A Technical & Social Deep Dive: Adding Avalanche to MetaMask

Avalanche is one of the most technically advanced and fastest-growing blockchains today. Its unique architecture allows for near-instant transaction finality, high throughput, and low fees – powering a thriving ecosystem of DeFi, NFTs, and more.

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To interact with Avalanche dapps, many users choose the popular MetaMask wallet. In this deep dive, we‘ll explore the technical and social factors driving Avalanche‘s rise and provide a detailed guide to adding Avalanche to MetaMask.

What is Avalanche? A Technical Primer

Launched in 2020 by Ava Labs, Avalanche is an open-source platform for launching decentralized applications and enterprise blockchain deployments in one interoperable ecosystem. It‘s the first smart contracts platform that confirms transactions in under 1 second, supports the entire Ethereum development toolkit, and enables millions of independent validators to participate as full block producers.

Whereas many blockchains use a single consensus mechanism, Avalanche employs three:

Avalanche – based on directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) for quick & reliable consensus
Snowman – a chain-optimized consensus used to secure smart contracts
Frosty – a Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) based mechanism for high-stakes applications

This novel approach enables the high performance, scalability, and flexibility that sets Avalanche apart.

Avalanche is composed of three integrated blockchains: the Exchange Chain (X-Chain) for creating and trading digital smart assets, the Platform Chain (P-Chain) for staking and coordinating validators, and the Contract Chain (C-Chain) for EVM smart contracts.

Key Avalanche features include:

Ethereum compatibility: Developers can port over existing Solidity contracts with minimal changes
Scalability: Sub-second finality and 4,500+ transactions per second (vs. ~15 on Ethereum)
Decentralized: Permissionless validators secure the network, not centralized miners
Interoperable: Easily connect and swap assets between chains
Eco-friendly: Uses proof-of-stake instead of energy-intensive proof-of-work mining
Low fees: Fraction of a cent per transaction

The Avalanche team is led by Emin Gün Sirer, a computer science professor at Cornell University and veteran in cryptographic research. Prior to Avalanche, Sirer developed a precursor to Proof-of-Stake consensus and co-authored the influential selfish mining research paper in 2013.

Avalanche has raised $230M from top VCs including Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain Capital, and Three Arrows Capital. Its AVAX token has a market cap of $5.2 billion as of March 2022.

MetaMask: The Key to the Web3 World

To access Avalanche and other blockchains, users need a crypto wallet that can interact with decentralized applications (dapps). While centralized exchanges like Coinbase are popular for buying and selling crypto, they don‘t provide direct access to Web3.

That‘s where MetaMask comes in. Launched in 2016, MetaMask is a free, open-source browser extension and mobile app that acts as an Ethereum wallet. It allows users to store and manage account keys, broadcast transactions, send and receive Ethereum-based tokens, and securely connect to dapps.

MetaMask provides an essential bridge between standard web browsers and the decentralized web. With over 21 million monthly active users, it‘s the most popular non-custodial wallet for interacting with Ethereum and other EVM-compatible chains like Avalanche, Polygon, and Binance Smart Chain.

By using MetaMask instead of a centralized exchange, users maintain full control over their funds and private keys. This aligns with crypto‘s ethos of decentralization and self-sovereignty – you are your own bank.

Step-by-Step: Adding Avalanche to MetaMask

Now that we‘ve covered the basics of Avalanche and MetaMask, let‘s walk through the process of adding the Avalanche network to MetaMask:

Install the latest version of MetaMask in your browser and create a new wallet (or import an existing one). Back up your secret recovery phrase securely – anyone with access to it can control your funds.
Open MetaMask and click the network selector at the top of the window (by default it will show "Ethereum Mainnet").
Click "Custom RPC" at the bottom to manually add the Avalanche network. Enter the following details:

Network Name: Avalanche Mainnet C-Chain
New RPC URL: https://api.avax.network/ext/bc/C/rpc
Chain ID: 43114
Currency Symbol: AVAX
Explorer: https://snowtrace.io/

Click Save. MetaMask should switch to the Avalanche Network.

You can also add the Avalanche FUJI testnet or local testnet:

FUJI Testnet

Network Name: Avalanche FUJI C-Chain
New RPC URL: https://api.avax-test.network/ext/bc/C/rpc
Chain ID: 43113
Symbol: AVAX
Explorer: https://testnet.snowtrace.io/

Local Testnet

Network Name: Avalanche Local
New RPC URL: http://localhost:9650/ext/bc/C/rpc
Chain ID: 43112
Symbol: AVAX
Explorer: N/A

To interact with the Avalanche network and dapps, you‘ll need AVAX for transaction fees. You can transfer AVAX from an exchange, use the Avalanche Bridge, or buy directly in MetaMask (US only).

Once you have AVAX, you can transact as you would with Ethereum:

Select Avalanche Network in MetaMask
Click Send
Paste the recipient‘s C-Chain address
Enter the amount and click Next, then Confirm

Your transaction should finalize in a few seconds – that‘s the power of Avalanche!

Avalanche Ecosystem & Adoption

Avalanche‘s technical advantages have attracted a growing number of projects and users. Its primary network statistics are impressive:

Transactions: 846M+ (source)
Total Value Locked (TVL): $11.3B
Unique Addresses: 1.7M+
Validators: 1,200+
Blocks Produced: 10.6M+

The Avalanche ecosystem spans DeFi, NFTs, gaming, and institutional use cases. Leading projects include:

DeFi

Aave: $2.48B TVL
Curve: $947M TVL
Benqi: $765M TVL
Trader Joe: $507M TVL

NFT Marketplaces

Joepegs
Kalao
NFTrade
Snowflake

Blockchain Gaming

Crabada
DeFi Kingdoms
Imperium Empires

Institutional / Enterprise

Deloitte (disaster recovery platform)
Togg (mobility app)
Anteraja (supply chain)
Aspiration (carbon credits)

Investors and retail users are taking notice. Avalanche‘s AVAX token has seen steady growth, from $4.63 on July 22, 2020 to an all-time high of $144.96 on November 21, 2022.

Social media buzz reflects this rising popularity. On Twitter, @Avalancheavax has 463K followers, @AvaLabsOfficial has 65K, and @CZ_Binance (Binance CEO) frequently tweets about Avalanche to his 5.3M followers.

An analysis by LunarCrush shows AVAX has:

121K total social mentions in the last 90 days
1.72B total social engagements
Sentiment score of 80% positive vs. 20% negative

Securing Your AVAX with MetaMask

While MetaMask makes it easy to use Avalanche, users should take precautions to protect their funds:

Never share your secret recovery phrase with anyone for any reason
Avoid keeping large balances in MetaMask long-term; move to a hardware wallet
Only download MetaMask from the official website: metamask.io
Triple-check addresses before sending transactions
Use a strong, unique password for your wallet
Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) for extra security
Beware of phishing attempts – MetaMask will never DM you first or ask for your recovery phrase

The Future of Avalanche

Avalanche‘s combination of speed, scalability, and Ethereum compatibility make it well-positioned for growth. According to Ava Labs, the platform processed over one million transactions per day in December 2021, a 23x increase from January that year.

As more users and developers flock to Avalanche to escape Ethereum‘s high gas fees, the ecosystem is poised to keep expanding. Upcoming developments will further improve performance, including:

Elastic Subnets: Independent throughput & security for application-specific blockchains
State API: Improves data accessibility for analytics providers and dapps
Ethereum State Connector: Allows cross-subnet communication between Avalanche and Ethereum contracts
Pruning: Reduces storage requirements & improves node uptime

Emin Gün Sirer, Founder & CEO of Ava Labs, sums up the vision:

"Avalanche can be looked at as a massive, global orchestra of computers that‘s pushing the boundaries of communication protocols and computation itself. What we‘ve built is a universal, scalable foundation on which anybody who wants to access a transparent system can build on securely, efficiently and globally."

Get Started with Avalanche

Adding Avalanche to MetaMask opens the door to a thriving ecosystem of dapps with near-instant and low-cost transactions. Whether you‘re a developer looking to port over an Ethereum dapp, a trader seeking an alternative to high gas fees, or simply curious about Avalanche‘s capabilities, it‘s worth taking the ecosystem for a spin.

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Disclosure: The author holds AVAX and uses Avalanche dapps. This post is for educational purposes only and is not financial advice. Always do your own research before investing.