By CCN: The crypto ecosystem often explores which blockchain will emerge as the ‘Ethereum killer.’ So far, no network has been able to muscle the second-biggest blockchain off its perch, but now there’s a new kid in town – Ava, and it has Bitcoin, Ethereum, and even Visa in its sights.
Ava is a new cryptocurrency that uses a consensus protocol known as Avalanche, whose creators similar to Bitcoin are anonymous only they go by Team Rocket. Avalanche is designed to combine the “best of both worlds” from the Nakamoto Consensus and Classical Consensus, according to Cornell University Associate Professor Emin Gun Sirer in a recent presentation.
Yes, a new coin, Ava, based on a new blockchain maintained by the Avalanche protocol.
— Emin Gün Sirer (@el33th4xor) June 19, 2018
Bitcoin transactions take 10 minutes or more to be completed, and Ethereum can handle about 15 transactions per second, though both are feverishly scaling. Avalanche is designed to deliver “two-second” payments and thousands of transactions per second, which could catapult crypto microtransactions into the mainstream. The new protocol is also designed to scale “from 10,000 nodes up to 10 million nodes,” Sirer said in a recent presentation. Scalability is an issue that has plagued the Ethereum network.
Sirer is close to launching the new cryptocurrency and network based on Avalanche, according to a Bloomberg report. The network that the academic describes sounds a lot like what Ethereum 2.0 is becoming. Much like Ethereum, a variety of applications can also be built on top of it.
Sirer, who is also co-director of the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Smart Contracts, described to Bloomberg a platform that sounds a lot like Ethereum’s use case as an ICO platform. In addition to the native Ava cryptocurrency, the Ava platform can host other tokens for industries such as real estate, for example. He told Bloomberg:
“You can create a digital asset on top of Ava, a coin X. And then you can say, I want my coin to support Bitcoin transactions as well as Zcash – you can mix and mash features from different languages. And I want these features to be supported on this set of nodes.”
Ava Labs Has Already Raised Millions
Sirer is behind blockchain startup Ava Labs, which earlier this year attracted $6 million to its coffers from some major venture capitalists, including Andreessen Horowitz. Ava Labs has reportedly unveiled a test version of the Ava network. The coin will reportedly launch soon.
Ava vs. Ethereum
So does it have the makings of the ‘Ethereum killer’ that the crypto ecosystem has been clamoring about? We don’t even know if that is what Sirer’s intentions are. We didn’t hear back from him in time for publication. But he did say in the recent presentation that Avalanche has “some huge big technical insights and technical progress compared to everything that exists today.” And he is launching a network that does everything that Ethereum already provides, from contracts to token support to app development.
Ethereum has a giant headstart from Ava and already boasts brand recognition around the world, not to mention the famous co-founders Vitalik Buterin and Joseph Lubin. Sirer is also very respected in the community, and his new Ava coin and blockchain are sure to make an impact. But Ava is also brand new.
In a best-case scenario, they will thrive and also place fire under the feet of Ethereum developers to accelerate the evolution of the network.
