In brief
- Avalanche, an Ethereum competitor, has announced a new way to port coins to and from Ethereum.
- The “Avalanche-Ethereum Bridge” is in the “final phase” of testing.
- Avalanche launched its mainnet in September.
Blockchain project Avalanche today announced that it’s one step closer to launching a product that could tempt developers who’ve built decentralized finance apps on Ethereum to switch alliances.
Avalanche, one of the many blockchain networks that claim to be faster, cheaper and more capable than Ethereum, announced the “Avalanche-Ethereum Bridge,” a way to transfer Ethereum tokens to the Avalanche blockchain and vice versa.
The software is “in the final phase of testing,” said Avalanche in its blog post today.
Avalanche’s main selling point is that it supports the Ethereum Virtual Machine, meaning that Ethereum developers would not have to extensively redesign their software to make it compatible with Avalanche’s blockchain.
Bringing ETH tokens to Avalanche, theoretically, sweetens the deal.
Functionally, the Avalanche-Ethereum Bridge is similar to other protocols and services that port assets between blockchains; for instance, Wrapped Bitcoin, a protocol that ports Bitcoin to Ethereum.
They all work like this: Deposit some asset from Blockchain A in a smart contract, and the contract will issue an equal amount in the format of a Blockchain B token. Ported tokens (known as “Wrapped” coins) are of equal value to the original token and can be redeemed at any time.
Avalanche’s bridge is powered by ChainSafe, a blockchain interoperability protocol produced by ChainBridge. ChainBridge built Avalanche’s bridge using funds from the Avalanche-X grants program.
Avalanche’s mainnet launched in September after raising $60 million, $42.5 million of which came from a public token sale. Avalanche is produced by Ava Labs, a software company run by Emin Gün Sirer, the Cornell University computer science professor who co-directs the University’s Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Smart Contracts.
