Grants initiative Retro9000 snapshot date announced to reward early builders on Avalanche
Avalanche Weekly Overview - March 19, 2025
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Avalanche by the numbers
AVAX token price: $19.77 (+8.93%)
Max transactions per second: 185.5 (-17.92%)
Network’s 7-day total transactions: 25.3M (-3.07%)
Avalanche C-Chain daily txns: 313.85K (-21.3%)
DeFiLlama’s Avalanche TVL: $1.43B (+31.19%)
Top 3 Avalanche DeFi projects by TVL:
Aave: $501.75M (+7.64%)
Benqi: $416.59M (+25.56%)
LFJ: $111.36M (+9.35%)
These metrics are based on a 7-day time frame, unless noted otherwise.
Inside the network
🔺What we’re watching: The Retro9000 grants program is unveiling its first snapshot of builders on April 15, the Avalanche Developers account shared.
🔺Why it matters: As part of the Avalanche9000 network upgrade, the Avalanche Foundation announced in October Retro9000, a $40 million retroactive grants program. This campaign was created with the goal to empower users on the network and reward those that deployed their own custom layer-1 blockchain.
Its first snapshot will be conducted to disburse funds for participants. Since Retro9000 was designed to reward developers for stress testing the network and launching blockchains on the network, this snapshot accomplishes just that.
Additionally, the grant program wanted to encourage developers to build publicly, earn community support and test and ship projects to get rewarded. There’s 157 projects on the Retro9000 leaderboard that Avalanche Foundation plans to reward, showcasing the team’s commitment to give back to the ecosystem.
Snapshots are a common way in web3 to keep a historical reference piece of contributors at a certain moment in time. For a grant program designed to reward developers and early contributors for Avalanche9000, this snapshot is no different. By capturing a record number of builders on the network at a specific point in time, Retro9000 can reward genuine early support rather than users who don’t have the best interest in mind.
Furthermore, snapshots can document who was involved and to what extent, creating a moment that reinforces trust in its project’s ecosystem, incentivizing participation as Avalanche9000 continues to develop.
🔺The bigger picture: Looking forward, Avalanche Foundation rewarding past contributions could encourage future builders on the network.
A barrier of entry for many developers or startups is lack of funds to see through their app. Retro9000 looks to eliminate that and alleviate stress for teams, so they don’t have to worry about capital or funding and can focus on technical updates or development.
While some chains don’t offer grants, they can play a crucial role in improving company infrastructure. By supporting its ecosystem with funding, Avalanche could set up its network’s builders for success.
Scaling the ecosystem
Top 3 Avalanche games by 7-day total txns:
Gunzilla Testnet: 17.84M (+2.19%)
Pulsar: 13.29 (+2.34%)
Defi Kingdoms: 5.17 (+6.25%)
Inversion Founder Santiago R Santos spoke at Digital Assets Summit about leveraging Avalanche to provide mobile banking services
GPT Wars integrated its token to the PLYR ecosystem to provide users AI-powered in-game warriors
BENQI reached 1.9K daily active users on March 17, and is up 1,360% on the month, Token Terminal data shows
Avalanche teamed up with Presto and StraitsX with a goal to enhance liquidity options for DEXs in the Asia market
OpenTrade hit a new high of $26M in TVL on Avalanche for its yield-bearing stablecoin platform (shown below)
Source: DefiLlama
Active L1s: 50
Total L1 validators: 1,721
Total active blockchains in the Avalanche network: 53
Total staked across L1s: 477,379
Distribution of L1s by category. Source: Snowpeer
AVAX community wins
Attending GDC? Make sure to check out the Avalanche web3 gaming lounge
Learn about AvaCloud and how it provides tools for developers to build their own Avalanche L1s, via an X livestream with the team
Republic announced that users can participate in an open investment round for Robert Rodriguez's Brass Knuckle Films, powered by Avalanche technology
Eclipse founder spoke about how it's using account and chain abstraction to enhance web3 gaming UX
Avalanche Archives
Here’s Avalanche-based articles that made headlines this week.
DeFi Kingdoms: The Pixelated RPG Conquering Web3 (Avalanche Team1 Dao)
Core Wallet: The Evolution (The Cook)
Check out the Avalanche blog for more updates.
Join in the fun
Want to dive deeper into Avalanche?
Boston Blockchain Association is hosting an Avalanche hackathon and strategic problem-solving competition with a $15K prize pool, along with workshops from Ava Labs
Register for Avalanche Summit in London from May 20 - 22, an event dedicated for developers and creators building in the ecosystem
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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.