Welcome to the Avalanche Weekly Overview. A one-stop-shop for the AVAX community to get up to speed on the Avalanche blockchain network’s latest updates, metrics, releases, insights, ecosystem developments and more. All in one place. 

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These metrics are based on a 7-day time frame as of Jan. 8, 10:10AM EST, unless noted otherwise. 

🔺What we’re watching: The goal of Avalanche9000 was to make layer-1 (L1) blockchain deployment on Avalanche cheaper, easier and more intertwined, Ava Labs Software Engineer Michael Kaplan said during the Avalanche Quarterly Webinar with Token Relations. 

In turn, this could promote experimentation and overall increasing usage across the entire network, he added. 

🔺Why it matters: A little over three weeks ago, Avalanche deployed Avalanche9000, the network’s largest upgrade to date.  This included six community proposals, which made the primary network on Avalanche 99.9% cheaper to use and easier to deploy an L1 on. 

“We removed the 2,000 $AVAX fee because it bounds availability [and] it means only primary network validators can deploy an L1,” said Ava Labs Chief Protocol Architect  Stephen Buttolph. “Something like that is a non-starter and puts constraints on a progressive system, [a] removal of the fee lets L1 infrastructure flourish.”

The Ava Labs engineers believe the removal of the deployment fee opens up the door for network participation. Now, in order to launch an L1, it requires a smaller continuous fee that gets burned, making the upfront cost less daunting. 

As more chains deploy on Avalanche, this also opens up more opportunities for communication across the ecosystem. Avalanche Interchain Messaging (ICM), which looks to enable native cross-Avalanche L1 communication, can act as a “phonebook for the network,” Kaplan said. “Think of ICM like a phonebook. As long as an L1 is in the phonebook, you can connect to any other L1 that's listed. That’s why the continuous fee is needed, because it allows for that discoverability and makes sure networks can communicate.”

🔺The bigger picture: Looking ahead for the rest of 2025, post-Avalanche9000 launch, the team wants to hone in on improving single chain scaling and the HyperSDK, a software development framework for building virtual machines from scratch on Avalanche.

“[For 2025], We want to focus on exposing easy to use interfaces so that developers can be able to plug in easily to an already running system,” Ava Labs Software Engineer Aaron Buchwald said. “We also want to create easily reproducible benchmarks with metrics that are easy to see and use to better understand important problems that need solving.”

Source: Artemis

Distribution of L1s by category. Source: Snowpeer

Here’s Avalanche-based articles that made headlines this week. 

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This information is for entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research.