A network whose main idea is letting anyone launch their own purpose-built chain.
Live market data
CoinGecko data; may be delayed.
61.7% of the achievable supply is already circulating.
$144.96 -93.80% · Nov 21, 2021
Source: CoinGecko, snapshot of Oct 28, 2026. Figures may be delayed.
Source: DefiLlama, data as of · Revenue is not reported by every protocol.. Figures are informational, not financial advice.
Avalanche's distinguishing feature is not its main chain but its support for custom chains, originally called subnets, that organisations launch with their own rules, validators and even compliance requirements. That makes it attractive to institutions and games that need control over who can participate, a requirement a public shared chain cannot satisfy.
The product is permissioned, purpose-built chains, not competing for general DeFi traffic.
Fee burn plus a hard cap gives AVAX clearer supply mechanics than most L1 tokens.
Custom chains only help AVAX if they keep requiring AVAX stake.
Avalanche runs several chains with different jobs: an EVM-compatible contract chain, a chain for asset transfers and a chain for coordinating validators. Its consensus works by repeated random sampling, where validators poll small random subsets of peers until confidence converges, which gives fast finality without every validator talking to every other. Custom chains reuse this machinery while setting their own rules.
Gas for transactions on the contract chain, which is burned
Staking required to operate a validator
Requirement for participating in the custom-chain ecosystem
AVAX pays gas on the main contract chain and is required as stake to run a validator. Crucially, validators of custom chains have historically also had to validate the primary network and stake AVAX, which ties the growth of the custom-chain ecosystem to demand for the token. Fees paid on the main chain are burned, so activity there reduces supply.
AVAX has a hard cap on total supply, and transaction fees on the primary network are burned rather than paid to validators. Staking rewards issue new AVAX up to that cap, so net supply change depends on the balance between emissions and fee burn.
On-chain governance is narrow: staked validators vote on a small set of network parameters such as minimum fees, and protocol upgrades ship via coordinated client releases from Ava Labs and community developers. There is no DAO treasury or token-voted spending of the kind DeFi protocols run; ecosystem funding flows through the Avalanche Foundation. The 2024 Avalanche9000 (Etna) upgrade — which restructured L1s to run their own gas tokens and cut C-Chain fees by roughly an order of magnitude — went through validator signaling followed by a mandatory client upgrade, a model that works because the validator set is still relatively aligned.
Custom chains fragment liquidity and users across many small networks.
A permissioned chain does not inherit the security of the public network by default.
Institutional adoption is slow and often stays at pilot stage.
Validator economics depend on staking requirements that governance and protocol changes can lower.
Competition from Cosmos appchains, OP Stack chains and Polygon CDK for the same customers.
The primary network splits workloads: the X-Chain handles UTXO-style asset transfers, the P-Chain manages staking and validator sets, and the C-Chain is the EVM where most DeFi lives. Recent upgrades also let independent L1s run their own gas tokens instead of AVAX, which diversifies fee demand away from AVAX — good for app chains, a real dilution consideration for AVAX holders.
They are independent blockchains — formerly subnets — that run their own execution and can choose their validator sets, while optionally deriving security from the primary network. Gaming and institution-focused chains use them for customization without congestion. The honest assessment: L1s diversify Avalanche's usage but can also siphon activity off the C-Chain, so network-level fee demand and chain-level activity are no longer the same number.
Last verified:
Avalanche · avax.network · primary source
The project's official site, retrieved on the date shown, supporting how it describes itself. It does not establish supply, governance or issuance mechanics.
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