A blockchain startup called Ava Labs has decided to show its testnet blockchain network to the world, which will be backed by a new consensus algorithm created by the company itself. The launch of the testnet happened at the Token Summit, an important conference which happens during Blockchain Week in New York.
What does this story have that is actually new and disrupting, though? At the moment, the network is only a testnet, so not ready for real money, however, devs outside of Ava Labs will be able to test out the new code with them using the Avalanche protocol.
This is very cool because it will give a boost to open source development, as the company enables others to create on top of its blockchain while it is not even properly finished. The Avalanche protocol, which will be used in the creation of the programs, was named after the notorious Pokémon villains, the Team Rocket.
The code will be also release for the launch partners of the company, which will be able to test it for the first time. However, the code will not be fully open source just yet.
Ava Labs’ founder Emin Fun Sirer was interviewed by Coindesk and he affirmed that the code will only be public when further scrutinized. A public version of the testnet will be open for use, but he does not deem as secure to open up the whole code while it has not been fully inspected with full caution.
The Success of Ava Labs
Launching this testnet is certainly a very important milestone for Ava Labs. The company was able to get $6 million USD in investments back in February, so the investors obviously expect results.
Among the main investors of the round, we got Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain, Metaastabe, Initialized, the former CTO of Coinbase (Balaji Srinivasan) and Ramtin Naimi, which works on Abstract Ventures.
One of the main goals of the platform so far has been to create a consensus that can work just like Bitcon’s proof of stake but wasting less energy and being considerably more efficient. Some experts are skeptical, though, but the company is certainly make advancements.
According to Sirer, the Avalanche protocol and its implementation on the testnet is a major success for the company and it represents a big breakthrough for them. He affirmed that they something which actually works, so they want to showcase it to the world now.
While proof of work on itself was very revolutionary, the company aims to be an important part in the revolution as well and to bring the best of both worlds to the blockchain.
A Secret Breakthrough
Ava Labs also affirmed that they had another major breakthrough, though they did not reveal exactly what it was. What they actually affirmed is that, in all blockchains created so far, all nodes have to agree on a set of criteria, so they use the same scripting language in order to communicate.
The company is now working on a new “heterogeneous network”, which is said to allow the actual nodes to have different properties from the ones that we have now and that this has the potential to be a huge revolution that would bring a completely different kind of universe to the blockchain world and would be different from Ethereum or EOS, for instance, as well as interoperable.
While this kind of vague announcement always sound exciting, the truth is that they are made to sound that way. Many researchers are still very skeptical that Ava Labs and its Avalanche protocol will be able to actually change the world, so what we can actually do is to wait and see how well they will fare in the future when the concept is finally put into practice.
Source: bitcoinexchangeguide.com/ava-labs-announces-new-blockchain-testnet-based-on-avalanche-protocol/
