MapleStory Chooses It Too! Why Do Top IPs Love Avalanche?
Recently, a few well-known projects have initiated (or planned to initiate) dedicated chains based on the Avalanche technology architecture. Why choose Avalanche over Ethereum? The answer begins with Avalanche 9000, the largest upgrade in the history of the network implemented last December, regarded as Avalanche’s version of “The Merge.” It fundamentally restructured the economic model for validators.
In the ACP-77 proposal, the high fixed staking cost requirement (2000 AVAX) for Avalanche validator nodes has been replaced by a low-threshold pay-as-you-go model. Evaluation data from Effort Capital, an analyst at Blockworks Research, indicates that the reduced upfront costs make launching a sovereign Avalanche L1 chain quite attractive, with costs potentially lower than those of Celestia rollup solutions or Cosmos application chains.
Further Cost Savings
Teams creating Avalanche’s first layer chain can leverage the infrastructure already built on the C chain (Avalanche’s liquidity hub). For instance, Avalanche’s first layer network can provide users with convenient access to centralized exchange deposit channels through the C chain, without incurring high token fees as direct integration costs. “This is one of Avalanche’s core value propositions,” Ava Labs Chief Strategy Officer Luigi D’Onorio DeMeo told me in an interview. “From a market entry perspective, this can save development teams significant time and millions of dollars in integration costs.”
For most standard on-chain infrastructure, including oracles, RPC services, indexers, block explorers, NFT markets, etc. (which are already available on the C chain), the estimated startup costs for building an independent L1 from scratch could reach as high as $13 million. All of this relies on Avalanche’s inter-chain communication protocol, which enables the first layer network of Avalanche to conveniently transfer assets between the C chain and other chains, thereby fully utilizing the aforementioned functional advantages. The connection between the C chain and Henesys (MapleStory’s dedicated chain) is now the most active two-way communication route in the international chat system, carrying thousands of messages daily.
Value Capture Mechanism
The value capture mechanism is another major reason for launching the Avalanche first layer network. Avalanche’s first layer blockchain can establish clear value accumulation channels for the project’s native token by guiding its own set of validators and distributing block rewards (or using the native token as gas fees). The Ethereum second layer network cannot utilize the same mechanism, limiting the value capture channels for the project’s token, which are extremely limited or even completely absent (with few exceptions).
Finally, AvaCloud’s HyperSDK supports a high degree of L1 chain customization, which stands in stark contrast to the constraints faced by current L2 solutions based on rollup technology stacks, showcasing significant advantages.
AVAX Value Accumulation
Given the value accumulation issues plaguing ETH and ATOM, it is essential to study how AVAX achieves value accumulation. First, unlike the partial token burn mechanisms of Solana or Ethereum, all transaction fees on Avalanche’s C chain are 100% burned. By 2025, the average monthly burn value of its AVAX tokens is expected to be around $453,000.
Validator nodes continue to stake AVAX to maintain the operation of the main network, with the current staking amount around $8 billion (360.2 million AVAX).
Thirdly, according to the requirements of the ACP-77 proposal, each Avalanche L1 validator node must continuously pay a small amount of AVAX as fees each month. Depending on the number of validator nodes, this fee fluctuates between several hundred to several thousand AVAX. Analyst Boccaccio from Blockworks Research has made detailed calculations regarding the Gunzilla chain (detailed report linked in the image).
Whenever a transaction operation involves the C chain, a small amount of indirectly generated ICM (inter-chain communication) transaction fees will be burned.
Avalanche’s Development Path
Ultimately, Avalanche’s business strategy is quite familiar: subsidizing long-term growth by reducing upfront investments. Ethereum is also adopting a similar strategy, actively foregoing short-term execution fee revenues in hopes of obtaining data availability fees in the long term. In pursuit of long-term growth, Celestia is currently offering data availability services for free. “One common misconception about Avalanche is that it has no intention of pursuing high-speed chains,” DeMeo told me, claiming this assertion is untrue. Both the ACP-125 and ACP-176 (Octane) upgrade proposals have implemented a reduction of the minimum basic fees on the C chain and introduced a dynamic fee mechanism to optimize fuel costs, resulting in an overall 96% decrease in C chain fees from early 2025 to now.
DeMeo continued, “As part of the network’s subsequent implementation of the ‘Asynchronous Execution (ACP-194)’ plan later this year, fees will continue to decrease. Currently, Avalanche’s value capture has not yet reached significant scale, but the development path is already clear. With 66 active L1 chains continuously operating in the ecosystem and more chains coming online, Avalanche is fully capable of creating its own network effects.”
This article is a collaborative reprint from: PANews
Further Reading: 【Exclusive Interview】The Chain Game Version of MapleStory Officially Launched! The Development Team of MapleStory N Reveals Game Highlights