The Layer-1 blockchain network, Avalanche, recently concluded a private locked-token sale, raising $250 million. Esteemed organizations like Galaxy Digital, Dragonfly, and ParaFi Capital spearheaded the sale, which saw participation from more than 40 entities such as SkyBridge, SCB Limited, Lvna Capital, FinTech Collective, and others.
This large funding takes place prior to the much-anticipated network upgrade titled “Avalanche9000”. Touted as the most significant upgrade in the history of Avalanche, anticipation surrounding it is high.
The recently amassed funding will supplement Avalanche’s treasury, which already houses roughly $3 billion in the form of the company’s own AVAX tokens. For reference, in 2021, Avalanche raised $230 million through a private token sale overseen by Polychain and Three Arrows Capital.
At the moment, the AVAX token is trading at $54.11. This represents a 13% gain since last 24 hours and a 45% rally over the past year. Speculations around the impending launch of Avalanche9000 seem to be fueling this surge in the token’s value.
Avalanche9000, the forthcoming system upgrade, builds upon Avalanche’s previous “Etna Upgrade” plus the community initiatives ACP-77 and ACP-125. The upgrade envisions a novel approach to how subnets or layer-1s operate, revises validator costs to a monthly subscription fee of 1.33 AVAX, and accentuates interchain communication.
The first iteration of Avalanche9000 was unveiled on the Avalanche “Fuji” testnet on Nov. 25. The team’s next focus is to launch it on the mainnet, expected to happen on Dec. 16. On the subject of the impending launch, Ben Forman, founder of ParaFi Capital, in a blog post dubbed Avalanche as a significant contributor within the growth of on-chain institutional finance.