Blockchain network Avalanche has announced its brand-new DeFi incentive program that offers a total of $180 million to the participants. The incentive program called Avalanche Rush is expected to attract DeFi apps, assets, and organizations into the Avalanche blockchain platform. Following the official announcement, AVAX, the native token of the Avalanche program, received a value boost of 16% in 24 hours. Avalanche Rush will be using the same digital token for the incentive program, and the parent organization says it has already allocated AVAX worth $30 million.
The Incentives Program
It is no surprise that Avalanche, like other blockchain networks, is trying to get a jumpstart in the DeFi scene. However, providing incentives to speed up the process and attract rapid investment to the platform seems to be a relatively new method. It is believed that the high-volume incentives could attract more developers and investors looking to build or launch custom decentralized apps through the Avalanche platform. Some projects, namely Aave and Curve, are already a part of the DeFi space provided by Avalanche. The Avalanche Foundation expects this number to grow exponentially in the upcoming months.
A Collaborative DeFi Space
The Avalanche Foundation seems to be following collective methods to stay solid in the DeFi industry. For instance, it already supports the Aave and Curve protocols and has allocated a considerable sum of the total incentive program to both. The foundation claims to spend AVAX tokens worth $20 million and AVAX tokens worth $7 million for Aave and Curve protocols, respectively, in the coming three months. In addition, the space will witness the launch of a new DeFi protocol from Benqi, running natively on Avalanche. This protocol will also benefit from the incentive program, and Avalanche has allocated AVAX worth $3 million already. It is expected to start functioning today August 19.
It is worth noticing that Avalanche has apparently optimized its blockchain network from multiple angles — instead of simply providing incentives to the upcoming apps and organizations. For instance, companies that run their projects on the Avalanche blockchain seem positive about the DeFi environment, scalability, data throughput, speed, and consensus system. In particular, the consensus system claims to be better suited for the changing momentum in the DeFi industry. At the same time, the company has also re-released a bridging tool named Avalanche Bridge.
Cross-blockchain Bridging
With the help of this brand-new cross-blockchain bridging tool, the proof-of-stake consensus system, and support for scalability, Avalanche plans to increase the number and diversity of projects on the network, which is already home to more than 225 DeFi projects, such as Tether, Circle, and The Graph. The numbers in this sector are expected to skyrocket with the help of the $180M incentive system. However, it remains to be seen how the Avalanche Foundation plans to spend the rest of the budget since only a fraction of it has been allocated to the currently available projects.
It is also possible that the increased chances of an incentive from the platform — even when unspecified — nudge investors and developers to rely on Avalanche for their DeFi projects.
