Avalanche Slides into Top 10 as Ethereum Users Complain About Gas Fees

People are looking for alternatives to Ethereum and Avalanche's cheap and fast blockchain offers an enticing alternative.

By Tim Hakki           2 min read • Nov 21, 2021

In brief

• Avalanche is now in the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
• The currency hit its all-time high shortly after a tweet by Avalanche investor Zhu Su criticized gas fees on Ethereum.
• Avalanche's fees are nominal compared to Ethereum, and transacting is much faster.

Avalanche, a high-speed low-cost blockchain that wants to take on Ethereum, has made its way into the top ten coins by market capitalization.

The coin’s now worth $134.74 and has a market capitalization of $30.19 billion. It set its all-time high earlier today when it peaked at $146.22.

Avalanche rose to the top 10 position eight hours after Zhu Su, the CEO of Singaporean crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, tweeted that he had “abandoned Ethereum despite supporting it in the past”.

Three Arrows has invested heavily in Avalanche, similar to how Sino Global Capital and FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried invested in Solana, another Ethereum rival. Together with Polychain Capital, Three Arrows led a $230 million funding round in Avalanche in September.

“Ethereum has abandoned its users despite supporting them in the past. The idea of sitting around jerking off watching the burn and concocting purity tests, while zero newcomers can afford the chain, is gross,” he tweeted today.

“Users are livid that they're promised a vision of the future, then told that they have to pay $100-1k per tx to enjoy it, and then get told some tales about how they should've been smart enough to buy ETH at $10,” he wrote. Su’s first tweet attracted 13,353 likes.

Zhu put his money behind his words when his firm moved about $78.35 million ETH to crypto exchange FTX. Often, people move funds to exchanges in order to sell them.

While it costs up to $100 and takes a few minutes to swap a coin on Ethereum-based decentralized exchange Uniswap, transaction fees on Avalanche usually cost under a dollar and settlement is near-instant.

To do this, Avalanche splits the work across three blockchains, known as X, C and P.

Avalanche’s C-Chain supports smart contracts, just like Ethereum, and decentralized finance protocols on the network currently handle some $12.5 billion, according to DeFi Llama. Ethereum’s DeFi protocols manage $174 billion.

While Avalanche still has a ways to go before it topples Ethereum, which currently has a market capitalization of $515 billion, it’s well on its way.

DISCLAIMER

THE VIEWS AND OPINIONS EXPRESSED BY THE AUTHOR ARE FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND DO NOT CONSTITUTE FINANCIAL, INVESTMENT, OR OTHER ADVICE.

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Original article posted on the Decrypt.co site, by Tim Hakki.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

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