched a concert showcasing an Avalanche Park X Ed Balloon series at Belasco Theater in Los Angeles. All of the roughly 1,000 concert attendees received a free Avalanche Park NFT upon arrival, which unlocked unique experiences, including a raffle via MynaSwap for a pair of rare shoes from Cool Kicks.

The event illustrates the potential of dynamic NFTs to create engaging, gamified, immersive experiences that can catalyze real-world interactions and revenue. Partnering with Ava Labs and building on Avalanche allows Moongate to stay at the forefront of innovation and continue driving NFT adoption in the event ticketing and membership industry.

Provided for informational purposes only, without representation, warranty or guarantee of any kind. None of this is as an endorsement by the Avalanche Foundation Limited, Ava Labs, Inc. or any of their respective subsidiaries or affiliates, nor is any of this investment or financial advice. Please review this Notice and conduct your own research to properly evaluate the risks and benefits of any project.

About Moongate

Moongate is building the underlying technology to drive the mass adoption of smart tickets and memberships. Through our platform, brands and businesses can easily create customized NFT digital assets that seamlessly integrates into real world operation. To date, we have worked with a broad range of conferences, F&B chains, retail brands, and hospitality groups with our technology implementation; our product has been used by tens of thousands of end users, and has proven to drive customer engagement and revenue.

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About Avalanche

Website | Whitepapers | Twitter | Discord | GitHub | Documentation | Forum | Telegram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Reddit | YouTube

Moongate to Drive “Phygital” Experience with Dynamic Avalanche NFTs was originally published in Avalanche on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ava Labs has announced the launch of Avalanche Evergreen L1s, a suite of institutional blockchain deployments, customizations, and tooling designed to address company-specific and industry-wide requirements for financial services. Crucially, Avalanche L1s maintain the benefits of public network development while enabling particular features historically only possible within enterprise solutions.

“Thus far, financial institutions’ enterprise blockchain applications have been hindered by a walled-garden approach that, among other things, restricts liquidity and interoperability from initiative to initiative,” said Morgan Krupetsky, Director of Business Development for Institutions and Capital Markets, Ava Labs. “However, there continues to be a significant need for customization and control, particularly among institutional use cases. The Avalanche network ultimately offers a perfect synthesis of the strengths of public and private blockchains, which is why we’re so thrilled to debut Avalanche Evergreen.”

Institutions are easily able to launch their own Avalanche L1s for either research and development purposes or production-ready use cases as they continue exploring blockchain benefits around process efficiencies, transparency, composability, asset tokenization, and more. With Avalanche L1s, institutions can pursue their blockchain and digital asset strategies in private, permissioned chains with known and approved counterparties, while retaining the ability to communicate and interoperate with other L1s through Avalanche’s native communication protocol called Avalanche Warp Messaging (AWM). AWM provides a messaging layer that enables seamless on-chain asset swapping, data transfer, confirmations, and other types of intra- and inter-institutional communications without relying on third party intermediaries or bridges.

AVALANCHE L1s

Avalanche’s unique sovereign, custom L1 architecture can empower everyone from individual builders and teams, to institutions and government agencies, to launch custom blockchains optimized for their specific use case. Avalanche L1s are seamlessly interoperable with the broader Avalanche network, but isolate traffic to dedicated infrastructure securing the chain, enabling Avalanche to scale without limits. Currently the Avalanche network already boasts several EVM-based Avalanche L1 deployments on Mainnet and Testnet across industries and use cases, including DeFi, Gaming, NFTs, enterprises and institutions. A few examples include Intain— a tokenized Asset Backed Securities (ABS) administration application and marketplace; Dexalot — an on-chain central limit order book; and Deloitte — a platform for more efficient FEMA fund disbursements.

Get in touch to launch your use case with Avalanche L1s, or to discuss further

About Avalanche

Website | Whitepapers | Twitter | Discord | GitHub | Documentation | Telegram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Reddit | YouTube

About Ava Labs

Ava Labs makes it simple to launch decentralized applications on Avalanche, the fast and secure smart contracts platform. We are empowering people to easily and freely digitize all the world’s assets on one open, programmable blockchain platform.

Ava Labs was founded by Cornell computer scientists who brought on talent from Wall Street to execute their vision. The company has received funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Initialized Capital, and Polychain Capital, with angel investments from Balaji Srinivasan and Naval Ravikant.

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Avalanche Launches ‘Evergreen’, Custom L1s for Institutional Blockchain Deployments was originally published in Avalanche on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Gunzilla Games, an independent AAA game studio, announced today the launch of GUNZ, an innovative and sustainable blockchain-based digital economy platform fully built on an Avalanche L1. This Avalanche L1 has been customized to enable seamless gameplay, utilize only in-game tokens for gas fees, and provide an intuitive, rewarding user experience for both Web3 and traditional gamers. Other gaming studios will be able to leverage the GUNZ SDK and white-label components, such as a built-in companion app, marketplace, and NFT minting engine, to build and launch their own projects on GUNZ.

Designed with the gaming community and blockchain enthusiasts in mind, GUNZ aims to give players the option to get involved in Play-to-Own mechanics by offering verifiable transparency. The platform will be first integrated into Gunzilla Games’ upcoming Battle Royale 2.0 game, Off The Grid (OTG).

OTG aims to revolutionize the Battle Royale genre by emphasizing storytelling and digital ownership, allowing players to influence both gameplay and narrative through their in-game decisions. GUNZ strives to be one of the first player-friendly crypto-economies in a AAA game, aiming to empower players by granting them complete ownership over their in-game items in the form of NFTs.

More projects building on GUNZ will be announced soon.

“Our partnership with Avalanche not only allows us to leverage its highly scalable and secure blockchain infrastructure but also ensures a seamless, low-latency gaming experience for our players,” explained Vlad Korolov, CEO and Co-Founder of Gunzilla Games, “By building GUNZ, we aim to revolutionize the gaming landscape with a transparent in-game asset management system by providing a number of market-standard features for game developers who are creating their economy on blockchain.”

Avalanche launched in September 2020, ushering in a new era for blockchains with near-instant transaction finality. Today, Avalanche supports 500+ applications and secures billions of dollars in value, all while having minimal climate impact. Avalanche also supports L1s like Gunz — custom, app-specific blockchains allowing the network to scale nearly infinitely.

The partnership between Gunzilla Games and Ava Labs, the main developer of Avalanche, is another great recent example of gaming leaders recognizing the power of Avalanche L1s to provide the best gaming experience.

“Gunzilla Games has ambitious plans to migrate the best of Web2 gaming to Web3 while delivering the top-tier quality gamers demand,” said Emin Gün Sirer, Founder and CEO of Ava Labs. “The Off The Grid L1 and Web3 publishing stack are amazing additions to the new wave of Avalanche games.”

To make sure you don’t miss any updates and for more information on Gunzilla, follow the studio on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

About Gunzilla Games

Founded in 2020, Gunzilla Games is an independent AAA developer working on next-generation Battle Royale games from three metropolitan locations: Frankfurt, Germany (HQ); Los Angeles, USA; and Kyiv, Ukraine. The company was co-founded by serial entrepreneur Vlad Korolov, CEO, and Alexander Zoll, CSO.

Gunzilla’s formidable team comes from various industry-leading studios and publishers, including Ubisoft, Electronic Arts (EA), Blizzard Entertainment, THQ, and more. Oscar-nominated screenwriter, director, and producer Neill Blomkamp joined Gunzilla as Chief Visionary Officer. In addition, the team features industry veterans such as Richard K. Morgan, the author of the Altered Carbon series, which has since been adapted into an award-winning Netflix show, and Timur Davidenko, who led the development of CryEngine as Technical Director and worked on Far Cry, Warface, and Crysis. Gunzilla is built on the desire to innovate and push the limits of the industry.

Gunzilla Launches AAA Shooter on Avalanche was originally published in Avalanche on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

SK Planet, one of South Korea’s largest information and communications technology platforms, will be launching a dedicated Avalanche L1, UPTN, which will act as a Web3 portal for SK Planet’s millions of users. The UPTN chain will serve as a foundation for digital collectibles, Web3 wallets, decentralized communities, and much more.

“Ava Labs is fully committed to supporting South Korea’s buyers and merchants as they explore the unique benefits of the Avalanche ecosystem,” said Emin Gün Sirer, CEO, Ava Labs. “We see this new partnership between Ava Labs, the Avalanche Foundation, and SK Planet as an incredible opportunity to not only meet South Korea’s enormous appetite for Web3 experiences, but expand what’s possible in 21st century e-commerce.”

UPTN will be integrated into SK Planet’s many popular services and apps, such as OKcashbag (OCB). OCB is the largest e-commerce loyalty program in Korea, membership of which comprises almost half of the South Korean population. OCB’s community will gain access to NFTs, unique community features, and dynamic membership benefits powered by the Avalanche protocol.

Ava Labs has been active in South Korea’s critical Web3 market for years, and the Avalanche blockchain’s explosive growth in the region has been fueled by partnerships — such as with SK Planet — as well as the country’s Web3-savvy population. According to research by Ava Labs, Avalanche’s brand recognition in the country skyrocketed 139% QoQ in Q4 ‘22.

SK Planet, a subsidiary of SK Square, offers e-commerce and digital marketing solutions, including some of South Korea’s most popular loyalty programs. Through collaborations with global partners like Ava Labs, SK Planet is committed to expanding its platforms not just in Asia, but other strategic markets globally.

“SK Planet plans to expand into new businesses and fields, and will be reborn as a global company that provides innovative information and communications technology powered by the Avalanche blockchain,” said Lee Han-Sang, CEO, SK Planet. “SK Planet will work closely with Avalanche to unlock synergies and offer differentiated benefits to our customers.”

Avalanche L1s empower everyone from individuals to enterprises to build custom, app-specific blockchains optimized for their specific use case. Avalanche L1s are seamlessly interoperable with the broader Avalanche network, but isolate traffic to dedicated infrastructure securing the chain, enabling Avalanche to scale without limits.

About SK Planet Co., Ltd.

Based in Seoul, Korea, SK Planet is a leading technology company that creates new value for businesses by leveraging data. On top of its expertise in marketing platforms and business solutions, the company offers differentiated value by collecting and analyzing over 130 million pieces of data from major services across SK Group. SK Planet enhances the productivity of operations in corporate clients with its marketing platforms — which include “OK Cashbag”, Korea’s largest integrated mileage service, and “Syrup”, an asset-management platform — as well as business solutions in a wide variety of areas, including IoT, media, and AI. For more information about SK Planet, visit www.skplanet.com/eng.

SK Planet Announces UPTN, South Korea’s Long-Awaited Web3 Ecosystem Built on Avalanche was originally published in Avalanche on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Avalanche is an open, programmable smart contracts platform for decentralized applications. Avalanche has one of the fastest time-to-finality (1 second) of any blockchain platform and is decentralized, enables interoperable app-chains within its ecosystem, is inexpensive to use, and customizable.

In this report, we will cover major news announcements, platform upgrades, projects, network performance, and more!

What’s New on Avalanche

Avaissance — The Avalanche Foundation launched a new, two-part program to support the NFT ecosystem on Avalanche. Digital artists of any skill level can apply for Artist-in-Residence and receive funding, one-on-one mentorship, virtual workshops, and more. Additionally, through the new Mona Lisa Initiative, the Avalanche Foundation will gift Avalanche NFTs to art-focused DAOs to highlight work from up-and-coming artists. Learn more here.

Cortina — The pre-release code for the Avalanche Cortina upgrade is available for deployment on Avalanche’s Fuji testnet. Cortina will standardize all Avalanche blockchains to Snowman++ consensus, enable X-Chain integrations with Avalanche Warp Messaging and into existing exchanges, novel transaction types, and more. Learn more here.

Ava Labs’ CEO appointed to CFTC’s Technical Advisory Board — Emin Gün Sirer, Ava Labs’ CEO, has been appointed to the CFTC’s technical advisory board, which aims to inform regulators about the latest developments in cryptocurrency. See Gün’s announcement here.

TSM — TSM, previously known as Team SoloMid, is a major esports gaming company that is releasing its gaming platform, Blitz, on an Avalanche Subnet. Through Blitz, TSM aims to onboard its existing 30m user base into the Avalanche ecosystem. Learn more here.

Core Wallet Upgrades — The Core wallet team released the iOS app, making Core mobile accessible to 1 billion mobile users. Core Mobile is the fastest growing version of Core Wallet. Additionally, the Core web browser extension now offers a “Discover” tab, which is a consolidated place for vetted information on projects, learning materials, and the latest news on Avalanche. Learn more here.

Glacier API Beta — The team at Ava Labs released the beta launch of Glacier API, an API repository for enriched blockchain data from Avalanche and Ethereum and the official API service for indexing Avalanche Subnets. Learn more here.

TYB and Shopify Loyalty Platform — TYB (Try Your Best) is Shopify’s community management platform aimed to engage and reward fans for taking action. TYB is deployed on Avalanche and is now available on the Shopify App Store. Learn more here.

The Past Month in Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

BTC.b Supply Reaches All Time Highs at ~10k

BTC.b is a bridged BTC (Bitcoin) token on Avalanche. Initially released in June 2022, BTC.b reached all time highs in early March at ~10,000 BTC.b. For comparison, the Lightning Network, one of BTC’s most popular scaling solutions, has a maximum BTC capacity of 5,400 BTC. Since its peak in early March, BTC.b supply has been hovering around 7,000. BTC derivatives like BTC.b and WBTC on Avalanche enable Avalanche users to deploy their BTC more actively in DeFi as inputs to borrowing and lending services like Aave.

Top TVL Protocols Hold Steady

The largest protocols by TVL remain unchanged since last month despite the US banking crisis. Aave, crypto’s largest borrowing and lending protocol, kept the top spot on Avalanche, while BenQi, an Avalanche-native liquid staking and lending protocol, retained the second spot (more on BenQi in our project spotlight below). Stargate Finance, an omnichain bridge, saw a considerable dip in TVL around the time of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapse, suggesting an outflow of funds.

Major Spike in DEX Volume during SVB Crisis

Trader Joe, Curve (stableswap protocol), and KyberSwap saw a spike in volume during the SVB and USDC depegging event in mid-March. Volumes across DEXs have since returned to more typical levels.

To dig further into statistics and trends for the Avalanche DeFi ecosystem, check out the Tie’s DeFi Dashboard

The Past Month in Gaming (GameFi)

Teams at Ava Labs attended the Game Developer Conference (GDC) in San Francisco. The GDC hosted over 28,000 attendees with over 1,000 speakers and 700 sessions, workshops, roundtable discussions, and networking events. Avalanche game development teams released news and updates about game launches, twitter spaces, free mints, partnerships, and more. Look at a summary tweet here.

DeFi Kingdoms Continues GameFi Dominance

DeFi Kingdoms, an Avalanche staple RPG game with DeFi mechanics, remains the game used by the most unique wallets. All games saw a minor withdrawal in unique users since February with the exception of Crabada (+2.2%).

Betswirl and DeFi Kingdoms Highest Volume Games

The largest GameFi games of the past month were Betswirl (a gaming platform offering games like Dice, Coin Toss, Million Jackpot), DeFi Kingdoms, Open Blox (NFT Gaming Platform), and Step App, a move-to-earn app. The spike in DeFi Kingdom’s volume is attributed to an unlock of CRYSTAL from the Crystalvale Jeweler on March 20th.

To dig further into statistics and trends for the Avalanche GameFi ecosystem, check out the Tie’s GameFi Dashboard

The Past Month in Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)

This was an especially strong month for Avalanche NFTs; the total volume of Avalanche NFTs in March was $1.09m, which is +62.2% from February’s mark at $668.9k. Joepegs, the largest NFT Marketplace on Avalanche, accounted for ~$859k in volume. According to avalytics.xyz, the largest collections in March are as follows:

1. OOPA (16371 AVAX) — OOPA is an NFT collection derived from other NFT collections called APA (Avalanche Party Animals) and Golden Token. OOPAs were by far the most popular NFT collection of March.
2. Chikn (7740 AVAX) — Chikn NFTs are perhaps the most famous upgradable NFT collection on Avalanche and are used in the Chikn NFT gaming ecosystem.
3. Golden Token (6197 AVAX) — Used to transform APAs into OOPAs
4. Ferdy Fish (5560 AVAX) — A collection of 300 NFTs, Ferdy Fish’s floor price has risen dramatically in March from around 17 AVAX to 90 AVAX.
5. Smol Joes (4034 AVAX) — Originally a free mint, Smol Joes are one of the first big NFT collections on Avalanche. Created by Joe Studios.

To dig further into statistics and trends for the Avalanche GameFi ecosystem, check out the https://www.avalytics.xyz/ and Tie’s NFT Dashboard

Spotlight

BenQi, mentioned above, released a new base layer protocol called Ignite. Ignite allows decentralized staking that reduces the cost to run an Avalanche node by up to 10x. Instead of native validator staking, which requires 2000 AVAX, Ignite users can spin up a node for 200 AVAX worth of the QI token. This liquid staking solution expands the number of potential stakeholders in the Avalanche ecosystem, so more developers, projects, and stakers can reap the full benefit of Avalanche validators.

Liquid staking solutions are popular among other proof-of-stake blockchains like Ethereum. Ignite is different from Ethereum liquid staking solutions because BenQi Subnet validators get exposure to both AVAX rewards and Subnet rewards. Rewards from Ignite validators will also be higher than delegation alone, since running a validator bypasses the need to pay delegation fees.

Cross-Chain Comparison

It can be difficult to find ways to fairly compare blockchain networks since there are not standard metric definitions. For instance, a single transaction on one blockchain network could equate to several on a different network, so metrics like transactions per second may be misleading.

One way to comparatively measure blockchain networks is by True Network Value, which factors in block size, time-to-finality, and the number of validators of a network. Block size was calculated using the average block size of the last 30 days. You can read more about True Network Value here.

The chart above shows Avalanche as a clear leader in TNV among other L1 alternatives. Factors include validator count, block size, and time-to-finality.

About Avalanche

Avalanche is a smart contracts platform that scales infinitely and regularly finalizes transactions in less than one second. Its novel consensus protocol, Subnet infrastructure, and HyperSDK toolkit enable Web3 developers to easily launch powerful, custom blockchain solutions. Build anything you want, any way you want, on the eco-friendly blockchain designed for Web3 devs.

Website | Whitepapers | Twitter | Discord | GitHub | Documentation | Forum | Telegram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Reddit | YouTube

Avalanche Watch: March Edition was originally published in Avalanche on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Developer Jomari Peterson has been building the future on Avalanche since its early days. He tends to juggle projects, like a lending platform, an auto-compounder, and a privacy-preserving protocol (to name a few), but Jomari believes his next dApp could be his biggest yet — and take DeFi to the mainstream with it.

Jomari first tried Avalanche after hearing about Pangolin. “I saw that it was proof-of-stake and was incredibly fast,” he said. “I said ‘oh snap, this is exactly what I’ve wanted to build on. This might just be the place for me.’”

Reflecting back from today, after countless hours developing on Avalanche, he knows his first instinct was right.

“As a dev, you want to be prepared not only for where things are, but where they’re going,” he said. “With Avalanche, you can be a first mover and launch a Rust or WASM VM to leverage the tooling from the platform. Whatever your tooling purposes, you can bring them to Avalanche and maximize your efficiency and effectiveness. That’s very valuable for developers.”

In Jomari’s experience, Avalanche can flex to his preferences and evolve as the goals of a project adapt to the long-term development of Web3. Couple that toolkit with Avalanche’s reliability, “academic rigor” underpinning the network, the ability of Ava Labs to “execute and support with marketing,” and you’ve got a hotbed for innovation.

“The tooling on Avalanche provides developers a robustness of opportunity,” he said. “It allows you to execute your vision faster, and on a chain with faster transaction speed and finality.”

Jomari seems to have a knack for skating to where the Web3 puck is going. These days, he’s developing two new projects.

The first is RITHM, a DAO helping users create and curate algorithmic art, including generative and AI art. Avalanche is the DAO’s home. DAO membership dues go toward purchasing NFTs and furthering the tech of the DAO’s forthcoming NFT-minting dApp. Jomari has a vision for the DAO, including potentially launching a “collaborative” chain down the road.

His second impending dApp is FiHub.

FiHub will help people navigate “the DeFi system through action-based, active discovery and learning.” Jomari said this forthcoming dApp will have a comprehensive dashboard, from which users can manage, track, and learn about digital assets. Education will be ongoing, as there will be real-time notifications, some triggered by on-chain data. He plans for users to earn rewards for participating in and learning about DeFi, including through algorithmically curated content.

His goal for FiHub: a friendly DeFi environment, one that might help appeal to the hundreds of millions of Web3 users that currently stick to CeFi.

Avalanche is helping Jomari build his vision of the future, and Jomari is helping write the future of Avalanche — which he believes is just beginning.

“The reason that I build in this space is so that I can affect change,” he said. “I believe that on Avalanche we’re building out the tools for the future. I think we’re just on the cusp of building the things that will empower the masses.”

For more on Jomari, start with his Twitter.

Developer Spotlight: Jomari Peterson Says His Biggest dApp is Yet to Come was originally published in Avalanche on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.