The official Avalanche Blog has moved to a new home. Everything you need to know from the Avalanche Foundation, including Engineering, Platform, DeFi, Institutions, Gaming, NFTs and Enterprise News.

Head to the Avalanche Blog to find out more: https://www.avax.network/blog

The monthly Snow Report is also a great resource to keep up to date on the latest news across the Avalanche ecosystem.

Subscribe to the Snow Report: https://www.avax.network/email/subscription-form/subscribe-snow-report

Read the past Snow Report editions: https://www.avax.network/snow-report-archive

The Official Avalanche Blog Has Moved! was originally published in Avalanche on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The L1, Beam, will streamline game deployment for developers — and aim to shape the future of Web3 gaming.

Merit Circle DAO, a gaming DAOs with 60+ partner games, will launch Beam, an Avalanche L1 tailored specifically to Web3 gaming development and gameplay. At or shortly after launch, Beam will offer existing Merit Circle products plus extensive new gaming-focused tooling, an NFT marketplace (Sphere), and three new games. Merit Circle plans for Beam to support dozens of Avalanche games.

Beam will be an independent, sovereign network catering to the range of gamers and game developers. Three of the first games slated for release on Beam are Trial Xtreme, Walker World, and Hash Rush.

Trial Xtreme is a thrilling racing game with 250M+ worldwide downloads. The flagship offering from the acclaimed Gameplay Galaxy, a studio aiming to develop a decentralized competitive gaming ecosystem, will launch down the road on Beam.

Powered by Unreal Engine 5, Walker World is a massive interoperable open-world experience where players and creators come together to own and build on their land, cooperate in heated game modes, and explore a vast universe filled with shared rewards.

Hash Rush, a pioneering Web3 MMORTS game, where players can explore the vastness of the Hermeian Galaxy. Gamers can build a base, marshall resources, enhance their strategies by recruiting heroes, and attempt to defeat enemies in epic battles.

In addition to games, Beam will have offerings allowing players to do more with their gaming assets and developers to launch games more seamlessly. For instance, an AMM will allow players to swap tokens linked to Beam dApps. Sphere, an NFT marketplace that devs can lego into their games, will enable players to buy in-game assets. Beam will also support native Avalanche SDKs, APIs, wallets, bridges, and analytics tools.

Merit Circle says that it chose Avalanche for its speed, quick settlement, security, and the open-ended possibilities that Avalanche L1s unlock for games and game developers.

“Beam is meant for gamers and game developers alike: to take away the complexity and still offer true ownership and easy control of that ownership,” said Brandon Aaskov, CTO Merit Circle DAO. “To get there, we’re incredibly excited to work with Ava Labs who have proven that scaling via Avalanche works effectively and efficiently. To keep transactions flowing and fees low, we’re optimizing Beam specifically for game-heavy workloads so that the ‘hard stuff’ with on-chain operations becomes an afterthought for everyone but Merit Circle.”

More exciting info on Beam will be spawning soon.

This post is based on materials provided by Merit Circle DAO. For more information, visit Merit Circle’s website. Also, please read this important notice.

Merit Circle DAO to Launch Gaming Subnet with Tooling, Three Games, and Many More to Come was originally published in Avalanche on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Initial institutional partners include T. Rowe Price Associates, WisdomTree, Wellington Management, and Cumberland.

The Avalanche L1 testnet in the Evergreen program, called “Spruce,” has been launched with an initial cohort of institutional partners that includes T. Rowe Price Associates, WisdomTree, Wellington Management, and Cumberland. Participating institutions will be using Spruce as a testnet for a variety of applications and assets to measure the benefits of on-chain trade execution and settlement.

“Participating in the Avalanche Spruce testnet presents a valuable opportunity to deepen our understanding and analysis of smart contract technology and the potential applications of public, permissioned blockchains in financial markets,” said Blue Macellari, Head of Digital Assets Strategy, T. Rowe Price Associates.

The Spruce testnet is meant to enable buy- and sell-side institutions to engage with public blockchain infrastructure in a low-risk, low barrier-to-entry manner. Using valueless tokens allows institutional participants to experience the full functionality of Avalanche’s L1 architecture without putting capital at risk.

Institutional partners will use DeFi applications on Spruce to execute foreign exchange (FX) and interest rate swaps, with other areas in active research and development. Future phases of Spruce will welcome additional third-party applications, assets, and processes, including the exploration of tokenized equity and credit issuance, trading, and fund management. Institutions will be key in providing ongoing feedback about Avalanche L1 architecture, integrations, and capabilities in order to ensure a successful and scalable mainnet implementation.

“We believe tokenization and blockchain will play an important role in financial services going forward,” said Will Peck, Head of Digital Assets, WisdomTree. “Avalanche Spruce provides an opportunity to further explore the potential efficiencies and benefits of on-chain trading and settlement with other financial institutions. We are looking forward to experimenting in this EVM-based testing environment.”

Upon onboarding, institutions’ wallets are issued non-transferable tokens (NTTs) indicating they’ve passed KYC/KYB checks; in addition, their wallet addresses are embedded in an allowlist, which monitors access at the chain level. Smart contract deployers who have integrated key infrastructure and applications also undergo the onboarding process for their activity on Spruce.

In a recent research report, executives from Uniswap Labs and Circle Internet Financial cited a 2022 BIS Triennial Survey indicating that “around one-third of deliverable FX turnover, around $2.2 trillion, is at risk on any given day, up from $1.9 trillion in 2019.” Potential benefits of on-chain FX and cross-border payments include payment vs payment transactions, atomic settlement, and reduced counterparty risk.

Said Mark Garabedian, Director, Digital Assets and Tokenization at Wellington Management:

“Avalanche L1s provide a potential settlement solution that enables financial transactions with enhanced operational efficiencies, reduced risks, and regulatory compliance without creating liquidity islands or reduced interoperability. We look forward to experimenting with this technology to determine its suitability for institutional workflows, and its potential to reduce costs thus adding value for our clients.”

Said John Wu, President of Ava Labs:

“This groundbreaking collaboration creates a secure, controlled, and exciting opportunity for the world’s financial institutions. We see Spruce, and more broadly, Avalanche Evergreen L1s, as a meaningful step in exploring the possibilities of digital finance.”

Spruce is a type of Avalanche L1s for institutional blockchain deployments. Avalanche L1s in the Evergreen program are EVM-based chains with a permissioned validator set and a custom gas token to power transactions. Ultimately, Spruce and Avalanche L1s aim to address many of the issues with permissioned DeFi precluding broader institutional adoption of public blockchain infrastructure.

Get in touch to launch your use case with Avalanche L1s, or to discuss further:

• Visit https://www.avax.com/evergreen
• Reach out to Morgan Krupetsky, Director of BD, Institutions & Capital Markets at Ava Labs: morgan.krupetsky@avalabs.org

About Avalanche

Website | Whitepapers | Twitter | Discord | GitHub | Documentation | Telegram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Reddit | YouTube

About Ava Labs

Ava Labs makes it simple to launch decentralized applications on Avalanche, the fast and secure smart contracts platform. We are empowering people to easily and freely digitize all the world’s assets on one open, programmable blockchain platform.

Ava Labs was founded by Cornell computer scientists who brought on talent from Wall Street to execute their vision. The company has received funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Initialized Capital, and Polychain Capital, with angel investments from Balaji Srinivasan and Naval Ravikant.

Website | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook

Financial Institutions Join Avalanche  Evergreen Subnet, ‘Spruce’, to Drive On-Chain Finance… was originally published in Avalanche on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Moongate, a platform aiming to revolutionize ticketing and membership by creating engaging, gamified, and immersive experiences through the use of dynamic NFTs, will be designing NFT campaigns for Avalanche developer Ava Labs. Moongate focuses on the “phygital,” meaning experiences giving the digital new dimensions of value in the physical world.

How exactly do Moongate NFTs shoot to drive further engagement?

Moongate’s NFTs allow event attendees to unlock or earn upgradable rewards and access based on real-life interactions. Moongate offers a no-code solution for businesses to easily create these NFTs and weave them in their events and other operations.

Moongate’s end-to-end platform is tailored to users of all crypto knowledge levels, from OG to relative newbie. Key features include email/social-based self-custodial wallets, support for cash payments, and tools to facilitate IRL integration. The platform also prioritizes post-NFT-minting management, opening the door to creative and engagement possibilities beyond those of Web2 ticketing and membership platforms.

With Moongate’s easy end-to-end solution and Avalanche’s speed, security, and reliability, the integration will enable businesses to launch NFT campaigns that drive engagement while providing a richer, more efficient ticketing and membership system.

For instance, Moongate and Ava Labs recently launched a concert showcasing an Avalanche Park X Ed Balloon series at Belasco Theater in Los Angeles. All of the roughly 1,000 concert attendees received a free Avalanche Park NFT upon arrival, which unlocked unique experiences, including a raffle via MynaSwap for a pair of rare shoes from Cool Kicks.

The event illustrates the potential of dynamic NFTs to create engaging, gamified, immersive experiences that can catalyze real-world interactions and revenue. Partnering with Ava Labs and building on Avalanche allows Moongate to stay at the forefront of innovation and continue driving NFT adoption in the event ticketing and membership industry.

Provided for informational purposes only, without representation, warranty or guarantee of any kind. None of this is as an endorsement by the Avalanche Foundation Limited, Ava Labs, Inc. or any of their respective subsidiaries or affiliates, nor is any of this investment or financial advice. Please review this Notice and conduct your own research to properly evaluate the risks and benefits of any project.

About Moongate

Moongate is building the underlying technology to drive the mass adoption of smart tickets and memberships. Through our platform, brands and businesses can easily create customized NFT digital assets that seamlessly integrates into real world operation. To date, we have worked with a broad range of conferences, F&B chains, retail brands, and hospitality groups with our technology implementation; our product has been used by tens of thousands of end users, and has proven to drive customer engagement and revenue.

Website | Twitter | Telegram | Linkedin | Email Us

About Avalanche

Website | Whitepapers | Twitter | Discord | GitHub | Documentation | Forum | Telegram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Reddit | YouTube

Moongate to Drive “Phygital” Experience with Dynamic Avalanche NFTs was originally published in Avalanche on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ava Labs has announced the launch of Avalanche Evergreen L1s, a suite of institutional blockchain deployments, customizations, and tooling designed to address company-specific and industry-wide requirements for financial services. Crucially, Avalanche L1s maintain the benefits of public network development while enabling particular features historically only possible within enterprise solutions.

“Thus far, financial institutions’ enterprise blockchain applications have been hindered by a walled-garden approach that, among other things, restricts liquidity and interoperability from initiative to initiative,” said Morgan Krupetsky, Director of Business Development for Institutions and Capital Markets, Ava Labs. “However, there continues to be a significant need for customization and control, particularly among institutional use cases. The Avalanche network ultimately offers a perfect synthesis of the strengths of public and private blockchains, which is why we’re so thrilled to debut Avalanche Evergreen.”

Institutions are easily able to launch their own Avalanche L1s for either research and development purposes or production-ready use cases as they continue exploring blockchain benefits around process efficiencies, transparency, composability, asset tokenization, and more. With Avalanche L1s, institutions can pursue their blockchain and digital asset strategies in private, permissioned chains with known and approved counterparties, while retaining the ability to communicate and interoperate with other L1s through Avalanche’s native communication protocol called Avalanche Warp Messaging (AWM). AWM provides a messaging layer that enables seamless on-chain asset swapping, data transfer, confirmations, and other types of intra- and inter-institutional communications without relying on third party intermediaries or bridges.

AVALANCHE L1s

Avalanche’s unique sovereign, custom L1 architecture can empower everyone from individual builders and teams, to institutions and government agencies, to launch custom blockchains optimized for their specific use case. Avalanche L1s are seamlessly interoperable with the broader Avalanche network, but isolate traffic to dedicated infrastructure securing the chain, enabling Avalanche to scale without limits. Currently the Avalanche network already boasts several EVM-based Avalanche L1 deployments on Mainnet and Testnet across industries and use cases, including DeFi, Gaming, NFTs, enterprises and institutions. A few examples include Intain— a tokenized Asset Backed Securities (ABS) administration application and marketplace; Dexalot — an on-chain central limit order book; and Deloitte — a platform for more efficient FEMA fund disbursements.

Get in touch to launch your use case with Avalanche L1s, or to discuss further

About Avalanche

Website | Whitepapers | Twitter | Discord | GitHub | Documentation | Telegram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Reddit | YouTube

About Ava Labs

Ava Labs makes it simple to launch decentralized applications on Avalanche, the fast and secure smart contracts platform. We are empowering people to easily and freely digitize all the world’s assets on one open, programmable blockchain platform.

Ava Labs was founded by Cornell computer scientists who brought on talent from Wall Street to execute their vision. The company has received funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Initialized Capital, and Polychain Capital, with angel investments from Balaji Srinivasan and Naval Ravikant.

Website | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook

Avalanche Launches ‘Evergreen’, Custom L1s for Institutional Blockchain Deployments was originally published in Avalanche on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Gunzilla Games, an independent AAA game studio, announced today the launch of GUNZ, an innovative and sustainable blockchain-based digital economy platform fully built on an Avalanche L1. This Avalanche L1 has been customized to enable seamless gameplay, utilize only in-game tokens for gas fees, and provide an intuitive, rewarding user experience for both Web3 and traditional gamers. Other gaming studios will be able to leverage the GUNZ SDK and white-label components, such as a built-in companion app, marketplace, and NFT minting engine, to build and launch their own projects on GUNZ.

Designed with the gaming community and blockchain enthusiasts in mind, GUNZ aims to give players the option to get involved in Play-to-Own mechanics by offering verifiable transparency. The platform will be first integrated into Gunzilla Games’ upcoming Battle Royale 2.0 game, Off The Grid (OTG).

OTG aims to revolutionize the Battle Royale genre by emphasizing storytelling and digital ownership, allowing players to influence both gameplay and narrative through their in-game decisions. GUNZ strives to be one of the first player-friendly crypto-economies in a AAA game, aiming to empower players by granting them complete ownership over their in-game items in the form of NFTs.

More projects building on GUNZ will be announced soon.

“Our partnership with Avalanche not only allows us to leverage its highly scalable and secure blockchain infrastructure but also ensures a seamless, low-latency gaming experience for our players,” explained Vlad Korolov, CEO and Co-Founder of Gunzilla Games, “By building GUNZ, we aim to revolutionize the gaming landscape with a transparent in-game asset management system by providing a number of market-standard features for game developers who are creating their economy on blockchain.”

Avalanche launched in September 2020, ushering in a new era for blockchains with near-instant transaction finality. Today, Avalanche supports 500+ applications and secures billions of dollars in value, all while having minimal climate impact. Avalanche also supports L1s like Gunz — custom, app-specific blockchains allowing the network to scale nearly infinitely.

The partnership between Gunzilla Games and Ava Labs, the main developer of Avalanche, is another great recent example of gaming leaders recognizing the power of Avalanche L1s to provide the best gaming experience.

“Gunzilla Games has ambitious plans to migrate the best of Web2 gaming to Web3 while delivering the top-tier quality gamers demand,” said Emin Gün Sirer, Founder and CEO of Ava Labs. “The Off The Grid L1 and Web3 publishing stack are amazing additions to the new wave of Avalanche games.”

To make sure you don’t miss any updates and for more information on Gunzilla, follow the studio on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

About Gunzilla Games

Founded in 2020, Gunzilla Games is an independent AAA developer working on next-generation Battle Royale games from three metropolitan locations: Frankfurt, Germany (HQ); Los Angeles, USA; and Kyiv, Ukraine. The company was co-founded by serial entrepreneur Vlad Korolov, CEO, and Alexander Zoll, CSO.

Gunzilla’s formidable team comes from various industry-leading studios and publishers, including Ubisoft, Electronic Arts (EA), Blizzard Entertainment, THQ, and more. Oscar-nominated screenwriter, director, and producer Neill Blomkamp joined Gunzilla as Chief Visionary Officer. In addition, the team features industry veterans such as Richard K. Morgan, the author of the Altered Carbon series, which has since been adapted into an award-winning Netflix show, and Timur Davidenko, who led the development of CryEngine as Technical Director and worked on Far Cry, Warface, and Crysis. Gunzilla is built on the desire to innovate and push the limits of the industry.

Gunzilla Launches AAA Shooter on Avalanche was originally published in Avalanche on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

SK Planet, one of South Korea’s largest information and communications technology platforms, will be launching a dedicated Avalanche L1, UPTN, which will act as a Web3 portal for SK Planet’s millions of users. The UPTN chain will serve as a foundation for digital collectibles, Web3 wallets, decentralized communities, and much more.

“Ava Labs is fully committed to supporting South Korea’s buyers and merchants as they explore the unique benefits of the Avalanche ecosystem,” said Emin Gün Sirer, CEO, Ava Labs. “We see this new partnership between Ava Labs, the Avalanche Foundation, and SK Planet as an incredible opportunity to not only meet South Korea’s enormous appetite for Web3 experiences, but expand what’s possible in 21st century e-commerce.”

UPTN will be integrated into SK Planet’s many popular services and apps, such as OKcashbag (OCB). OCB is the largest e-commerce loyalty program in Korea, membership of which comprises almost half of the South Korean population. OCB’s community will gain access to NFTs, unique community features, and dynamic membership benefits powered by the Avalanche protocol.

Ava Labs has been active in South Korea’s critical Web3 market for years, and the Avalanche blockchain’s explosive growth in the region has been fueled by partnerships — such as with SK Planet — as well as the country’s Web3-savvy population. According to research by Ava Labs, Avalanche’s brand recognition in the country skyrocketed 139% QoQ in Q4 ‘22.

SK Planet, a subsidiary of SK Square, offers e-commerce and digital marketing solutions, including some of South Korea’s most popular loyalty programs. Through collaborations with global partners like Ava Labs, SK Planet is committed to expanding its platforms not just in Asia, but other strategic markets globally.

“SK Planet plans to expand into new businesses and fields, and will be reborn as a global company that provides innovative information and communications technology powered by the Avalanche blockchain,” said Lee Han-Sang, CEO, SK Planet. “SK Planet will work closely with Avalanche to unlock synergies and offer differentiated benefits to our customers.”

Avalanche L1s empower everyone from individuals to enterprises to build custom, app-specific blockchains optimized for their specific use case. Avalanche L1s are seamlessly interoperable with the broader Avalanche network, but isolate traffic to dedicated infrastructure securing the chain, enabling Avalanche to scale without limits.

About SK Planet Co., Ltd.

Based in Seoul, Korea, SK Planet is a leading technology company that creates new value for businesses by leveraging data. On top of its expertise in marketing platforms and business solutions, the company offers differentiated value by collecting and analyzing over 130 million pieces of data from major services across SK Group. SK Planet enhances the productivity of operations in corporate clients with its marketing platforms — which include “OK Cashbag”, Korea’s largest integrated mileage service, and “Syrup”, an asset-management platform — as well as business solutions in a wide variety of areas, including IoT, media, and AI. For more information about SK Planet, visit www.skplanet.com/eng.

SK Planet Announces UPTN, South Korea’s Long-Awaited Web3 Ecosystem Built on Avalanche was originally published in Avalanche on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Developer Jomari Peterson has been building the future on Avalanche since its early days. He tends to juggle projects, like a lending platform, an auto-compounder, and a privacy-preserving protocol (to name a few), but Jomari believes his next dApp could be his biggest yet — and take DeFi to the mainstream with it.

Jomari first tried Avalanche after hearing about Pangolin. “I saw that it was proof-of-stake and was incredibly fast,” he said. “I said ‘oh snap, this is exactly what I’ve wanted to build on. This might just be the place for me.’”

Reflecting back from today, after countless hours developing on Avalanche, he knows his first instinct was right.

“As a dev, you want to be prepared not only for where things are, but where they’re going,” he said. “With Avalanche, you can be a first mover and launch a Rust or WASM VM to leverage the tooling from the platform. Whatever your tooling purposes, you can bring them to Avalanche and maximize your efficiency and effectiveness. That’s very valuable for developers.”

In Jomari’s experience, Avalanche can flex to his preferences and evolve as the goals of a project adapt to the long-term development of Web3. Couple that toolkit with Avalanche’s reliability, “academic rigor” underpinning the network, the ability of Ava Labs to “execute and support with marketing,” and you’ve got a hotbed for innovation.

“The tooling on Avalanche provides developers a robustness of opportunity,” he said. “It allows you to execute your vision faster, and on a chain with faster transaction speed and finality.”

Jomari seems to have a knack for skating to where the Web3 puck is going. These days, he’s developing two new projects.

The first is RITHM, a DAO helping users create and curate algorithmic art, including generative and AI art. Avalanche is the DAO’s home. DAO membership dues go toward purchasing NFTs and furthering the tech of the DAO’s forthcoming NFT-minting dApp. Jomari has a vision for the DAO, including potentially launching a “collaborative” chain down the road.

His second impending dApp is FiHub.

FiHub will help people navigate “the DeFi system through action-based, active discovery and learning.” Jomari said this forthcoming dApp will have a comprehensive dashboard, from which users can manage, track, and learn about digital assets. Education will be ongoing, as there will be real-time notifications, some triggered by on-chain data. He plans for users to earn rewards for participating in and learning about DeFi, including through algorithmically curated content.

His goal for FiHub: a friendly DeFi environment, one that might help appeal to the hundreds of millions of Web3 users that currently stick to CeFi.

Avalanche is helping Jomari build his vision of the future, and Jomari is helping write the future of Avalanche — which he believes is just beginning.

“The reason that I build in this space is so that I can affect change,” he said. “I believe that on Avalanche we’re building out the tools for the future. I think we’re just on the cusp of building the things that will empower the masses.”

For more on Jomari, start with his Twitter.

Developer Spotlight: Jomari Peterson Says His Biggest dApp is Yet to Come was originally published in Avalanche on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The unique program aims to spur Avalanche NFT growth through specialized mentorship, financial support, and DAO curation of Avalanche art.

The Avalanche Foundation has launched Avaissance, an initiative to support on-the-rise digital artists and drive Avalanche NFT ecosystem growth. Avaissance has two signature components: an Artist in Residence program (AIR) for 50+ artists, and the Mona Lisa Initiative (MLI), which is a digital art curation collaboration that will jump-start the next generation of Avalanche art.

Avaissance intends to bring a Renaissance to Avalanche NFTs, sparking artists and spurring the ecosystem’s momentum. Artists can already benefit enormously from Avalanche’s speed, reliability, and low fees, all of which make creating and collecting NFTs frictionless. Avaissance aims to help take Avalanche NFTs to yet another level.

Artist-in-Residence (AIR)

From now through April 28, artists of any skill level working in any digital medium can apply for AIR. The residency will be digital. Artists from across the world (with a few exceptions) can apply. The first cadre of 50+ residents will be announced in May.

AIR will give accepted artists a 6-month opportunity to pursue a personal creative project while receiving substantial funding, one-on-one mentorship, virtual workshop opportunities, and support from the Avalanche ecosystem. Artists can attend educational sessions tailored to helping them manage successful careers.

AIR’s one-hour virtual workshops will cover a range of subjects, such as marketing strategies and how to use digital tools. AIR artists will also gain networking opportunities. The program’s 50+ artists will each release one collection of work on Avalanche.

Mona Lisa Initiative (MLI)

For the other component of Avaissance, the Mona Lisa Initiative, the Avalanche Foundation will collaborate with DAOs’ curatorial teams, helping to cement the next generation of digital art.

The Foundation plans to gift Avalanche NFTs to pioneering art-focused DAOs, expanding the DAOs’ NFT collections. DAOs participating in the MLI curation will be announced soon. The priority will be collecting and highlighting work from up-and-coming Avalanche NFT artists.

Finally, the MLI will establish an Avalanche Permanent Collection.

How to Apply

Digital artists of all experience levels are invited to learn more, submit their portfolios, and apply for AIR. For more info (including on limitations), visit www.artonavalanche.com/avaissance.

Website | Whitepapers | Twitter | Discord | GitHub | Documentation | Telegram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Reddit | YouTube

The Avalanche Foundation Launches Avaissance, a Trailblazing NFT Initiative Featuring Artist… was originally published in Avalanche on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This fall, Eunice Jesang insured her whole maize crop for $.83. Eunice is a farmer in Kenya. She plants, tends her crop, and harvests when the time comes. She relies on the harvest for income, so spending $.83 to secure payment for her entire crop in the event of a climate-driven catastrophe provides financial protection that wasn’t there before. What makes it possible now? An insurance-like application built by the Lemonade Crypto Climate Coalition on Avalanche.

“This insurance product is built end-to-end on blockchain,” explained Roy Confino, head of strategy and operations at Lemonade. “It utilizes strategies that would be impossible with regular technology, with regular financial instruments. I don’t think it’s comparable to anything in the insurance space.”

The app is simple. Farmers get a quote on their phone. They pay, creating a policy. If weather conditions are bad and crops fail, farmers receive a sum.

Already, some 7,000 Kenyan farmers have obtained crop insurance through the program. Its protection comes at a time when farmers like Eunice Jesang are increasingly at risk due to the stronger, more erratic storms of climate change.

When crops fail, payment is automatic. No need to file claims.

“Just because it’s on-chain doesn’t mean it’s complicated,” Roy said.

Daniel Schreiber on Twitter: "Today at 13:39 East African Time, in Makeuni County, Kenya, Eunice Jesang paid $0.83 to insure her maize against crop failure. This was enabled by Lemonade Crypto Climate Coalition. #Insurance + #crypto at its most impactful. https://t.co/oKm4R0S32o https://t.co/6CuqmJDNvA pic.twitter.com/M9DMwdxDHW / Twitter"

Today at 13:39 East African Time, in Makeuni County, Kenya, Eunice Jesang paid $0.83 to insure her maize against crop failure. This was enabled by Lemonade Crypto Climate Coalition. #Insurance + #crypto at its most impactful. https://t.co/oKm4R0S32o https://t.co/6CuqmJDNvA pic.twitter.com/M9DMwdxDHW

The Lemonade Crypto Climate Coalition brings these principles to its Avalanche-powered initiative in Kenya with industry-leading partners. With expertise in their respective fields, Chainlink and DAOstack are also contributing on the blockchain end, while Lemonade, Etherisc, Hannover Re, and Pula are building highly accurate, fully automated crop insurance models — all working together to solve the challenges we know today.

The initiative was announced in March 2022 and initially funded primarily by The Lemonade Foundation, the nonprofit founded by digital insurance company Lemonade to effect exponential social and environmental impact through technology.

For the initiative, Roy and his team devised a program that uses Avalanche and on-chain infrastructure like Chainlink oracles to solve a problem that was previously deemed unsolvable. “In Kenya, less than 3% of people have insurance,” Roy said. “Farmers basically bear the risk alone. With blockchain, we can provide a platform to help pool that risk, and the right tool to do that is insurance.”

Before blockchain, the obstacle was cost. With traditional insurance and its tangle of brokers and agents, insuring small farmers where premiums are less than $10 a year doesn’t make financial sense. But with the Lemonade Crypto Climate Coalition offering policies at-cost and with the speed, reliability, and low fees of Avalanche, small-but-mighty policies become possible.

Even behind the curtain, the technical picture is simple. Money for the policies is held as stablecoins on Avalanche. Once certain weather or crop conditions occur, Chainlink oracles send this data on-chain to the application’s smart contracts, prompting instant payouts.

“We use what’s called the area yield index,” Roy said. “We take a segment of land, and let’s say 1,000 farms are on the land. We sample five. If those farms usually grow 3 tons of maize per hectare but they end up growing less than 2 tons, we pay all the farms.”

Roy notes that the coalition deployed on Avalanche for three reasons. First, Avalanche is an eco-friendly protocol, and one of its primary developers, Ava Labs, purchases carbon credits to offset its minimal carbon footprint. Second, Avalanche consistently achieves low transaction fees, a necessity for small policies. Third, Avalanche is compatible with existing infrastructure, making it familiar to builders.

“Building on Avalanche was seamless,” Roy said.

The Lemonade Crypto Climate Coalition’s first initiative provides an example of crypto’s transformative real-world potential. “I believe that over time more and more financial products will either move or have corollaries in and on the blockchain,” Roy says. “I think that this is one of the first projects to do that, but I believe that there will be many more.”

That he has helped develop the program means a lot to Roy. He lived in Kenya during his early teenage years. “I saw poverty day to day,” he recalled. “I saw subsistence farmers. It’s something that I’m very fortunate to be able to come full circle and help the communities I grew up with.”

In Africa alone, there are hundreds of millions of subsistence farmers. Roy notes that the project’s Kenya phase might be the first step, a proof of concept that could be broadened. In other words, the pioneering policies that Avalanche is now unlocking might just be the beginning.

This post is based on materials provided by The Lemonade Foundation. For more information, visit The Lemonade Foundation’s website. Also, please read this important notice.

About The Lemonade Foundation

The Lemonade Foundation is a nonprofit organized under IRC section 501(c)(4). The foundation was founded by Daniel Schreiber and Shai Wininger and funded by Lemonade shareholders prior to the company’s IPO. The Lemonade Foundation is an independent legal entity, and is not owned or controlled by Lemonade, Inc. or its shareholders. Lemonade’s founders currently serve as directors in the foundation.

More information can be found at www.lemonade.org.

About Avalanche

Avalanche is a smart contracts platform built to scale infinitely and finalize transactions in under a second. Its revolutionary consensus protocol and novel Subnets enable Web3 developers to easily launch highly-scalable solutions. Deploy on the EVM, or use your own custom VM. Build anything you want, any way you want, on the eco-friendly blockchain designed for Web3 devs.

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Builder Spotlight: The Lemonade Foundation and Insuring Smallholder Farmers with Avalanche was originally published in Avalanche on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.