Avalanche Blockchain Had 1,500% Transactional Growth in 2022: Nansen

Transactions on the Avalanche blockchain grew as much as 1,500% last year compared to 2021 even as the broader industry saw the collapse of several centralized crypto players and entered a technical bear market.

In Avalanche's fourth-quarter report shared with CoinDesk, data and analytics firm Nansen said the network demonstrated strength with notable increases in both non-fungible trading (NFT) trading volume and the overall number of transactions.

“While the network ended November 21, 2021, with nearly 27 million transactions, Avalanche’s cumulative total surpassed 450 million transactions on November 21, 2022, marking an astounding 1,507% increase in a single year,” Nansen said.

Such transactional activity came even as the total value of tokens locked on Avalanche-based decentralized finance applications slid from 2021’s $15 billion peak to just over $900 million in November 2022, data from DeFiLlama shows.

“Avalanche users may find themselves asking, ‘What crypto winter?’ as the network made impressive gains in Q4 2022,” said Mega Septiandara, research analyst at Nansen.

“With strong transaction totals and NFT trading volumes pairing well with new features and products set to improve user experience, Avalanche is poised for continued growth in 2023 as the entire Web3 space works to rebound from havoc caused by the FTX collapse,” Septiandara added.

When looking specifically at Avalanche’s C-Chain, the report noted that the Q4 daily transactions were mostly volatile, ranging between approximately 100,000 to 230,000 transactions per day.

Part of that growth may have come from Avalanche subnets, a custom blockchain built on Avalanche with products such as DeFi Kingdom’s DFK Subnet reaching a cumulative 200 million transactions on Nov 13, 2022.

Compared to Ethereum, however, the report noted Avalanche C-Chain’s transactions were relatively stable.

The Avalanche C-Chain, short for contract chain, is the default smart contract blockchain on Avalanche, which enables the creation of any Ethereum-compatible smart contracts. This operates complementary to the X-Chain, which is used to send and receive funds in the form of AVAX tokens.

Elsewhere, Avalanche saw a thriving non-fungible token marketplace throughout Q4, with the likes of industry-leading marketplace OpenSea’s expanding to the network.

In addition to substantial growth in overall transactions and NFT trading volumes, key developments that Avalanche saw during Q4 included several new projects, protocols, and features joining its ecosystem.

Notable projects include Core Web, a free, all-in-one command center giving users a more intuitive and comprehensive way to view and use Web3 across Avalanche and Ethereum, and JoePegs, an NFT marketplace launched in May that has grown to be the largest on Avalanche with over $3.4 million in secondary NFT sales and more than 12,000 users, Nansen noted.