Avalanche activated the Cortina upgrade this week, which should improve the ecosystem in important details. However, AVAX’s price curve did not react noticeably to the progress.
Avalanche (AVAX) continues to work on optimizing its technology base, and this week it rolled out the Cortina upgrade to do so. When the team reported the successful activation of Cortina via Twitter, they also reminded everyone of the three important advancements that come with it for Avalanche:
1. X-Chain Linearization: behind the complicated-sounding term is a technological trick that will anchor Avalanche Warp Messaging (AWM), which launched in December, deeper into the ecosystem. AWM is a feature that allows Avalanche subnets to communicate with each other. In practice, it became apparent that AWM needed to be readjusted and this was now done as part of the Cortina upgrade.
2. Batched Delegator Rewards: Those doing staking with AVAX usually delegated this to a so-called validator. But validators, until the Cortina upgrade, got the staking bonuses from Avalanche in many individual transactions billed separately for each staker. Now, validators can have Stakink Bonuses transferred collectively, which simplifies accounting and reduces the burden on the network.
Increased C-Chain Gas Limit: To prevent excessive transaction fees at Avalanche, there is a limit on the so-called gas fees. Previously, this was 8 million gas per block and a maximum of 15 million gas per 10 seconds. There is room for an average of five blocks in the time window. But AVAX developers complained 8 million gas was not enough for complex smart contracts and DApps. So Avalanche raised the limit to 15 million gas per block through the Cortina upgrade. The maximum limit of 15 million gas per 10 seconds remains unchanged.
Conclusion: Avalanche hopes to regain market share in the DeFi division
In its best days, AVAX was among the top ten most capitalized cryptocurrencies, and Avalanche drew its importance from its Decentralized Finance division, where more than $10 billion was deposited. However, the crash of Terra (LUNA) and its related stablecoin UST in May 2022 hit Avalanche hard because the two ecosystems were closely linked. Meanwhile, AVAX has fallen out of the top 10 major cryptocurrencies and DeFi at Avalanche comes in just shy of $300 million in deposited capital. Thus, the Cortina upgrade is to be understood as a package of improvements as well, which should strengthen Avalanche and AVAX in competition with other altcoins.
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