Although the crypto news coverage is often dominated by the two top dogs Bitcoin and Ethereum (hardware wallet from US$59 on Amazon), meme coins like Dogecoin, Shiba Inu Coin and other alternative tokens have occasionally made headlines in the recent past. But even though there are many cryptocurrencies with promising concepts, they often struggle to garner the necessary attention of potential investors. However, a crypto token called Avalanche has now apparently achieved exactly that. After doubling in value over the last 30 days, Avalanche is now the 10th most valuable cryptocurrency in the world.
The Avalanche crypto token, which is traded under the code AVAX on crypto exchanges, is based on a newly developed and improved layer-1 blockchain. This gives Avalanche some noticeable advantages in comparison to Ethereum, which is why the Avalanche crypto does not appear to be just another alternative token, but rather a sophisticated crypto product from a technical point of view. This cryptocurrency was created by a small group of academics from the world-famous Cornell University, and its most important selling point is the better efficiency in the processing of transactions in the blockchain, also called smart contracts.
While the Ethereum blockchain can only process 15 transactions per second, Avalanche can process an impressive 4,500 transactions per second. This ultimately leads to much lower transaction fees, which could consequently make Avalanche useful for so many more practical use cases than Ethereum, which has been plagued by sky-high gas fees. It remains to be seen whether Avalanche can actually turn into a true competitor for Ethereum, or if the long-awaited full release of the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade will make ETH even more dominant than it is today.