The Banff update launch on Avalanche mainnet occurred this Tuesday at 12pm EDT.
Banff is an upgrade designed to take subnets on the Avalanche blockchain to the next level. With the implementation of this upgrade, which complements the launch of Elastic Validation, Avalanche, the network optimized for the creation of highly scalable smart contracts and DApps, now allows the creation of elastic subnets that unlock new functionalities on the blockchain.
Subnets are presented as an effective scalability solution that allows developers and companies to build new specific blockchains, optimized to meet each project's needs.
These customizable blockchains are especially useful in developing financial applications and native Web3 games, as they guarantee developers a high level of scalability, without competing for Avalanche's network resources.
Now, with Banff, developers can enable new features and functionality to further optimize their own subnets.
Ava Labs Head of Engineering Patrick O'Grady commented in a publication Avalanche’s elastic subnets unlock the ability for creators to enable Proof of Stake (PoS)-based validation, and with it, uptime-based rewards, all using their own subnet tokens.
Banff allows staking on Avalanche subnets
The new capabilities offered by Banff and Avalanche Elastic Subnets allow, for the first time, the ability for subnet users to become validators of these blockchains, simply by staking each subnet’s native token. This allows Avalanche validators the opportunity to secure more blockchains through staking.
On the other hand, these new subnet capabilities allow each of the projects to establish their own PoS validation parameters, as well as provide a token to reward validators.
Avalanche enthusiasts and the crypto community at large have greeted the launch of Banff with great enthusiasm. On LinkedIn, a social network geared toward professional and business use, Avalanche enthusiast Giuseppe Francaviglia said that the launch of Banff represents a very important step in the development of the network. In his view, Avalanche is giving validators the ability to validate the large number of subnets that will be running on the network in the near future in a permissionless manner.
It should be noted that, as explained by O'Grady in his post, projects that enable the new features that the Avalanche network is offering through Banff and Elastic Validation must “permanently lock the subnets for future modifications.”
Finally, Banff is not backwards compatible, so Avalanche validators must upgrade to the new AvalancheGo v1.9.0.
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