Ava Labs, the blockchain startup responsible for the research and development of smart contracts platform Avalanche has introduced Core, “a free, non-custodial wallet engineered specifically for applications on Avalanche, including subnets and the next generation of Web3 projects.” 

What is Avalanche ($AVAX)?

Below is a brief description of Avalanche from its developer documentation:

“Avalanche is an open-source platform for launching decentralized applications and enterprise blockchain deployments in one interoperable, highly scalable ecosystem. Avalanche is the first decentralized smart contracts platform built for the scale of global finance, with near-instant transaction finality. Ethereum developers can quickly build on Avalanche as Solidity works out-of-the-box.

“A key difference between Avalanche and other decentralized networks is the consensus protocol. Over time, people have come to a false understanding that blockchains have to be slow and not scalable. The Avalanche protocol employs a novel approach to consensus to achieve its strong safety guarantees, quick finality, and high-throughput without compromising decentralization.

“AVAX is the native token of Avalanche. It’s a hard-capped, scarce asset that is used to pay for fees, secure the platform through staking, and provide a basic unit of account between the multiple subnets created on Avalanche. 1 nAVAX is equal to 0.000000001 AVAX.“

Avalanche is being developed by Ava Labs, a blockchain startup founded in Brooklyn, New York in 2018 by Professor Emin Gün Sirer (CEO), who does computer science research at Cornell University, Kevin Sekniqi (COO), and Ted Yin (Chief Protocol Architect).

The Core Browser Extension and Mobile Wallet

In a blog post published n March 22, Ava Labs said that Core, which will available in the form of a desktop browser extension as well a mobile app, will “expand the high-powered, streamlined tools built to help users keep pace with the Avalanche public blockchain and the growth of apps on it.”

The Core browser extension should be available by the end of this month, and the Core mobile app is expected to launch in early Q2 2022.

The blog post went to say that Avalanche has “a significant number of ‘power users’ who want a Wallet experience that is optimized to harness the speed of Avalanche, and extended functionality that is coming with the dawn of application-specific chains empowered by Subnet technology.”

Nick Mussallem, Head of Product at Ava Labs, said:

“Core is not just a wallet. It’s a curated, Web3 operating system that combines secure wallet architecture with technology not found in any other wallet. It is the culmination of extensive user and product research to understand how we can facilitate mass-adoption of Web3 systems and applications with a smooth, user-friendly experience that has never been seen before.“

The most interesting feature of Core is “native bridging functionality, which enables users to directly access the Avalanche Bridge” (apparently, such a feature has never been available for a browser extension wallet).

The Avalanche Bridge, which was launched in July 2021, is “the most popular Ethereum-connected bridge by Total Value Locked (‘TVL’),” which was above $6B as of March 22.

A few other Core features that will be available in both the web and the mobile versions are:

  • “Ledger-enabled — compatible with industry-leading hardware wallet”
  • “Swap — swap between hundreds of tokens directly from the wallet (powered by ParaSwap)”
  • “Buy — buy AVAX directly from the wallet (powered by MoonPay)”

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.

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Featured Image by “_anaposa_” via Pixabay