Avalanche (blockchain platform)

Last updated
Avalanche
Avalanche logo without text.png
Icon of Avalanche
Denominations
CodeAVAX
Development
Original author(s) Emin Gün Sirer, Kevin Sekniqi, Maofan “Ted” Yin
White paper https://www.avalabs.org/whitepapers
Initial release23 September 2020;4 years ago (2020-09-23)
Code repository https://github.com/ava-labs/
Development statusActive
Written in Go, TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, Vue
Developer(s) Ava Labs
Source modelOpen source
Ledger
Block explorer https://explorer.avax.network/
Website
Website https://avax.network/

Avalanche is a decentralized, open-source proof-of-stake blockchain with smart contract functionality. AVAX is the native cryptocurrency of the platform.

Contents

History

Avalanche was conceptualized as a consensus protocol that operates efficiently in a network of unreliable machines, addressing both crash-faults and Byzantine faults. [1] The foundations of Avalanche were first shared in May 2018 through the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) by a pseudonymous group known as "Team Rocket". [2]

Avalanche was later developed by researchers from Cornell University, led by Emin Gün Sirer and doctoral students Maofan "Ted" Yin and Kevin Sekniqi. [3] After the initial release phase, they founded a startup technology company to develop a blockchain network that would meet finance industry requirements. [4] [5] [3] In March, 2020, the AVA codebase, part of the Developer Accelerator Program or AVA DAP) for the Avalanche consensus protocol, was released as open-source and made publicly available. [6]

In September 2021, the Ava labs foundation secured a $230 million from a consortium including Polychain Capital and Three Arrows Capital through the purchase of the AVAX cryptocurrency. [7]

In November 2021, following an agreement with Deloitte to improve U.S. disaster-relief funding, the Avalanche blockchain entered the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. [8]

In August 2022, the whistleblower group "Crypto Leaks" published a report alleging that Ava Labs had entered secret agreements with the Roche Freedmen law firm with the intent to legally undermine Avalanche's competitors. Emin Gün Sirer, the CEO of Ava Labs, denied any involvement in illegal or unethical dealings with Roche Freedmen law firm. [9]

In January 2023, a partnership was announced between Avalanche and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to improve Avalanche's infrastructure and decentralized application ecosystem. [10] Arkham Intelligence also announced a partnership with Avalanche, allowing Arkham users to analyze the activities of wallets and entities within the Avalanche ecosystem.

Design

AVAX

In September, 2020, the company issued on X-Chain its native token Avax. [11] [12]

Protocol

The protocol has four basic interrelated mechanisms that compose structural support of the consensus tool. These four mechanisms are Slush, Snowflake, Snowball, and Avalanche. By using randomized sampling and metastability to ascertain and persist transactions, it represents a new protocol family. Although the original paper focused on a single protocol, namely Avalanche, it implicitly introduced a broad spectrum of voting-based, or quorum-based consensus protocols, called the Snow family. [2] While Avalanche is a single instantiation, the Snow family seems to be able to generalize all quorum-based voting protocols for replica control. Unlike prior quorum-based work, the Snow family enables arbitrarily parametrizable failure probability at the quorum intersection level. Standard quorum-based protocols define this failure probability to be precisely zero, but by introducing errors in the quorum intersection, a larger set of consensus protocol designs is available. [13]

Background

Consensus protocols are the basis for the state machine replication problem, which aims to enable a set of machines to achieve agreement over a network even when a subset of the machines are corrupted. There are two major families of consensus protocols to date - classical consensus and Nakamoto consensus protocols. [14] The first achieves consensus through quorums, thus requiring voting. Famous instantiations of this are Paxos (in the crash-fault-tolerant environment) and PBFT [15] in the Byzantine-fault tolerant case. These protocols achieve agreement in a similar operation to a parliament: a proposal (transaction) is proposed and voted on to be accepted or rejected. If sufficient votes cast by the various replicas are accumulated (typically collected through elected leader replica), then a quorum is achieved, and thus agreement.

The second family, pioneered by Satoshi Nakamoto and Bitcoin is that of the Nakamoto consensus. Unlike quorum-based protocols, machines operating an instance of Nakamoto consensus achieve agreement on transactions by downloading the longest chain (typically called a fork). In Bitcoin, the longest chain is verified by ensuring that it is the one with the highest degree of work (or proof of work). Snow, while quorum-based, seems to be a universal generalization of all quorum-based protocols. Unlike prior work which requires that quorums be deterministic, i.e. the failure probability is precisely zero, Avalanche loosens this requirement, thus enabling quorum-based protocols to estimate global network state with errors. [13]

Assumptions

While the Snow family can be theoretically generalized to all classes of assumptions that quorum-based protocols have previously made, the formalization paper analyzes Avalanche under an asynchronous network in the Byzantine setting. [16] [15] [17] The assumptions are as follows:

Processors

Network

Consensus

The Avalanche consensus algorithm is a unique approach to achieving consensus in various blockchain networks. It utilizes a randomized voting system to quickly confirm transactions, achieve high throughput, and reduce the risk of splits. This approach also allows for the creation of subnets, which can operate independently with their own validators and parameters. [18]

The consensus mechanism also involves a set of sub-protocols, including Avalanche-X, Avalanche-C, and Avalanche-P. [18]

Safety and liveness properties

The Snow family generalizes the typical definitions of safety and liveness encountered in quorum-based protocols. For Avalanche specifically, these properties are:

Agreement (or consistency, or safety)
If any node (or machine) finalizes a value v, no other node will finalize another value u that conflicts with v with probability higher than Ɛ.
Termination (or liveness)
If network resumes synchronous operation, then all nodes will achieve agreement.

Avalanche, like other asynchronous networks, is not guaranteed to terminate and thus does not have the liveness property, during asynchrony. Like Paxos, Avalanche's goal is to ensure fault tolerance and it guarantees safety under asynchrony, but not liveness. This is in contrast to Nakamoto consensus, which guarantees liveness, and not safety under asynchrony. [15]

See also

Related Research Articles

A Byzantine fault is a condition of a system, particularly a distributed computing system, where a fault occurs such that different symptoms are presented to different observers, including imperfect information on whether a system component has failed. The term takes its name from an allegory, the "Byzantine generals problem", developed to describe a situation in which, to avoid catastrophic failure of a system, the system's actors must agree on a strategy, but some of these actors are unreliable in such a way as to cause other (good) actors to disagree on the strategy and they may be unaware of the disagreement.

A fundamental problem in distributed computing and multi-agent systems is to achieve overall system reliability in the presence of a number of faulty processes. This often requires coordinating processes to reach consensus, or agree on some data value that is needed during computation. Example applications of consensus include agreeing on what transactions to commit to a database in which order, state machine replication, and atomic broadcasts. Real-world applications often requiring consensus include cloud computing, clock synchronization, PageRank, opinion formation, smart power grids, state estimation, control of UAVs, load balancing, blockchain, and others.

In computer science, state machine replication (SMR) or state machine approach is a general method for implementing a fault-tolerant service by replicating servers and coordinating client interactions with server replicas. The approach also provides a framework for understanding and designing replication management protocols.

Paxos is a family of protocols for solving consensus in a network of unreliable or fallible processors. Consensus is the process of agreeing on one result among a group of participants. This problem becomes difficult when the participants or their communications may experience failures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cryptocurrency</span> Digital currency not reliant on a central authority

A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. It has, from a financial point of view, grown to be its own asset class. However, on the contrary to other asset classes like equities or commodities, sectors have not been officially defined as of yet, though abstract versions of them exist.

Proof-of-stake (PoS) protocols are a class of consensus mechanisms for blockchains that work by selecting validators in proportion to their quantity of holdings in the associated cryptocurrency. This is done to avoid the computational cost of proof-of-work (POW) schemes. The first functioning use of PoS for cryptocurrency was Peercoin in 2012, although the scheme, on the surface, still resembled a POW.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ethereum</span> Open-source blockchain computing platform

Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second only to bitcoin in market capitalization. It is open-source software.

A blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of records (blocks) that are securely linked together via cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data. Since each block contains information about the previous block, they effectively form a chain, with each additional block linking to the ones before it. Consequently, blockchain transactions are irreversible in that, once they are recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without altering all subsequent blocks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cardano (blockchain platform)</span> Public blockchain platform

Cardano is a public blockchain platform. It is open-source and decentralized, with consensus achieved using proof of stake. It can facilitate peer-to-peer transactions with its internal cryptocurrency, ADA.

Emin Gün Sirer is a Turkish-American computer scientist. Sirer developed the Avalanche Consensus protocol underlying the Avalanche blockchain platform, and is currently the CEO and co-founder of Ava Labs. He was an associate professor of computer science at Cornell University, and is the former co-director of The Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Smart Contracts (IC3). He is known for his contributions to peer-to-peer systems, operating systems and computer networking.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IOTA (technology)</span> Open-source distributed ledger and cryptocurrency

IOTA is an open-source distributed ledger and cryptocurrency designed for the Internet of things (IoT). It uses a directed acyclic graph to store transactions on its ledger, motivated by a potentially higher scalability over blockchain based distributed ledgers. IOTA does not use miners to validate transactions, instead, nodes that issue a new transaction on the network must approve two previous transactions. Transactions can therefore be issued without fees, facilitating microtransactions. The network currently achieves consensus through a coordinator node, operated by the IOTA Foundation. As the coordinator is a single point of failure, the network is currently centralized.

Hashgraph is a distributed ledger technology that has been described as an alternative to blockchains.The hashgraph technology is currently patented, is used by the public ledger Hedera, and there is a grant to implement the patent as a result of the Apache 2.0's Grant of Patent License so long as the implementation conforms to the terms of the Apache license. The native cryptocurrency of the Hedera Hashgraph system is HBAR.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tron (cryptocurrency)</span> Blockchain computing platform

TRON is a decentralized, blockchain-based operating system with smart contract functionality, proof-of-stake principles as its consensus algorithm and a cryptocurrency native to the system, known as Tronix (TRX). It was established in March 2014 by Justin Sun and since 2017 has been overseen and supervised by the TRON Foundation, a non-profit organization in Singapore, established in the same year. It is open-source software.

Paxos Trust Company is a New York–based financial institution and technology company specializing in blockchain. The company's product offerings include a cryptocurrency brokerage service, asset tokenization services, and settlement services. ItBit, a bitcoin exchange run by Paxos, was the first bitcoin exchange to be licensed by the New York State Department of Financial Services, granting the company the ability to be the custodian and exchange for customers in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ouroboros (protocol)</span> Blockchain protocol

Ouroboros is a family of proof-of-stake consensus protocols used in the Cardano and Polkadot blockchains. It can run both permissionless and permissioned blockchains.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chia (cryptocurrency)</span> Cryptocurrency

Chia is a cryptocurrency where mining is based on the amount of hard disk storage space devoted to it rather than processing power as with proof of work cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. The platform was created by a California based company called Chia Network Inc. The Chia Network was founded in 2017 by American computer programmer Bram Cohen, the author of the BitTorrent protocol. In May 2021, Chia Network raised a $61 million investment, valuing the company at about $500 million. The same month, the company announced plans to conduct an IPO before the end of 2021. As of 2023, Chia had filed a draft registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission towards an IPO.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solana (blockchain platform)</span> Public blockchain platform

Solana is a blockchain platform which uses a proof-of-stake mechanism to provide smart contract functionality. Its native cryptocurrency is SOL.

ICON is a decentralized, open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality. ICX is the native cryptocurrency of the platform.

Nervos Network is a proof-of-work blockchain platform which consists of multiple blockchain layers that are designed for different functions. The native cryptocurrency of this layer is called CKB. Smart contracts and decentralized applications can be deployed on the Nervos blockchain. The Nervos Network was founded in 2018.

References

  1. ↑ "Avalanche Documentation". GitHub.
  2. 1 2 Rocket, Team (16 May 2018). "Snowflake to Avalanche: A Novel Metastable Consensus Protocol Family for Cryptocurrencies".
  3. 1 2 "Blockchain startup raises a quick $42M in first sale". Cornell Chronicle.
  4. ↑ "A Cornell University Crypto Professor Is Launching His Own Coin". Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg. 16 May 2019.
  5. ↑ Leising, Mathew (April 17, 2020). "New Startup Aims to Prove Blockchain Is Fast Enough for Finance". Bloomberg. Retrieved 27 August 2020.
  6. ↑ "AVA Labs releases codebase for AVA blockchain platform". Enterprise Times. 17 March 2020.
  7. ↑ "Avalanche Raises $230 Million From Sale of Surging Crypto Token". Bloomberg. Bloomberg Law. 16 September 2021.
  8. ↑ "Avalanche Surges Into Crypto Top 10 on Deloitte Deal". Bloomberg Law. 22 November 2021.
  9. ↑ "Avalanche Crypto News: What's Going On With The Scandal Surrounding AVAX?". forbes.com.
  10. ↑ Melinek, Jacquelyn (11 January 2023). "AWS partners with Avalanche to Scale Blockchain Solutions for Enterprises, Governments". TechCrunch. Retrieved 7 February 2023.
  11. ↑ "Blockchain Startup Ava Labs Makes Crypto Veteran Top Lawyer". Bloomberg Law.
  12. ↑ "Overview | Avalanche Docs". docs.avax.network. Retrieved 2021-12-19.
  13. 1 2 Tanana, Dmitry (2019). "Avalanche blockchain protocol for distributed computing security". 2019 IEEE International Black Sea Conference on Communications and Networking (BlackSea Com). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. pp. 1–3. doi:10.1109/BlackSeaCom.2019.8812863. ISBN   978-1-7281-3234-1. S2CID   201649683.
  14. ↑ Roy, Sangita; Shyamasundar, Rudrapatna K. (2023). "An Analysis of Hybrid Consensus in Blockchain Protocols for Correctness and Progress". In Atluri, Vijayalakshmi; Ferrara, Anna Lisa (eds.). Data and Applications Security and Privacy XXXVII. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 13942. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. pp. 404–412. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-37586-6_24. ISBN   978-3-031-37586-6.
  15. 1 2 3 4 5 Castro, Miguel (February 1999). "Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2006-08-31.
  16. ↑ Yin (June 2019). "Scalable and Probabilistic Leaderless BFT Consensus through Metastability". arXiv: 1906.08936 [cs.DC].
  17. ↑ Chitra, Tarun; Chitra, Uthsav (2019). "Committee Selection is More Similar Than You Think: Evidence from Avalanche and Stellar". arXiv: 1904.09839 [cs.DC].
  18. 1 2 "Avalanche Platform | Avalanche Dev Docs". docs.avax.network. Retrieved 2023-05-02.
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