A grant has been signed to add support for Avalanche in the Ledger hardware wallet.
Nicolas Lemaitre announced, “I just got the news the Avalanche-X grant has been signed today for the implementation for the ledger.”
The date of delivery is October 13, 2020.
The grant to support Avalanche on Ledger hardware was listed on Avalanche-X, an accelerator that provides resources and funding for developers building on Avalanche.
The AVAX token sale starts on July 8 on a website run by AVA Labs, but which exchanges will list AVAX after the sale?
Back in November 2019, Emin Gün Sirer mentioned that AVA Labs was talking to a few exchanges, and pointed out that Coinbase was evaluating Avalanche.
In a blog post in September 2019, Coinbase said they were exploring support for several new assets, including Avalanche. Coinbase and AVA Labs share common investors including a16z and Polychain Capital.
AVA Labs is based in New York, and if they wanted an initial listing on a U.S. based exchange, top options would include Coinbase, Gemini, and Kraken.
On the other hand, the Avalanche Foundation is based in Singapore, and the foundation and its affiliates will be conducting the public sale.
As recently as a few weeks ago [1, 2], AVA Labs still hoped to use AVA as the name and ticker of Avalanche’s native token.
However, Binance-affiliated Travala already has a token named AVA, and that seems to have partially influenced the decision to rebrand Avalanche’s token to AVAX.
It is reasonable to expect that discussions occurred between AVA Labs and Travala or Binance over the ticker symbol. Would the ticker dilemma have any influence on the choice of initial exchanges for AVAX?
AVA Labs team members have said AVAX will be available as soon as possible after the public sale on a top tier exchange. We don’t know which one it will be, but Coinbase is certainly a top contender.
Regardless, given the significant interest around the AVAX public sale, it seems likely that many exchanges will seek to add support for AVAX.
AVA Labs CEO Emin Gün Sirer talked about non-fungible tokens (NFTs), assets, and collectibles on Avalanche in a series of comments on Telegram.
“Personally, I’m really excited about this pic:,” Sirer stated, followed by an image of the AVA Wallet with sections for NFTs and collectibles alongside fungible assets.
Non-fungible tokens are a special type of digital token representing something unique. For example, NFTs can represent property titles or rare art.
NFTs contrast with currency tokens like AVAX, which are fungible and interchangeable.
Sirer went on to say:
We have uses for NFTs that go far beyond what others have done.
In additional comments, Sirer continued to praise the possibilities offered by NFTs:
NFTs have a huge role to play in DeFi! They aren’t just for rare pepes.
NFTs are pretty amazing and we haven’t seen enough of their potential explored.
In a livestream yesterday Sirer also discussed entirely new kinds of assets, revolutionizing Wall Street, and all the value that is not in blockchain form yet.
It is clear that Sirer sees huge potential for NFTs on the Avalanche network representing a variety of assets.
AVA Labs CEO Emin Gün Sirer discussed the future of Avalanche in a livestream with Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov on June 26.
We have new digital asset types, some built around oracle information, some entirely new kinds of assets that nobody has ever thought about before.
Sirer revealed the next version of the network will be called Everest, following the current network named Denali.
On July 8, there will be a public sale for the AVAX token, and Emin said mainnet will launch at around that time if all goes well.
Ava Labs has lots of exciting things to open up to the world, according to Sirer:
Lots of exciting solutions are coming in the identity space, in the exchange DEX (decentralized exchange) space, in tokens of all kinds, NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), and so forth on top of Avalanche. These are all in the pipeline and I’m really excited to see them.
Sirer also described the improvements Avalanche can bring to Wall Street:
We can revolutionize what Wall Street does. We can revolutionize how people buy assets, how they trade them. We can bring wealth to a much broader range of people around the globe. And this is what keeps me going through all this.
Near the end of the livestream, Sirer summarized his goal for the future:
In five to ten years what I would like to do is to have completely redone the financial infrastructure for the globe. Nothing less.
Sirer explained that crypto is not a zero sum game. There’s a lot of value not in blockchain form yet, and he’d like to bring it to a fully functioning, fast, secure platform like Avalanche.
Kevin Sekniqi, co-founder and COO of AVA Labs, is betting on AVAX becoming the global reserve currency.
Amidst a busy day fending off a question-wielding mob after the AVAX token sale announcement, AVA Labs team members took a well-deserved break to ponder world domination.
Sekniqi stated, “I’m betting on this being global reserve currency. Selling any would be silly if this becomes acceptable tender.”
Echoing a sentiment shared by many cryptocurrency enthusiasts, Sekniqi went on to say, “It’s not about USD. What’s USD if this becomes legal tender? I would never care about USD.”
Nicolas Lemaitre, a general manager at AVA Labs, may have kicked off the dialog by saying he’s not going to sell AVAX “until we reach the full potential.”
It is reassuring to see AVA Labs team members eating their own dogfood. We are digging in, too, and so far Avalanche is delicious.
Update: AVAX token sale details were changed since this article was published. Please see the newer article describing the changes. Original article below.
We scoured the Avanet for you and collected the most interesting details about the AVAX public token sale.
Avalanche raised $12 million in an AVAX private token sale referred to as Staking Round #1.
Investors included Galaxy Digital, Bitmain, Initialized Capital, NGC Ventures, Dragonfly Capital, and dozens of other individuals.
The private sale of 24 million AVAX tokens occurred in May 2020 and participants paid $0.50 per AVAX token.
This latest private sale follows a seed sale in February 2019 in which investors paid approximately $0.33 per AVAX token for 18 million tokens.
The AVAX tokens from the seed sale and private sale are locked up for one year after mainnet launch.
A public sale of AVAX tokens will start on July 8, 2020. In the public sale, up to 12 million AVAX tokens will be available for $0.50 per token (one year lockup) or $0.85 per token (no lockup).
AVA Labs released official information about the AVAX token sale.
The AVA Labs FAQ and the AVA Report FAQ about the AVAX token sale have been updated.
AVA Report will post individual articles with the most interesting news and details about the AVAX token sale.
The requirements for participating in the $AVAX public sale have been published on the AVA Labs support website.
All U.S. investors must be accredited investors.
Non-U.S. investors may face similar requirements, depending on their jurisdiction:
For non-US Persons, participation may be limited to qualified investors or similar designation, as defined by such investors’ country or region.
Additional $AVAX token sale details are likely coming soon. In the meantime, AVA Report has an ongoing list of frequently asked questions and answers about the $AVAX token sale.
AVA is rebranding to Avalanche and $AVAX. AVA Labs revealed the new naming conventions for various components of the Avalanche ecosystem in a Medium post.
As part of the identity update, the names of several sub-projects and social channels are changing as well.
According to the Medium post, the name changes will consolidate identities and simplify the brand.