ChainCatcher news, Avalanche announced the successful activation of the Banff upgrade on its mainnet. This upgrade allows Avalanche subnet validators to stake using subnet tokens and earn rewards, and it also enables subnet creators to remove validators from the subnet before the staking period ends.It is reported that this change will not be immediately applied to all subnets. To operate in this manner, subnet creators must change their subnets to elastic subnets. Additionally, the Banff upgrade is a hard fork, and validators will need to upgrade to the latest version; otherwise, they will face being marked as offline and seeing a reduction in rewards.Ava Labs Engineering Director Patrick O'Grady stated that elastic subnets are the biggest feature of Avalanche since the network's launch in 2020. When creators convert their subnets to elastic subnets, they open staking to anyone who holds their subnet tokens and directly reward them for providing additional security. However, validators still need to stake AVAX tokens, which are necessary for the upcoming native cross-subnet messaging feature. (Source link)