Coinbase Cloud, which “provides web3 APIs, services, and infrastructure to power the next generation of software builders”, is “launching a suite of blockchain infrastructure solutions and services for the growing Avalanche ecosystem.”

What is Avalanche ($AVAX)?

Below is a brief description of smart contracts platform 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).

What Is Coinbase Cloud?

Coinbase Cloud allows builders to “get started with the APIs and infrastructure that power Coinbase”. Here is what you get:

  • Wallet: “Link dapps to Coinbase Wallet”
  • Commerce: “Accept and manage secure crypto payments for your business”
  • Exchange & Pro: “Place orders, track market data, and more”
  • Rosetta: “Standardize integrations between blockchains and crypto services”
  • Query & Transact (QT): “Easily access data and transact with secure, managed read/write nodes”
  • Participate: “Run nodes to secure networks and earn participatory rewards”

Coinbase Cloud’s Support for Avalanche

Here is what Coinbase’s blog post. which was published yesterday (March 22), had to say about Avalanche:

“Avalanche is a high-speed smart contract platform with near-instant finality and EVM compatibility. Developers can deploy their Ethereum applications on Avalanche’s C-Chain or deploy custom-built blockchains as a subnet. Avalanche has seen accelerated growth in 2021 since its launch in 2020, reaching new highs in active addresses, transactions, and total value locked. A number of high-profile projects such as Curve, Aave, and DeFi Kingdoms expanded into Avalanche alongside native projects like Trader Joe, BENQI, and Crabada.“

The blog post went on to explain how Coinbase Cloud aims to make it “easier and faster for developers to build innovative applications and unlock new use cases.”

First, it now provides “a public validator that lets delegators easily and securely stake their AVAX.” Delegators will “need a minimum of 25 AVAX to stake, plus funds to cover the gas fees.” Furthermore, people who wish to “run their own dedicated validators on Avalanche” can do so by using Coinbase Cloud’s Participate product.

Second, Coinbase Wallet SDK “empowers developers to expand their app’s reach to millions of Coinbase users, providing easy access to the Avalanche ecosystem via Coinbase Wallet.” Coinbase Wallet “offers users built-in fiat onramps to buy AVAX from Coinbase, providing users an easy start with Avalanche.” It is worth noting that Coinbase Wallet “offers first-class support for Avalanche C-Chain and the Fuji testnet, as well as EVM-compatible subnets, ensuring that any EVM-compatible application runs seamlessly and reliably through Coinbase Wallet.”

Third, Coinbase Cloud is updating its Query & Transact infrastructure to “empower developers to easily access data from the Avalanche blockchain,” which will simply “building dapps such as wallets, exchanges, data aggregators, and blockchain analytics solutions.” Once this is available, developers will be able to “customize their Query & Transact read/write infrastructure via the Coinbase Cloud web interface to meet their needs.” The web interface will allow them to “configure who can access the node infrastructure, and distribute their nodes across four geographic regions and two cloud providers to serve traffic globally with low latencies.”

Comments by Coinbase Cloud and Ava Labs

Joe Lallouz, head of product at Coinbase Cloud, had this to say:

“We couldn’t be more excited to work with the Avalanche team to empower builders and participants. Avalanche is contributing to building a more vibrant and accessible Web3 economy, and we are looking forward to working with them to help the network grow and scale.“

And Jay Kurahashi-Sofue, VP of Marketing at Ava Labs, said:

“We are thrilled to be working with Coinbase Cloud. The Coinbase Cloud team offers the technical expertise, security best practices, and deep understanding of protocols that will make them one of the important contributors to Avalanche. We are excited for what’s to come and to build the Web3 future with Coinbase Cloud.”

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.

Image Credit

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