Why Avalanche

talk.gyuho.dev/why-avalanche-2023q1.html

Who am I?

이규호 (Gyuho Lee)
Protocol Engineer, Ava Labs
prev. Senior SDE, AWS EKS
Top contributor to etcd
github.com/gyuho
linkedin.com/in/gyuho
twitter.com/gyuhox
t.me/leegyuho (Telegram)

What sets Avalanche apart?

"The fact that it works, it's fast, it scales, can grow and absorb any use case, can be used for compliant asset offerings. Bitcoin is single asset, single chain. Ethereum is multi-asset, single chain. Avalanche is multi-asset, multi-chain system. Most decentralized with fastest consensus finality."

All Access with Emin Gün Sirer - Ep. 51 (2023)

Vision #1

If we are to build new financial foundation for the whole world, the system must be decentralized and censorship-resistant.

Vision #2

If we are to digitize all assets in the world, we need horizontally scalable solution.

Vision #3

If we are to commoditize blockchains, we must achieve web2-like reliability and flexible architecture to support app-chains.

Steps

System that scales to millions of nodes
Consensus with sub-second finality
Flexibility to support app-specific chain

News

Yes. Avalanche solves scalability while decentralized with novel consensus algorithm and subnets.

What is Avalanche?

Overview

Avalanche ($AVAX)

Mainnet launched in Sep 2020
Supports Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)
Novel Consensus Algorithm: Snowman
Proof-of-Stake
Fast and Scalable L1 (>6K EVM TPS)
Reliable (no downtime, no reorg)
Platform for deploying "Subnets"

Avalanche Today

>3.6B requests (a day, July 2022) with ~80ms latency

Avalanche Today

Subnet effect -- scales without congestion

Avalanche Today

DFK subnet using more gas than Polygon and BNB

DFK subnet == Over 200-million requests per day

Avalanche Today

Subnet horizontally scales!

>500 TPS (possible >6,000 TPS)

Avalanche TPS

Customize subnet-evm for super-high TPS!

Different gas limit than primary network

Or build custom VM, tailored for high TPS workloads

Avalanche Consensus + Subnets

Consensus with sub-second finality (Fast)
Decentralized with >1,200 validators (Secure)
Subnets for application specific chains (Isolation)

Avalanche Consensus ☃️

Snowman Protocol

Consensus

"Assume a collection of processes that can propose values. A consensus algorithm ensures that a single one among the proposed values is chosen." Leslie Lamport, Paxos Made Simple (2001)

Should this transaction be placed in a block or not?

PoW or PoS is NOT a consensus mechanism!

Consensus Until Now

Classical (Lamport 1998, Paxos/Raft/etcd)

Quick finality but does not scale
Quadratic message complexity
Permissioned, requires precise membership

Consensus Until Now

Nakamoto (Bitcoin 2008)

Robust, no need for precise membership
High latency, low throughput
Wastes energy, not green, not sustainable

Consensus Until Now

PBFT (1999)

Powers many PoS networks (Tendermint, Casper)
Committee/leader-based

Can't scale easily ("leader/coordinator" dilemma)
Quorum-based: must know all participants
Fast when membership is small

Deterministic safety (100% safe)

Hard limit on the Byzantine adversaries

Many are very complicated

Avalanche Consensus Family

Published in 2020
Instant finality, low latency (~1 sec)
High throughput (>6,000 TPS)
Scales >10-million nodes
Robust, no need for precise membership
Leaderless
Quiescent, green, sustainable
Inspired by epidemic protocols and gossip networks
New idea: deliberately metastable

Avalanche Sustainability

Binary Consensus

Pick one red/blue -- no correct answer
Adopt the majority color by repeated sub-sampling
Consensus results in the entire network agreeing on either red or blue
Even with 50/50 split, random perturbation in the sampling results in a single value being selected

At the beginning, pick any color (no correct answer)

Radomly sub-sample the network

"Red" is the majority from the sample

Adopt the majority color, "red"

Repeat this random sampling in parallel, in all nodes

Repeated random sampling perturbs conflicting state

Sequence of metastable process of random sampling

All converge to the same value (agreement)

"The protocol is designed to tip" (YouTube)

Fast Finality

Avalanche == no block re-org, no longest chain rule

Re-org in game? May lose item after tx revert
Re-org in bridge? Must wait longer for source chain
Re-org in payment? May lose money for goods

Avalanche Subnet 🔺

What is Subnet?

Primary Network == Special Subnet

X-chain runs on DAG, used for exchanging assets
P-chain coordinates validators and subnets
C-chain executes EVM contracts with ETH RPCs

Subnet validator must validate primary network!

Subnet (sub-network)

Subnets

Subnets provide failure isolation

Failure in one subnet does not impact the other!

Thus better fault tolerance and better reliability!

Subnet (sub-network)

Custom networks running on Avalanche

Security: Choose who and how many can participate
Compliance: Comply with specific industry, jurisdiction, regulatory environment (KYC)
Custom Execution: Common VM (subnet-evm with custom gas token), custom VM optimized for own use case (key-value store, gaming, Rust 🦀)
Privacy: Controls data visibility (encryption)