Let’s talk about Avalanche — the crypto up 113% in the past month — taking over Dogecoin as the top 10 crypto currency by market cap.

What is Avalanche? Launched in 2020, Avalanche is a cryptocurrency developed by Ava Labs with the goal of disrupting Ethereum — the OG crypto — used for decentralized applications.

Think of Ethereum as the infrastructure that powers applications (i.e. NFTs) — and the Ethereum tokensETH

as the currency used to transact on those networks.

• Ethereum use exploded in recent years — making it the second-largest cryptocurrency behind Bitcoin.
• But there’s a problem with Ethereum — users are paying too much in gas fees (a.k.a. transaction fees).

Before it’s too late: Ethereum is upgrading its network to lower fees but several companies are racing to build a better network before that happens — a.k.a. the Ethereum killers.

• Avalanche is one of the several cryptos (i.e. Cardano, Polkadot and Solana) trying to build a better Ethereum.
• All are making big progress but few are close to Ethereum’s dominance — with Ethereum’s market cap 4x larger than the next crypto — Binance Coin.

Despite its problems, Ethereum’s early start cultivated a massive developer community — leading to better tools with simpler adoption.

Slippery slope: In the past week, most of the top 10 cryptos are down by over 10% — but not Avalanche — which is up 50%.

• Last week, Avalanche partnered with Deloitte to simplify reimbursement applications for natural disaster victims.

Ava Labs recently announced over $600M in funding incentives for projects and applications to move over from Ethereum.