Avalanche developers have launched the blockchain’s “Avalanche9,000” testnet, an upgrade that aims to bring cheaper and easier L1 development to its network.

Avalanche9,000 went live at roughly 1pm ET on Monday, the Avalanche Foundation said in a statement. The Foundation will disburse $40 million in retroactive grants to builders on Avalanche, including $2 million for referrals, to stimulate the network’s growth and adoption.

The upgrade will come to Avalanche’s mainnet, called the C-Chain, sometime in 2025.

“[This latest upgrade] focuses on making every component of the Avalanche tech stack cheaper,” Ava Labs Chief Protocol Architect Stephen Buttolph told Decrypt. “From reducing C-Chain fees to removing capital requirements for L1 validators, every user of Avalanche should experience reduced costs.”

Avalanche9,000 spans the Etna Upgrade, a set of network changes that includes new validator-related rules, in addition to the rebranding of Avalanche subnets to Avalanche L1s.

Avalanche L1s are dedicated, project-specific chains that are built on the same tech stack, but operate independently from the C-Chain mainnet. The developers of games like Off the Grid and Shrapnel operate their own Avalanche L1s, for example. Other L1 operators include those focused on small business payment solutions and institutional research, while development of additional verticals is underway. 

Under the ACP-77 upgrade, Avalanche will have a new validator management framework for creating low-cost, natively interoperable blockchains. Meanwhile, the ACP-125 upgrade aims to reduce the minimum base fees on the Avalanche C-Chain from 25 nAVAX to 1 nAVAX.

Since 1 nAVAX equals one-billionth of an AVAX token, which is worth about $42 as of this writing, both figures represent a tiny fraction of a penny. But since those costs can add up for developers, the planned 96% reduction should prove to be meaningful over the long haul.

Together, these latest changes should facilitate the launching of L1s, in addition to reducing deployment costs by 99.9%, simplifying customization and enhancing maintenance activities, according to the Avalanche Foundation.

Submissions for the Retro9,000 grant programs are ranked on a public leaderboard, the Avalanche Foundation said in its statement. Community voting will inform the retroactive grant allocations, encouraging developers to build public projects and earn community support to get rewards. 

More than 500 L1s are already in development on Avalanche’s testnet and mainnet, according to the network's team. And with Interchain Messaging (ICM), builders can create even more cross-L1 decentralized applications (dapps).

Edited by Andrew Hayward