Ava Labs launches blockchain testnet for Avalanche protocol

Although you might try to find information on Ava Labs, their twitter account is inactive and their website is as well, yet recently CoinDesk wrote about their announcement to open up their blockchain network backed by a new consensus algorithm.

According to CoinDesk Ava Labs launched a private testnet of their technology at Token Summit, one of the many conferences taking place during Blockchain Week NYC. Ava released the code to their launch partners, who will be able to comb through it, battle-test it, and play around with it for the first time. The code will not be completely open sourced quite yet, as Ava Labs founder and Cornell professor Emin Gun Sirer told CoinDesk. Once the code has been “scrutinized” further, a public version of the testnet will be opened up for wider use.

Backing the effort is the $6 million that Ava Labs raised in February during a previously undisclosed funding round, when it won support from notable names in the venture capital and cryptocurrency spaces. These include Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain, former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, Metastable, Initialized and Ramtin Naimi of Abstract Ventures.

Ava blockchain network is based on consensus protocols that are more energy efficient and serve the same purpose as proof of work. He told CoinDesk in the article, “We already have something that works and want to show people who are interested in it. This third approach combines the best of both worlds,” he said. He added that Ava is faster and more scalable, “allowing us to open up a new level of decentralization.”

It boils down to this: in all blockchain platforms launched thus far, all the nodes have to agree on certain criteria. All nodes utilize the same “scripting language” for smart contracts, for example. Ava, by contrast, offers a “heterogeneous network,” allowing nodes across the system to have different properties. This essentially means that the platform allows different groups in the network to “plug-and-play” different features.

Sirer explains, “Ava has an interoperable framework, but then you have smaller and smaller universes of your own that have minimum properties.”