Avalanche Watch: May Edition

Koyuki Nakamori

What’s New on Avalanche

AvaCloud — Ava Labs released AvaCloud, a platform to launch fully managed, custom blockchains on Avalanche. AvaCloud automates validator deployment and maintenance, provides workflows with no code solutions, hosts tooling for real-time analytics, and natively connects to other Avalanche blockchains. AvaCloud brings a familiar user experience from the enterprise technology industry to blockchain, with fast, reliable application deployments.

EUROC — Circle released a new stablecoin on the Avalanche blockchain, EUROC, that is pegged to the value of the Euro. This is a significant stablecoin development because it gives users an alternative to US dollar stablecoins that dominate the stablecoin market. EUROC is deployed on multiple blockchain platforms and has a market capitalization greater than $50m.

Avalanche Summit II — Avalanche hosted its annual conference May 2–5 in Barcelona, Spain. Technologists, ecosystem partners, market makers and more came together to exchange new ideas, make announcements, and provide updates. Here are some highlights from the week:

Coin Operated Agents — Emin Gün Sirer, CEO of Ava Labs, gave his keynote speech on the potential intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Avalanche. Emin outlined his vision for Coin Operated Agents, or Avalanche validators integrated with large language models that empower anyone to build Avalanche applications through natural language. Watch Dr. Sirer’s keynote here.
Cloudverse — Alibaba Cloud and partners have built a launchpad called Cloudverse. Cloudverse is a one-stop solution to design, build, and manage business solutions on Avalanche infrastructure. Learn more here.
Meld Subnet — MELD is a project aimed to bridge the gap between crypto and traditional finance. The MELDapp is a non-custodial, multichain wallet. Through MELD, users can borrow fiat currencies against their digital assets while maintaining custody of cryptocurrency collateral. Read more here.

Network Performance

Avalanche Reaches All-Time-High in Monthly Active Addresses

In the last month, Avalanche has seen a substantial increase +382% in the number of active addresses on-chain, reaching an all-time high of monthly active addresses. It is especially notable to see this surge in adoption during a low-liquidity macroeconomic environment.

Rise of C-Chain and Dip Overall in Transactions

This rise of users is leading to a substantial increase in transactions on the C-Chain. In the three months, the C-Chain weekly transactions rose +96%. On the other hand, DeFi Kingdoms, the most popular gaming Subnet on Avalanche, saw a substantial dip in transactions, which impact’s Avalanche’s overall transaction count.

Stargate Finance Leads the Rise in C-Chain Transactions

Stargate Finance, a liquidity layer used primarily to transport stablecoins and ETH between blockchains, is largely responsible for the C-Chain transaction increase. Stargate Finance is built on LayerZero messaging technology. It is rumored that LayerZero may airdrop a token to users of the protocol. One reason the C-Chain transactions may be on the rise is due to its relatively inexpensive transaction fees, making it a prime candidate for airdrop farmers to frequently move stablecoins in volume.

Avalanche Stablecoin Supply Remains Consistent

Despite an increasing Stargate Finance transaction volume, the stablecoin supply on Avalanche remains overall consistent. Tether and USDC account for 93.6% of the total stablecoin supply on Avalanche. Overall stablecoin supply increased +2.7% in May.

The Past Month in Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

Trader Joe Top Avalanche DEX

Overall DEX volumes remain strong with Trader Joe as the clear leader in the space. WOOFI, a cross-chain DEX, and Platypus, a stableswap DEX, are picking up in volume compared to their peers.

Top Projects by TVL Remain Unchanged

TVL for the top projects on Avalanche remain relatively unchanged. Aave’s borrowing and lending protocol remains the top project by TVL. BenQi’s lending and liquid staking protocol kept its second rank by TVL.

The Past Month in Gaming (GameFi)

While DeFi Kingdom’s transaction volume has gone down this past month, the number of active users on the DFK chain has stayed steady. Step App has also shown signs of growth by going from the 8th ranked GameFi game by active users to the second. Additionally, Step App recorded 1.8m transactions in May, making it the second most used Subnet by transaction count.

The Past Month in Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)

Top 5 NFT Collections

In May, overall NFT sales were down ~30% in volume. The top selling NFT collections were as follows:

Chikn — An upgradable NFT collection used by the Chikn NFT gaming ecosystem. At Avalanche Summit, Chikn revealed its new game called Coq Fight that allow players to battle each other through upgradable and tradeable NFTs.
Roostr — Another upgradable NFT collection in the Chikn ecosystem.
Smol Joes Season 2 — Released by Joe Studios, Smol Joes were initially released as a free mint and became one of the highest valued collections on Avalanche. With Smol Joes Season 2, Joe Studios released another round for the collection.
Smol Creeps — Another NFT collection by Joe Studios.
ferdy fish — A collection of 300 NFTs, Ferdy Fish is a PFP project with a strong community and reward tie in to ferdyflip.xyz, a collection of games that use Chainlink’s verifiable randomness functions.

Spotlight — Trader Joe

Trader Joe, the largest DEX on Avalanche, released a new DeFi primitive, the autopool. These autopools automate the process of liquidity balancing for liquidity providers. This means markets efficiently receive the liquidity they need to function, and liquidity providers provide liquidity where it earns the most rewards. Furthermore, LPs receive a fungible LP receipt, which can later be used in partner protocols for more farming options.

The first autopool on Avalanche is AVAX-USDC. Learn more here.

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.