Avalanche raises $250M ahead of Avalanche9000 launch

Layer-1 blockchain Avalanche announced the closure of a $250 million private locked-token sale led by Galaxy Digital, Dragonfly, and ParaFi Capital on Dec. 12. More than 40 companies joined the token sale including SkyBridge, SCB Limited, Hivemind, Big Brain Holdings, Hypersphere, Lvna Capital, Republic Capital, Morgan Creek Digital, FinTech Collective and others. The raise comes ahead of the launch of the “Avalanche9000” network upgrade, purported to be the most significant upgrade in Avalanche’s history. Avalanche token salesThe $250 million in funds raised will add to Avalanche’s treasury, which currently holds an estimated $3 billion worth of the organization’s own AVAX token. As Cointelegraph previously reported, Avalanche raised $230 million in a private token sale led by Polychain and Three Arrows Capital in 2021. At the time of publication, AVAX traded at $54.11, gaining 13% over the last 24 hours and 45% over the past year. This movement is likely attributable to positive speculation concerning the impending launch of the Avalanche9000 upgrade.Avalanche upgradeThe 9000 upgrade is built on Avalanche’s “Etna Upgrade” and community proposals ACP-77 and ACP-125. Among its many changes are a reimagining of how subnets (now called layer-1s) work, a shift in validator cost from 2,000 AVAX per instance to a subscription fee of 1.33 AVAX per month, and an enhanced focus on interchain communication. As Cointelegraph reported, Avalanche9000 went live on the Avalanche “Fuji” testnet on Nov. 25. The next step, according to the team, will be launching on the mainnet, which is scheduled for Dec. 16. Ben Forman, founder and managing partner of ParaFi Capital, lauded the upcoming launch in commentary made in an organizational blog post, calling Avalanche a major player in the growth of “onchain institutional finance.”