How Avalanche Wins: A New Roadmap For 2021
Tags: Smart Contracts, Avax, Blockchain, Crypto, Avalanche

Today, Avalanche has a new roadmap defining the key areas of engineering, ecosystem development, and constant iteration that will make the platform better than ever. Through the end of 2021, the Avalanche community will see upgrades to:

User Experience

Platform Features & Performance

Liquidity & Ecosystem Growth

The full roadmap is available here, but let’s dive into a few highlights from each:

User Experience: Avalanche Wallet Overhaul & Industry-First Bridge

Wallet Experience

Multi-chain wallets are expanding to support Avalanche, but the Avalanche Wallet is still the primary gateway for users to access all of the core functionality of the Avalanche platform.

Starting in Q3 and throughout Q4, the Avalanche Wallet is undergoing a complete facelift to consolidate the most common workflows to make Avalanche more accessible to new crypto adopters, enhance security features, and fix common user issues like balance refresh and imports.

The Avalanche Wallet will also be coming to your mobile devices, and accessible as a browser extension to provide a tailor-made DeFi experience for users to seamlessly access the rapidly expanding ecosystem on Avalanche.

Novel Bridge Technology

Another common pain point for users wishing to move assets to Avalanche has been the complexity and fees related to the Avalanche-Ethereum Bridge (AEB). As we’re seeing with multi-chain wallets, more bridges are supporting Avalanche, but in Q3 users will have an industry-first secure bridging architecture that is 5X cheaper and 2X faster than the AEB. And there are plans to extend this bridge to support other EVM compatible chains and non-EVM chains like Bitcoin.

Platform Features & Performance: Apricot Performance Upgrades, P-Chain Governance, and Sneak Peek at Blueberry

The Avalanche platform has rapidly evolved to not only add new features, but also significantly improve stability, performance, and fees for all users and developers.

Through the rest of Q2 and Q3, the platform will complete the next two phases of the Apricot upgrades. These upgrades implement dynamic fees for smart contract transactions on the C-Chain, add governance to the P-Chain, and further optimize the network for scaling to meet the precipitous growth of user demand.

These phases will also improve the experience and efficiency for all Avalanche validators. Implementing epochs on the X-Chain and fast sync capabilities for the P-Chain and C-Chain will enable new validators to get up-to-speed in a fraction of the current time, while also reducing the load on each validator.

In Q4, Apricot Phase 5 will bring dynamic fees, state pruning, and fast sync capabilities to the X-Chain, completing the first major upgrade to Avalanche and making the X-Chain the most powerful and efficient peer-to-peer asset transfer chain on the planet.

Q4 will also mark the beginning of the Blueberry Upgrade, which unlocks subnets as the next growth engine for Avalanche and the crypto ecosystem.

Blueberry will enable the creation of independent blockchains with custom virtual machines and rulesets. Subnets are the foundation for increased activity from enterprises and institutions who require complete control over their development and data.

Subnets also enable Avalanche to scale even further. Developers and projects can build independent, high-throughput chains run by dedicated resources, but still connected to the broader Avalanche ecosystem. This empowers greater value creation across the ecosystem, while maintaining the seamless transfer of value.

Liquidity & Ecosystem Growth: Exchange Integrations, C-Chain Support, New Applications, and Ava Labs Expansion

Since mainnet launch, AVAX has been added to leading trading venues all over the world to enable quick, reliable access to AVAX where and when people want.

Exchange integrations and due diligence take time, but in Q3 and continuing into Q4, Avalanche will be available on more top-tier venues. These include venues in the most active geographies in DeFi, including the United States, to unblock the many users that have been interested in accessing Avalanche’s ecosystem, but unable to access AVAX.

These on-ramps, and existing venues supporting AVAX, are pushing to support the C-Chain so their users can go directly from their accounts into DeFi apps on Avalanche without cross-chain transfers.

The Avalanche Community will continue to welcome new infrastructure integrations and DeFi functionalities, including Chainlink on mainnet, liquidity protocols like BenQi, launchpads like Avalaunch, and flagship NFT marketplaces. It will also see the launch of a new, first-of-its-kind asset class, Initial Litigation Offerings (“ILOs”).

Collectively, the liquidity and ecosystem growth will further Avalanche’s position as a premier platform for DeFi users and developers just one year after launch.

To support this rapid growth across the ecosystem, the Ava Labs team has rapidly expanded with over 80 new hires in the last year, and over 30 since the beginning of May 2021. These hires have focused on experienced leaders who expand Ava Labs ability to deliver top-quality projects across engineering, business development, and marketing.

More than 110 people now work within Ava Labs, with almost half dedicated solely to technical research and development. The Ava Labs team is more equipped than ever to expand Avalanche’s technical edge over other platforms, while also supporting the projects building on Avalanche with operational capabilities and strategic guidance.

Answering the Call

The roadmap for the remainder of 2021 is ambitious and will require each member of the Avalanche community to do their part. Whether that’s contributing to the core platform as a developer, building a new application, or providing feedback as a user, Avalanche grows stronger with every addition.

But there’s one more request, and a contribution each of us can make.

Avalanche has always been focused on building real technology that can scale to global demand. Now it’s on all of us to help our friends and families, peers and projects join the Avalanche community.

Spread the word. The Avalanche is coming.