Why are big games building on Avalanche instead of Ethereum?
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FIFA, Maplestory, Off the Grid, Inversion.
These are among the many few high-profile names to have launched (or plan to launch) chains on Avalanche’s tech stack currently.
Why Avalanche and never Ethereum?
The reply begins with Avalanche9000, the community’s largest improve that went into impact final December. It was Avalanche’s personal model of “The Merge,” which radically overhauled validator economics.
As a part of ACP-77, Avalanche validator’s excessive fastened stake value necessities (2000 AVAX) have been changed with a low-cost, pay-as-you-go mannequin.
Diminished upfront prices have made it enticing to launch a sovereign Avalanche L1 chain — it’s presumably even cheaper than a Celestia rollup or Cosmos Appchain, based mostly on estimates by Blockworks Analysis’s EffortCapital.
The associated fee financial savings go additional.
Groups bootstrapping an Avalanche L1 can leverage what the C-Chain — Avalanche’s liquidity hub — has already constructed out.
As an example, Avalanche L1s can provide customers the comfort of a CEX ramp through the C-Chain with out having to pay a hefty proportion of their token provide to combine instantly.
“That’s one of many core worth propositions at Avalanche,” Ava Labs chief technique officer Luigi D’Onorio DeMeo instructed me. “From a go-to-market perspective, it saves groups numerous time and hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in integration charges.”
This goes for most traditional chain infrastructure that the C-Chain already has, akin to oracles, RPCs, indexers, explorers, NFT marketplaces, and so forth. — all of which may value as much as an estimated $13 million for an impartial L1 to bootstrap themselves.
All of it hinges on Avalanche’s “Interchain Messaging” (ICM) protocol, which Avalanche L1s use to simply transfer belongings to and from the C-Chain to benefit from the aforementioned options.
C-Chain to Henesys (Maplestory’s chain) is at present probably the most energetic back-and-forth route on ICM, facilitating hundreds of messages each day.
Supply: L1beat.io
Worth accrual is one other main cause to launch an Avalanche L1.
Avalanche L1s can devise clear worth accrual streams to their native tokens by bootstrapping their very own validator units and issuing block rewards (or utilizing their very own native token as fuel).
Ethereum L2s can not leverage the identical levers and subsequently have restricted or no worth accrual streams to their tokens, outdoors of governance (there are exceptions).
Lastly, AvaCloud’s HyperSDK additionally grants a excessive diploma of L1 customization, a stark benefit over the constraints L2s face constructing on at present’s rollup tech stacks.
AVAX worth accrual
Given the issues of worth accrual which have plagued ETH and ATOM, it’s value taking a look at how AVAX accrues worth.
First, 100% of all C-Chain charges are burned, in comparison with partial burns for Solana or Ethereum. AVAX burn had a month-to-month common of about $453k in 2025.
Secondly, validators proceed to stake AVAX to validate the first networks — about $8b (360.2m AVAX) is staked at present.
Third, each Avalanche L1 validator pays a small month-to-month steady payment in AVAX, as a part of ACP-77. Relying on what number of validators there are, these charges vary from the lots of to hundreds. Blockworks Analysis’s Boccaccio has drawn up some good estimates right here for the Gunzilla chain:
Lastly, there’s a minimal, oblique payment on ICM that’s burned at any time when transactions work together with the C-Chain.
Avalanche’s path ahead
When all is alleged and executed, Avalanche’s enterprise technique rings acquainted: Scale back upfront prices to subsidize long-term progress.
Ethereum is doing the identical by forfeiting short-term execution charges to L2s in hopes of attracting information availability charges in the long term. Celestia can also be virtually giving DA away without spending a dime now in pursuit of long-term progress.
