Although the crypto industry began in 2009 with the launch of Bitcoin, the growth of overall crypto users and cryptocurrencies in the past two years has been explosive. With over 18 000 cryptocurrencies available, identifying future giants from fly-by-night coins has never been more important.

In the fiercely competitive field of blockchain innovations, a few cryptocurrencies have risen to the top, showing the world that they’re here to stay.

Avalanche, a smart contract blockchain similar to Ethereum, launched in September 2020 and has since climbed its way into the top 10 cryptocurrencies. Avalanche’s design was aimed at solving some of the limitations of other older cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Bitcoin was introduced as a peer to peer cash system and Ethereum as a internet computer for applications to run on but they both fall prey to a limitations such as speed (transactions per second) and finality (the amount of time it takes for a transaction to be complete). For example Avalanche achieves finality in 3 seconds versus Ethereum's 1 minute.

Avalanche has one of the most innovative blockchain setups in crypto. Three separate blockchains make up its working structure.

By splitting its architecture across separate blockchains Avalanche is able to optimise for flexibility, speed and security, without major trade-offs.

Building a blockchain that can service high numbers of people, called scaling, while maintaining the highest levels of security, all fulfilled on a decentralised network is known as the blockchain trilemma.

Without complicating things blockchains have optimise for more scalability, speed or decentralisation. Blockchains like Solana that offer the fastest transaction speeds to the highest number of users lean towards scalability, but compromise on decentralisation.

Ethereum, the market leader in smart contract platforms maintains incredible security and decentralisation, while compromising on speed and number of users. By splitting Avalanche’s core tasks over three, interoperable blockchains, Avalanche’s innovative design sacrifices the least of all three.

How Fast Is Avalanche?

Bitcoin can handle 5 transactions per second, Ethereum can handle 15 and Avalanche can handle a whopping 4500. Which falls short of Solana’s impressive supposed 50,000 tps with the reason that Avalanche offers better security and is more decentralised.

Another incredible factor that makes Avalanche very attractive is that it supports and leverages the Ethereum Virtual Machine (sounds cool but its just a virtual engine that runs code and applications). As well as being positioned very well to interact and integrate with other blockchains.

Rise of the Ethereum Killers

Ethereum was the major investment thesis during the 2017 crypto bull run because it offered a completely different investment thesis to Bitcoin (digital unstoppable cash). Ethereum promised to the blockchain where you could build and run any application you wanted and no body could stop you. A very valuable invention and technology that the world certainly needs.

This birthed a wave of innovation as people wanted to create a better, faster version of Ethereum known more recently as Ethereum killers. Before 2020 majority of the world would never have heard of Solana, Cardano, or in more recent months Avalanche.

The reason these names became household names was because of their insanely fast rise to the top of the crypto currency market and investment returns that would put a smile on everyone.

On top of having returned investors and early believers with returns any investor dreams of Avalanche has established itself with a very strong community of investors and developers to make the blockchain better and even more valuable.