Gas fees drop up to 99.5% with Avalanche’s Octane network upgrade
Avalanche Weekly Overview - April 9, 2025
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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Avalanche by the numbers
AVAX token price: $16.81 (-7.08%)
Max transactions per second: 362.3 (+65.43%)
Network’s 7-day total transactions: 25.88M (+54.05%)
Avalanche C-Chain daily txns: 227.2K (-14.23%)
DeFiLlama’s Avalanche TVL: $1.07B (-29.14%)
Top 3 Avalanche DeFi projects by TVL:
Aave: $492.29M (-8.51%)
BENQI: $370.42M (-13.47%)
LFJ: $94.25M (-9.82%)
These metrics are based on a 7-day time frame, unless noted otherwise.
Inside the network
🔺What we’re watching: Avalanche deployed its Octane network update for the C-Chain and layer-1s (L1) to adopt a dynamic fee mechanism.
🔺Why it matters: This network upgrade derives from community proposal ACP-176, a dynamic fee mechanism for the Avalanche C-Chain and its L1s to let validators adjust gas consumption targets. This replaces its current system, which made gas prices spike during large block times.
With the implementation of ACP-176, validators can dynamically adjust target gas consumption rates based on usage. This means transaction costs can go down significantly during normal network activity and according to the latest data, it has.
Swapping fees were essentially removed, dropping 97% from 0.003 AVAX to 0.0001 AVAX. Most notably, the fee per 1,000 AVAX tokens transferred dropped 99.5% from 0.04 to 0.00021 AVAX.
Meanwhile, the average transaction fee dropped 30% from 0.0001 AVAX before the upgrade to 0.00007 after it, Flipside data shows.
Gas fees can be seen as a barrier for blockchain adoption because they are a needed, and typically unpopular, cost to perform transactions. This could be a deterrent because it's an unavoidable fee users usually have to take on. In turn, many operations might become nearly fee-less, making the network more accessible to newcomers who might otherwise have to face unpredictable costs.
The proposal builds on ACP-103, which introduced dynamic fees to Avalanche's P-Chain. That looked to prevent DDoS attacks, while keeping fees reasonable during normal use. Now, Avalanche looks to integrate the same strategy to its C-Chain and L1s, which are commonly the most used chains in the ecosystem.
🔺The bigger picture: This upgrade is part of Avalanche's broader Avalanche9000 upgrade, which aims to scale the network to 9,000+ TPS. By allowing validators to adjust gas targets, the network can grow without requiring constant updates.
This approach could make transaction costs negligible during normal conditions. Avalanche’s goal is to make its network adapt automatically through market mechanisms rather than developer intervention.
Scaling the ecosystem
Top 3 Avalanche games by 7-day total txns:
Gunzilla: 17.69M (-1.25%)
Pulsar: 9.27M (+218.87%)
DeFi Kingdoms: 4.73M (+1.95%)
Total Avalanche volume performed on Uniswap hit $5B, DefiLlama data shows
Watr, a blockchain infrastructure for commodities market, is migrating to become an Avalanche L1
WisdomTree Connect deployed its 13 tokenized funds to Avalanche, among other networks, for institutional RWA use
Arena added live streaming to its Avalanche-powered socialFi app
Daily volume on the Avalanche C-Chain hit $750.2M, up 134% over the month (shown below)
Source: Artemis
Active L1s: 56
Total L1 validators: 647
Total blockchains created in the Avalanche network: 59
Total staked across Subnets: 471,950 AVAX
Distribution of L1s by category. Source: Snowpeer
AVAX community wins
Learn about Retro9000 participants: Tixbase, L1Beat, Animalia Games and Suzaku
AvaCloud achieved SOC 2 Type II certification meaning it was recognized as having high standards of data security
Forgotten Playland shared it reached over 100K total downloads and 21K active players
LFJ unique active wallets hit 7K, up nearly 33% on the week, DappRadar data shows
Avalanche Archives
Here’s Avalanche-based articles that made headlines this week.
Japan's second-largest bank SMBC eyes stablecoin launch with Ava Labs: Nikkei (The Block)
Can DePin Help Build A Better Internet (Avalanche Live)
infraBUIDL(AI) Roundtable: Here's How AI is Reshaping Web3 (Avalanche Live)
From Research to Mainnet: In Conversation with Emin Gün Sirer (IC3 Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts)
Check out the Avalanche blog for more updates.
Join in the fun
Want to dive deeper into Avalanche?
Attend the Avalanche Summit in London at the Hatfield House from May 20-22
Sign up for Owl Explains Crypto Summit after Avalanche Summit on May 22 to learn about global policies around tokenization and more
Participate in the network’s hackathon on May 23 for a chance at a $50K prize pool
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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.