Avalanche is an open-source, decentralized, interoperable, and highly scalable blockchain for the deployment of decentralized applications. It is the first blockchain with a near-instant transaction finality and allows Ethereum developers to quickly build and port their Solidity smart contracts into the Avalanche ecosystem. Avalanche utilizes a novel proof of stake (PoS) consensus mechanism to achieve its security, quick finality, and high throughput without compromising decentralization. AVAX is the native token of the Avalanche network and is used to secure the network through staking, pay for fees, and provide a basic unit of account between the multiple subnetworks created on the platform.

Methodology

The data for this analysis were collected from the fact_blocks and fact_transactions tables of the core schema of the avalanche database.

Analysis

The hourly analysis of minted blocks on the network has shown that on average, a new block is created every 2 seconds. Except for two hours on the evening of the 24th of June when the balance was disrupted, which can also be considered as an outlier, the average has been stable since the beginning of the measured period.

The hourly average gas fees per transaction and per block have been plotted in the following charts. Although the base fee per gas on each block has been around 25 nano AVAX (nAVAX) with only a few exceptions, the average gas price has been slightly higher for each transaction. The changes in average gas used per transaction are in accordance with the number of transactions per second. However, since there has been a huge gap between the minimum and the maximum number of transactions per block, the average amount of gas used per block has highly fluctuated over different hours in the measured period.

The hourly maximum, minimum, and average number of transactions per block has been shown in the next chart. The minimum has been steadily 1 transaction per block with few exceptions where no transactions were registered on the block. On the other hand, the maximum number climbed to as high as 144 transactions per block. Although there were blocks with a high number of transactions stored on them, the average has remained below 10 transactions per block.

The hourly average block size in kilobytes has been plotted in the next chart. It has indicated that each block has roughly 3kB worth of data inside it which gets higher or lower depending on the hour of the day. In comparison, each block on the Ethereum network has a size of around 100kB. A higher block size indicates a higher activity on the network which results in higher data to be stored on that block. The block size diverges from the average to the downside in the midnight and early hours of the day, and it increases between noon and the afternoon.

In the following chart, the number of transactions per block, transactions per second, and the number of unique addresses initiating transactions have been plotted over time. On average, around 5 transactions have registered on each block. The fluctuations of both the number of transactions per block and transactions per second are in accordance with the block size. Overall, the number of transactions has been higher during the daytime.

Although the Avalanche blockchain is capable of achieving infinite TPS with its subnets, in theory, it has only registered an average TPS of between 2-3 during the measured period. This indicates that providing a scalable solution compared to other crypto assets such as Ethereum, will not automatically result in the migration of existing or adoption of current users.

The number of unique addresses that initiated a transaction per second has been less than the TPS of the network. In theory, the maximum number of addresses is equal to the number of transactions. In other words, if 100 transactions register on the network, 100 unique addresses can be the initiator. The average number of users on the Avalanche network has been around 0.8. Comparing this number to the 2-3 TPS indicates that on average, each address conducts 3 transactions per second.

The following two graphs depict the changes in the number of transactions and the number of users during different hours of the day with the transaction fees. The interesting point is the fact that during the midnight and early hours of the day, a lower number of users are responsible for a considerable amount of transactions, and in turn pay higher fees. Besides that, the total transaction fees paid in each hour directly correlate with the number of users. The more the users, the more transactions occur on the network, and more fees will be paid to the platform. On the other hand, the average transaction fees have been in a high range both when the network is busy and when it is less active. To be precise, the average transaction fees have been during the midnight to early hours of the day, and during its peak around noon.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the fundamental analysis of the Avalanche blockchain has demonstrated that although in theory, it has the capacity of handling thousands of transactions per second, it has only had 2 transactions per block recently. On the other hand, a new block has minted almost every 2 seconds which indicates a high transaction finality. Besides that, users have shown a proper engagement with the network and on average, a single user conducts around 3 transactions on the network. The average gas prices for each transaction have been slightly higher than the base fee on each block. However, since the number of transactions that were registered on each block encompasses a wide range, the total gas used per block has also hugely varied during different hours. Last but not least, it has indicated that while the number of users and the total transaction fees directly correlated during different hours of that day, the transaction fees have been high both when the number of transactions was high and low. The midnight through the early hours of each day, plus the hours during noon have been the most active hours of the blockchain.