AVAX mainnet officially launched [Sept 22, 2020]

AVAX mainnet has launched with thunderous success!

As we write this article, AVAX has gained over 620% (8 AM UTC) in the first 4 hours of trading at Binance. Volume stood at impressive U$ 72 million in just hours (> $100 million when we last updated this text 1 hour later).

Despite some profit-taking during the past 2 hours, AVAX continues trading above 580% gains at noon UTC.

Avalanche Telegram groups are on fire as even the most expensive option () in the AVAX private sale* gained 6x in the fist few hours.

(* See Total AVAX in Early Circulation section below.)

Major Exchanges Listing AVAX

Binance launched AVAX trading at precisely 6:30 AM UTC.

It was the first official listing from a major exchange, honoring Ava Labs’ promise to get listed with a top tier exchange at mainnet launch. Live Binance AVAX/USDT trading pair shows impressive activity.

Binance announced 50x leverage trading for AVAX tokens from the start:

Bitfinex Listing

At approximately 11 AM UTC, Bitfinex had also listed AVAX at U$ 5.00.

AVAX deposits are now open at Bitfinex but trading will begin at noon UTC on September 23, approximately 24 hours after Binance.

OKEx Listing

OKEx has just announced they will be listing the AVAX coin as well.

OKEx AVAX deposits were opened at 8 AM UTC on September 22, same day as Binance.

Trading against Tether began just 30 minutes later. ETH and BTC AVAX pairs began trading 1 hour later.

CoinEx

AVAX got listed on CoinEx at 6 AM, Sept 22, same day as Binance. Deposits were opened first, then trading began at noon the same day.

AVAX is currently listed on the following exchanges:

• Binance
• Bitfinex
• OKEx
• Huobi
• Gate.io
• BKEX
• LBank
• ZG.com
• FTX

Mainnet On-Chain Activity

Avascan showed much on-chain activity at noon UTC :

Staking AVAX

Meanwhile, users have already begun staking AVAX on mainnet!

One node had over 628k AVAX delegated to it just a few hours after mainnet launch with 63k AVAX potential rewards – a U$ 3.6 million value at current prices.

Locked AVAX

Most AVAX is still locked for vesting periods ranging from 1 year onwards.

Some private sale AVAX has been pledged to be locked by founders and early holders for up to 10 years, while public sale options A and B, as well as bounty hunters and community rewards, will be locked for at least 1 year.

This means AVAX price discovery won’t be complete until at least 3rd quarter 2021.

The AVAX sale happened on July 15th and ended just 4.5 hours after being open at 10 AM Eastern Time.

Investors were able to buy tokens under three lockup options: Public Sale Option A1, Public Sale Option A2 and Public Sale Option B. 

Public Sale Option A1 and Public Sale Option B offered 12M AVAX from the same pool, the only difference being option B AVAX were not locked.

Meanwhile, Public Sale Option A2 had a separate pool of 60M tokens which was made larger on purpose in order to satisfy all early investors.

Total AVAX in Early Circulation

The maximum AVAX sold to the public in 2020 was 72M tokens, which represents 20% of the mainnet coins.

Here are the specific details of each public sale option as executed in July 2020:

• Public Sale Option A1 – [Staking Round #2 – 1 Year Vesting]. AVAX coins sold at $0.50/token locked for 1 year. The AVAX coins sold in this option will be unlocked every 3 months. Investors were able to buy a maximum of U$ 25,000.00 in option A1.
• Public Sale Option A2 – [Staking Round #2 – 1.5 Year Vesting]. AVAX price here was also 50 cents of a dollar, but investors will have their AVAX locked for 1.5 years. AVAX in option A2 are also unlocked every 3 months. Since this was a larger pool, investors were able to buy more AVAX after a few hours into the sale.
• Public Sale Option B – [No Vesting, Fully Unlocked]. Here, investors bought AVAX at $0.85 but had not restrictions. These investors were only able to buy U$ 5,000.00 each

Therefore, the coins you see being traded at U$ 6.xx at the time of this writing come from the Public Option B, which means these traders made a ~7x gain in the first few hours of AVAX trading!

The AVAX mainnet launch has been a thunderous success so far and early investors seem to be very satisfied. The markets will be watching AVAX price closely, especially since Nasdaq and Bitcoin have suffered considerable losses during the past week.

Victory Despite 2020

Despite it being a very difficult time around the world with the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as recent tech market downturn, Ava Labs was able to adapt.

The Avalanche team completed the public sale and launched mainnet with enormous success still in 2020.

Some had speculated that Avalanche could go the Cardano route, facing years of delays due to technical issues – something which, fortunately, didn’t happen.

The Cornell-led team of developers got the product out the door with a very small delay, since AVAX mainnet had been promised by the end of August.

Links

Avalanche Mainnet Explorer

AVAX Public Sale Info

Avascan Supply Info

Avalanche (AVAX) Announces First Official Listing on Binance

OKEx to List Avalanche [AVAX] and 2 More EOS DeFi Tokens Elected by User Voting

CoinEx AVAX Launched: Deposit to Share 20,000 AVAX

Ava Labs Sets Avalanche Mainnet Launch for Sept. 21

Avalanche blockchain network to launch full mainnet

Avalanche Mainnet is Live

Avalanche Launches Final Incentivized Testnet With Rewards Totalling Two Million Tokens (AVAX)