Avalanche is a global financial network for the issuing and trading of all digital goods. We enable potentially millions of validators to process thousands of transactions per second with near instant finality using a protocol which is completely green and quiescent. We've paired this high throughput and fast finality protocol w/ an architecture that can meet the needs of unique financial services and decentralized apps.
We accomplish this through the notion of Subnets. Subnets allow anyone anywhere to spin up a taylor-made network w/ custom virtual machines and complex validator rulesets.
Avalanche is a network of networks. It's a platform of platforms where we invision thousands and thousands of public and private Subnets all emerging into this global marketplace which we call The Internet of Finance.
Consensus is the process by which a group of independent validators come into agreement on a decision. Avalanche Consensus is the 3rd major paradigm shift in the field of Consensus going back 40 years
A Virtual Machine defines the application-level logic of a blockchain. In technical terms, it specifies the blockchain’s state, state transition function, transactions, and the API through which users can interact with the blockchain. Every blockchain on Avalanche is an instance of a VM.
As a developer when you write a VM, you don't need to concern yourself with lower-level logic like networking, consensus, or the structure of the blockchain. Avalanche does this behind the scenes so you can focus on the thing you would like to build.
A dynamic set of validators working together to achieve consensus on the state of a set of blockchains. Subnets manage their own membership, and may require that their constituent validators have certain properties which is very useful for
- Regulatory compliance
- Support for private blockchains
- Separation of Concerns
- Application-Specific Requirements