Smart Contracts Firm Avalanche Offers $290M in Incentives to Build DeFi, NFT Blockchains

Smart contracts platform Avalanche Foundation has rolled out a new incentive program called “Multiverse,” which will help grow subnets on its network, according to a Thursday (March 17) press release.

Multiverse will have incentives up to $290 million, per the release, and the program will look at making scalable chains to support things like decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and games.

On a company blog post, Avalanche noted that subnets allow users to create powerful, secure “permissioned or permissionless networks with custom implementations.”

The post continued that these subnets are natively integrated with Avalanche’s wider ecosystem, and allow Web3 applications to “differentiate on user experience as they never have before.”

Per the release, the Multiverse will give new opportunities for WonderFi Technologies, Coinbase, Bit Digital and others.

WonderFi is a tech company giving more access for digital assets, using centralized and decentralized compliant platforms. The company announced Wednesday (March 16) that the Ontario Securities Commission has granted final regulatory approval for the acquisition of BitBuy, a crypto platform.

“We are pleased to mark this final step toward completing the Bitbuy acquisition and combining these two world-class companies,” said Ben Samaroo, president and CEO of WonderFi. “Both teams have been actively working on integration and our strategic plan which centers around providing secure and compliant access to crypto and DeFi, and creating value for our shareholders.”

PYMNTS wrote about Avalanche earlier this year, noting that Avalanche is one of the “Ethereum Killer” blockchains looking at stealing DeFi, NFT and other types of projects from the Ethereum blockchain.

Read more: PYMNTS Blockchain Series: What is Avalanche?

Avalanche had around $22 billion market capitalization as of the writing of the report and was the No. 12 blockchain. Like several other Ethereum Killers, it has a creator, Emin Gün Sirer, who is an associate professor of computer science at Cornell University.

Avalanche reportedly offers a speed of 4,500 transactions per second and has a full production-ready blockchain ready to handle 20,000 TPS when the work is done.