Dialogue with Avalanche Founder: Unique Consensus Mechanism Remains an Advantage, Technological Innovation Can Bring Actual Value

Compilation & Organization: Deep Tide TechFlow

Emin Gün Sirer is the founder of Avalanche, commonly known as "Professor Gun."

In this podcast episode, Emin elaborates on Avalanche's multi-chain architecture, consensus algorithm, and virtual machine design, emphasizing its flexibility and scalability. He predicts that there will be millions of blockchains or subnets in the future, each with specific purposes and rules.

At a time when Star Arena is gaining popularity and the Avalanche chain is craving traffic and attention, what advantages does its technical mechanism have compared to L2? Has it successfully attracted more users and applications? What direction should Avalanche take in the future? Let's listen to the founder's insights and thoughts.

Host: Logan Jastremski

Speaker: Emin Gün Sirer, Founder of the Avalanche Protocol

Program: Logan Jastremski Podcast

Original Title: "Avalanche Founder Emin Gün Sirer on Asia Market & The End State of Millions of Blockchains"

Show: Link

Broadcast Date: October 7

Outlook and Beliefs on Future Blockchain Technology

• Emin believes that blockchain technology will no longer be a single, centralized entity or platform. To support different applications and business needs, blockchain technology must be flexible and adaptable to various scenarios and requirements. Emin believes that there will be millions of blockchains or subnets in the future, and to realize this vision, he and his team designed the Avalanche consensus protocol.

• The Avalanche consensus protocol is an innovative consensus mechanism that differs from existing PoW (Proof of Work) and PoS (Proof of Stake) mechanisms. Avalanche provides a more efficient and scalable solution capable of handling a large number of transactions, supporting high throughput and low latency, meeting the demands of millions of blockchains or subnets in the future.

• The Avalanche protocol focuses on security, ensuring that the blockchain network can withstand various attacks while maintaining data integrity and security.

Asian Blockchain Market: A Demand for Tokenization, More Active and Open

• Clear Regulatory Environment: Emin's experiences in Singapore and Hong Kong have shown him the strength and activity of the Asian market. He noted that, unlike the United States, Asian countries have a clearer and more friendly regulatory environment for blockchain and cryptocurrency. In Asia, governments and regulatory bodies provide clear guidance and support for blockchain innovation and development, which helps promote the growth and prosperity of the blockchain ecosystem in the region.

• Huge Demand for Tokenization: Emin observed a significant demand for tokenization in the Asian market. Large companies and enterprises are actively exploring the possibilities of blockchain technology and tokenization to drive innovation and increase efficiency. The activity in the Asian market also reflects the region's open attitude and positive acceptance of new technologies and innovations.

• Emin illustrated the positive response of the Asian market to blockchain applications by citing Avalanche's collaboration with South Korea's SK Planet. SK Planet is a large company in South Korea with a vast user base. Through Avalanche, SK Planet's loyalty points were tokenized, allowing users to manage and use their points more conveniently and securely, attracting approximately 35 million South Korean users.

• The success of this project reflects the trust and acceptance of blockchain technology by Asian consumers and enterprises. Compared to the U.S. market, the Asian market is more active and open in terms of blockchain and tokenization.

Evolution of Blockchain Technology: From Fantasy to Maturity

• Emin pointed out that past blockchain technology was filled with technical jargon and promises for the future, which were often hollow and lacked practical execution and realization. Emin believes this phenomenon is due to the immaturity of technology and excessive market hype.

• Over time, the market and users began to grow weary of these hollow promises and future fantasies, seeking blockchain technologies and solutions with practical applications and value. Emin believes that blockchain technology is maturing. Future blockchains will focus more on the practicality, reliability, and security of technology rather than empty promises and future fantasies.

• Emin predicts that there will not be many new blockchains emerging in the future, and the market will become more concentrated on those blockchain technologies and platforms that have proven their value and reliability. The market and users will become more rational and clear-headed, focusing more on the actual applications and value of blockchain technology rather than being attracted by unrealistic promises and fantasies. The value of technology will be reflected in the actual benefits and value it brings to users and enterprises.

• Emin noted that different blockchain communities have significant disparities in the speed of technological development and delivery, with some communities able to deliver innovative and practical technologies quickly, while others perform poorly in this regard. He believes that a clear, focused, and innovative community is more likely to deliver valuable technology quickly.

• Emin emphasized that technological innovation is a key factor driving the development of blockchain technology; only through continuous innovation can blockchain technology meet the growing market demands and challenges.

• Emin specifically highlighted how Avalanche achieves innovation by addressing the most challenging issue of consensus protocols. He believes that consensus protocols are at the core of blockchain technology, and solving this problem is crucial for advancing blockchain technology. He stated that Avalanche has a new perspective and approach to solving problems in distributed systems, enabling it to develop more efficient and reliable blockchain technology.

Problems with Layer 2 Solutions

• Emin believes that when communities and developers face difficulties and do not know how to improve or optimize their Layer 1 blockchains, they often turn to Layer 2 solutions. He views Layer 2 as a stopgap measure, not a long-term or fundamental solution.

• Emin pointed out that Layer 2 solutions face the same problems and challenges as Layer 1. Although Layer 2 may provide a temporary solution, it does not truly address the underlying issues or challenges, and the market needs time to recognize the limitations and problems of Layer 2. He noted that engineers and developers often realize this sooner because they directly face and deal with these technical issues and challenges.

• Emin illustrated that blockchains like Polygon are "reverting" daily, experiencing issues such as chain reorganization or other situations that lead to a rollback of the blockchain state. Due to this "reversion," Polygon has not achieved the fundamental value of blockchain—eventual consistency. Emin believes that if a blockchain cannot move forward and is constantly reverting, then people cannot trust and use it. This is because the value of blockchain largely relies on its immutability and reliability.

Deep Tide Note: Eventual Consistency is a core characteristic of blockchain technology, meaning that once a transaction is confirmed, it cannot be changed or revoked.

Everything About the Avalanche Consensus Algorithm

• Emin explained the background of the consensus problem in distributed systems. In distributed systems, consensus is key, ensuring that all nodes in the system can agree on a certain state or value. Emin pointed out that over the past 60 years, there have only been three main consensus methods: Proof of Work (PoW), classical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT), and the new method introduced by Avalanche.

• Emin explained the limitations of classical Byzantine Fault Tolerance protocols, particularly in situations requiring extensive communication and signature verification, where such protocols typically require a large amount of messaging and computational resources, which is unsustainable in large-scale and high-performance systems. Due to these limitations, it faces serious challenges in efficiency and scalability, restricting its application in larger and more complex distributed systems.

• Emin emphasized that Avalanche addresses these issues by introducing a completely new consensus method designed to overcome the limitations of classical BFT protocols, providing higher efficiency and scalability. The Avalanche consensus algorithm reduces communication and computational overhead, enabling efficient and reliable consensus in large-scale distributed systems.

• Emin stressed that Avalanche optimizes the consensus algorithm by reducing communication overhead. In many traditional consensus algorithms, significant communication overhead is a major bottleneck that limits system performance and scalability. The design of Avalanche reduces the communication requirements between nodes, making the system more efficient and scalable. In addition to reducing communication overhead, Avalanche also optimizes the consensus algorithm by achieving probabilistic finality, which allows Avalanche to provide faster transaction confirmation times, improving user experience.

• Emin believes that Avalanche can handle more validators because its consensus algorithm does not rely on all-to-all communication, reducing the system's communication overhead and allowing more validators to participate in the system. This design enables Avalanche to support larger networks while maintaining high performance and low latency.

• In Avalanche, nodes do not need to communicate with every other node in the network, significantly reducing the complexity and overhead of communication. This design enhances the efficiency and scalability of the system, allowing Avalanche to operate in larger and more complex environments.

• Emin emphasized his hope that everyone who can run a node will participate in Avalanche. He believes that the strength of these systems depends on their level of decentralization and the representation from around the world participating in their consensus protocol.

• The Avalanche consensus algorithm is not based on all-to-all communication but achieves consensus through repeated sub-sample voting. In this process, each node randomly selects a few other nodes to inquire, and then these queried nodes continue to ask other nodes, repeating this process to achieve coverage across the entire network.

• Because each node only communicates with a few other nodes, Avalanche can process transactions at an extremely fast speed. Emin mentioned that transactions on Avalanche can be completed in about 700 milliseconds, far faster than other systems.

• Emin believes that Solana also relies on an all-to-all communication mechanism, which limits its scalability, while Avalanche completely breaks free from this limitation.

Deep Tide Note: "All-to-All" communication is a mode where each node needs to communicate with all other nodes.

• Emin distinguished between information propagation and consensus. He believes that information propagation is about presenting the content of blocks to everyone, while consensus is about reaching agreement on that block. Avalanche's consensus algorithm can be completed quickly while ensuring that information is fairly and rapidly propagated; Avalanche's information propagation protocol is the fastest in the world.

• Emin expressed surprise at the rapid growth of the Avalanche community and its widespread acceptance globally. The active participation of the developer community, the diversity of applications and projects, and Avalanche's global influence have exceeded his expectations. These surprises reflect Avalanche's strong potential and its significant position in the blockchain field.

Common Misunderstandings About Avalanche

At the end of the podcast, Emin summarized several common misunderstandings people have about Avalanche:

• Competitive Relationship with Other Blockchains: Avalanche's main competitors are Wall Street and other traditional financial systems, not blockchains like Ethereum.

• Goals of the Ecosystem: Avalanche aims to achieve the tokenization of physical assets, thereby transforming and optimizing the operations of traditional finance.

• Misunderstanding of Multi-Chain Architecture: Avalanche is a multi-chain system, where each chain can have its own rules, operating independently and not affected by the load of other chains.

• Relationship with Ethereum: Emin denied the notion that Avalanche competes with Ethereum. He believes that Avalanche's architecture can accommodate other systems, including Ethereum. He envisions that many existing Layer 1 chains will transform into subnets of Avalanche in the future.