Avalanche9000 goes live on testnet, unlocks $40M rewards for builders
2024-11-26

The Avalanche network is going through its largest upgrade since the platform’s mainnet launch, with over $40 million in rewards set to be unlocked to its community.
According to a Nov. 25 announcement, Avalanche9000 is now live on the Fuji testnet, with its mainnet launch expected in the coming months. The upgrade will reduce deployment costs by 99.9%, allow interchain communication and unlock over $40 million in retroactive rewards to developers. 
The upgrade is based on technical improvements from the Etna Upgrade and community proposals ACP-77 and ACP-125. Among the key changes is the rebranding of Avalanche’s subnets, now called layer-1s. 
According to Avalanche, the revamp does not introduce changes in the way its subnets operate, still allowing horizontal scaling rather than compounding dependencies on custom blockchains. 
Avalanche’s L1 networks will operate as permissionless or permissioned networks, each offering a different level of control over validator participation and rewards.
The Etna upgrade also changes how validator sets are managed within the Avalanche network. Now, the responsibility for managing validators shifts from the centralized Avalanche P-Chain to the individual L1s themselves, using a ValidatorManager smart contract. Avalanche said this change will grant L1 networks more independence and decentralization, allowing them to set their own rules and incentives. 
Subnets looking to eliminate the staking requirement for validators must transition their management from a P-Chain Owner Key to a ValidatorManager smart contract.
Over 500 L1s are already being developed on testnet and mainnet, Avalanche said in a statement, with solutions ranging from gaming, payment solutions, and institutional research.
With the upgrade, Avalanche plans to improve interoperability and lower barriers for developers. According to data from DefiLlama, Avalanche’s total value locked currently stands at $1.4 billion — nearly 10% of its all-time high in November 2021, when it amounted to $11.1 billion.