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Mastercard Onboards Ava Labs as Part of Start Path Crypto Program

American payment services firm Mastercard has onboarded Avalanche blockchain creator Ava Labs as part of its Start Path Crypto Program, designed to explore and solve how blockchain technology can democratize use cases for people and businesses worldwide.

As announced by Ava Labs, the blockchain startup will join a host of other crypto innovators to redesign the value-added services and use cases that blockchain technology can be integrated for use in solving real-world problems. Mastercard will back innovations that will make Distributed Ledger Technologies safer and easier for people, businesses, and developers to innovate.

“The past year has seen incredible momentum in the world of crypto assets, from the explosion of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) to the piloting of central bank digital currencies in countries across the world. As we look to what’s next, it’s all about finding new use cases and problems blockchain technology can solve for now and in the future,” said Jess Turner, executive vice president of New Digital Infrastructure & Fintech at Mastercard, “Whether it’s enhancing financial freedom or a new value-added service using stablecoins, we believe our new cohorts of Start Path crypto and digital assets companies combined with Mastercard’s expertise in the space will accelerate access to new ways to pay and prioritize choice for consumers and businesses.”

Rather than compete against blockchain technology, many startups feel threatened by the growing technology. Ava Labs’s President, John Wu, said his team is enthusiastic about working with developers within the Start Path Crypto Program.

“Mastercard is setting an example for leaders across all industries on how to embrace, rather than combat innovation,” says John Wu, President of Ava Labs. “We look forward to working with projects and partners in the Start Path program to accelerate the positive impacts blockchain technology will have for individuals and institutions across the world.”

The underlying focus of the partnership is centred on scaling blockchain technology for global enterprise adoption, and Ava Labs with its unique design of the Avalanche Blockchain, is a great addition to this cause.

Ava Labs to Serve as Smart Contracts Platform for Turkish EV Maker TOGG

Ava Labs, the team behind the development and management of Avalanche public blockchain, has entered into a strategic partnership with Turkish Electric Vehicle (EV) manufacturer TOGG to serve as its smart contract infrastructure provider for its next generation self-driven cars.

The partnership was unveiled at the 2022 CES Summit in Las Vegas, U.S. As reported by TBEN, the partnership aims to accelerate Togg’s use case mobility initiative, which combines different technologies and transportation solutions to produce cars with more functionality compared to traditional electric vehicles.

Avalanche is one of the fastest-growing blockchain protocols nowadays. The network prides itself as the fastest smart contract in terms of time to finality. This feature is necessary for the speed that TOGG is integrating into its next-generation automobiles. The partnership will afford TOGG the opportunity to integrate innovative tools, including the Internet of Things (IoT) and machine-to-machine communication (M2M), to expand and accelerate its EV capabilities.

Avalanche will also support the design of a smart contract that can help Togg users pick a scooter or taxi while their own cars are undergoing charging. In addition, the Ava Labs partnership will allow Togg to store vehicle maintenance and parts information on the Avalanche blockchain, which will form the basis of a reliable second-hand market.

“Our collaboration with Ava Labs is founded on improving the Togg user experience, going beyond automobiles to enable partners, users, and non-Togg users in the mobility ecosystem to benefit from this platform,” said Togg CEO Gürcan Karakaş.

It is not uncommon for EV and automobile manufacturing firms to consider employing blockchain innovations in meeting key aspects of their operation. According to an earlier report by Blockchain.News, Volvo Cars, a leading Swedish car manufacturer, invested in Circulor, a London-based blockchain company majoring in industrial supply chains.

Also, German automobile manufacturing company Mercedes-Benz has also reportedly explored a blockchain-based automobile gas emission tracker in the past, a move that implied mainstream car manufacturers are beginning to realize the importance of blockchain technology in the industry.

Ava Labs to Raise New Funding Round at $5B valuation

Ava Labs, the team behind the development and management of Avalanche public blockchain, is raising a new funding round at a valuation of $5 billion, according to Bloomberg.

According to people familiar with the matter, the funding raised might reach $350 million, and Ava Labs will become one of the most valuable crypto startups globally.

AVA is a next-generation blockchain platform with revolutionary scalability, decentralization, security, and flexibility.

Avalanche is an open, programmable smart contracts platform for decentralized applications, becoming one of the fastest-growing blockchain protocols currently. The network prides itself on the fastest smart contract in terms of time to finality.

Ava Labs has raised a total of $290.1 million in funding over seven rounds.

Their latest funding was raised on Sep 16, 2021, from an Initial Coin Offering round. While on September 16, last year, the Avalanche Foundation received a $230 million investment from a group led by Polychain and Three Arrows Capital.

The Avalanche network is compatible with the Ethereum cross-chain.

Smart contracts initially operated on the Ethereum network can be migrated to the Avalanche ecosystem to enjoy higher throughput and low-cost transactions with higher gas fees than the Ethereum (ETH) chain.

Bitfinex, Ava Labs raise $10M for DeFi technology amid market turmoil

As the ongoing bear market in cryptocurrencies continues, investors continue to find attractive projects to invest in, demonstrating that this market is, in reality, a builders’ market. Despite the present market conditions, investors continue to find promising projects to invest in.

In order to develop its ground-breaking protocol, the ecosystem known as Onomy, which is driven by the Cosmos blockchain, has recently successfully crowdfunded millions of dollars from various investors.

The purpose of the project is to integrate decentralized finance (DeFi) with blockchain technology in order to bring the foreign exchange market onto the distributed ledger.

According to the people who initiated the project, the most recent investment round was a success, and it was able to successfully raise $10 million from significant players in the industry. Some of these significant players include Bitfinex, Ava Labs, the Maker Foundation, and CMS Holdings, amongst others.

According to Lalo Bazzi, one of the co-founders of Onomy, the primary goal of constructing a decentralized autonomous organization with a public infrastructure should be to support the “core tenant of crypto,” which is self-custody, without sacrificing the user experience. This can be accomplished without compromising the security of the network.

Both decentralized financial institutions (DFIs) and self-custody have emerged as prominent topics of conversation among the cryptocurrency community as a direct result of the FTX liquidity-bankruptcy episode.

Despite the fact that another difficult year is anticipated according to estimates made for the industry’s not too distant future, the sector will continue to draw the attention of investors.

The results of a survey that was conducted between September 21 and October 27 of this year and was sponsored by Coinbase indicate that institutional investors are still interested in the industry.

It was discovered that 62% of the institutional investors who were questioned and who had cryptocurrency holdings increased such holdings over the course of the preceding year.

On November 9, just a few days after the FTX event came to light, Cathie Wood of ARK Investment raised the company’s existing shares in Coinbase by an additional $12.1 million. This was done by ARK Investment.

In addition, financial institutions continue to show interest in the sector, as evidenced by JP Morgan’s use of DeFi for international transactions and BNY Mellon’s creation of its very own Digital Asset Custody Platform, both of which are examples of how JP Morgan and BNY Mellon are participating in the industry.

Despite this, there is a body of evidence that projects the blockchain industry will continue to confront adverse settings, which have the potential to endure into the next year. These environments include:

Snowtrace to End Etherscan-Powered Service by Nov 30

On October 30, 2023, Snowtrace.io, a popular blockchain explorer tool dedicated to the Avalanche C-Chain, announced that it would be discontinuing its Etherscan-powered explorer effective from November 30, 2023 (00:00 UTC). This announcement came through a series of tweets from Snowtrace’s official Twitter handle, @SnowTraceHQ. The Snowtrace team expressed their gratitude towards the Avalanche community (@avax) for their support over the last two years.

The Snowtrace team stressed the importance of backing up crucial information. They specifically urged users to save backups of Private Name Tags and Contract Verification details before the discontinuation date. An official reminder was also issued 17 hours before the post, reiterating the urgency to backup such information, linking to a page on Etherscan’s website for further details regarding the discontinuation of the blockchain explorer.

Although the official announcement did not clarify the reason behind the discontinuation, some individuals within the crypto community speculated that the high service costs associated with Etherscan’s Explorer-as-a-Service (EaaS) framework could be a driving factor. Mikko Ohtama, Co-founder of Trading Strategy, estimated the annual EaaS subscription cost to be between one to two million dollars, potentially making it a costly endeavor for Snowtrace to continue its operations under the existing framework.

Amidst the buzz, Phillip Liu Jr., the Director of Strategy and Operations at Ava Labs, commented on the development. He mentioned that the protocol is transitioning to “something better” and affirmed that operations would “absolutely not” cease, indicating a probable shift to an alternative solution for blockchain exploration.

The episode underscores the dependencies and potential challenges faced by blockchain explorers leveraging Etherscan’s EaaS framework. It sheds light on the importance of renewing service agreements, ensuring sufficient bandwidth, and maintaining adequate traffic to keep a block explorer operational. The Snowtrace scenario serves as a strong reminder to users about the significance of backing up their data, especially when utilizing third-party services for blockchain exploration.

While the exact future of Snowtrace remains uncertain, the proactive communication from its team regarding the discontinuation and urging users to backup their data demonstrates a responsible approach towards handling such transitions. The anticipation now pivots towards what alternative solutions will emerge to fill the void left by Snowtrace’s discontinuation and how Ava Labs plans to navigate this change.