Since the fourth quarter of 2025, Avalanche has seen a synchronized resurgence in on-chain activity and institutional adoption.
On one side, mainnet activity metrics have repeatedly hit new phase highs multiple times at the end of the year and in January. On the other side, events related to institutional workflows and compliant distribution have become increasingly frequent. Even amid a weak market, the story of asset tokenization continues to accelerate.
Institutional routes drive asset tokenization.
In January 2026, renowned crypto investment bank Galaxy Digital announced the successful issuance of its first tokenized loan-backed security (CLO) on Avalanche, with a total size of $75 million, of which $50 million was subscribed by the institutional credit protocol Grove.
CLO is a structured credit product that packages corporate loans and sells them to investors with different risk levels. Its debt tranches are tokenized and issued through the regulated digital asset platform INX via the Avalanche network, offering trading opportunities to qualified investors.
This investment is essentially Grove's second major move on the Avalanche platform. In July last year, Grove announced its launch on the Avalanche platform, with an initial deployment strategy aiming to issue up to approximately $250 million in real-world assets (RWA) on the network. Grove allocated funds to JAAA, which are issued natively on-chain via the multi-chain protocol Centrifuge, and tokenized these shares for issuance and circulation on the Avalanche C-Chain.
As a high-performance public blockchain specifically designed for institutional-grade finance, in addition to advantages such as EVM compatibility, rapid deployment, and access to compliant distribution channels, Avalanche also emphasizes the fast deployment of customizable Avalanche L1 (Atomic subnet, Subnet), which better balances access control, compliance, performance, and risk management. As a result, it has become one of the preferred partners for financial institutions entering the blockchain space.
For example, in May last year, New Jersey real estate infrastructure company Balcony announced that it had deployed a scalable, dedicated Avalanche L1 service using the AvaCloud platform. This service aims to digitize and tokenize property records for over 370,000 land parcels with a total value of approximately $240 billion. AvaCloud is a managed blockchain service provider for Avalanche L1, assisting enterprises in building, deploying, and scaling Layer-1 networks.
The "Polar Contrasts" of Data
Avalanche's structured roadmap has contributed to the steady growth of its on-chain assets. According to Token Terminal data, the total market value of stablecoins and tokenized funds on the Avalanche mainnet has increased by approximately 70% over the past two years since January 2024.
According to RWA.xyzData shows thatAs of January 21, the total stablecoin assets on the Avalanche network exceeded $2.2 billion, with the total RWA assets surpassing $1.351 billion—of which Distributed Assets were approximately $636 million, and Represented Assets were approximately $715 million.
Distributable assets represent tokenized assets that can be peer-to-peer transferred between wallets, emphasizing market reach, financial inclusion, and platform interoperability. Represented assets, on the other hand, cannot be transferred outside the issuing platform, with the blockchain network primarily serving as a shared ledger for record-keeping, clearing, and settlement.
In December 2025, the total number of transactions on the Avalanche network's L1s exceeded 10 billion, marking a significant milestone. Along with this achievement, the ecosystem officially entered a recovery phase as the year came to a close. That month, the Avalanche C-Chain repeatedly set new daily and weekly records for 2025, with active addresses reaching 651.2 million and weekly inflows amounting to $43 million, briefly ranking second among all blockchains.
As the new year began, Avalanche continued the growth momentum from the end of last year. The daily active addresses on its main network (primarily the C-chain, along with the P-chain and X-chain) kept setting new records, reaching a peak of 1.71 million on January 18th.
However, if we shift our focus back to asset pricing and DeFi activity from on-chain热度 (activity), we don't see a similar "recovery curve." According to CoinGecko market data, since mid-January, the AVAX closing price has fluctuated roughly between $12 and $15, closing at about $12.09 on January 20, which marked its lowest level since November 2023.
Looking at the chain-level metrics from DeFiLlama, Avalanche's native TVL is approximately $1.66 billion, while bridged TVL is around $3.62 billion. Meanwhile, on-chain fees/income remain relatively low on a daily basis, indicating that even if transaction volumes and address numbers increase, they may not necessarily translate into significant value capture at the protocol level.
However, from a macro perspective, cryptocurrencies—especially L1 tokens—have generally faced downward pressure over the past year. Even when ecosystems announce institutional partnerships or technological advancements, these are often overshadowed by stronger market beta effects and the persistent lack of large-scale adoption. Avalanche's pricing challenges are not unique to it alone.
Nest Building to Attract Phoenixes: Launching the Million-Dollar Builder Competition
For infrastructure, a period of market downturn is also a great opportunity to accumulate strength for future growth. It allows for more focused and undistracted attention to be given to ecosystem development.
Taking advantage of the recent resurgence in on-chain activity, Avalanche has also significantly increased its efforts on the developer supply side. On January 21, the Avalanche Foundation announced the launch of the "BuildGames" builder competition, offering a total prize pool of $1 million. The official competition will last for six weeks, with a total prize pool of $1 million. Registration is now open and will be reviewed on a rolling basis. This competition does not specify any particular direction, type, or track. Outstanding teams will also have the opportunity to receive follow-up guidance and funding from Avalanche's official incubation program.
From the perspective of the existing foundation system, Avalanche's support for developers is not solely reliant on one-time competitions to attract new participants, but instead is divided into several parallel pipelines.
One is the official accelerator Codebase, which mainly focuses on providing early-stage teams with rapid guidance and non-dilutive funding support. Selected teams will receive a $50,000 funding grant and practical support covering areas such as product development, token design, validator/infrastructure strategies, growth, and compliance.
The second is the Foundation's Grants system, which focuses on allocating funds to infrastructure and AI-related projects. The last one is Retro9000, officially stated to have a maximum funding pool of up to $40 million, used to reward teams that have already delivered tangible results and made a significant impact on the Avalanche L1 or key toolchains. This initiative aims to lower the barrier of "raising funds before delivering" and direct resources toward builders who have already demonstrated value.
On the infrastructure development level, Avalanche completed a network upgrade codenamed "Granite" at the end of last year, which consists of three ACPs (ACP-181/204/226). The Granite upgrade introduced dynamic block time, biometric authentication, and a more stable validator view, enhancing the reliability and performance of cross-chain messaging.
Overall, in the past month, the Avalanche ecosystem has introduced institutional-scale capabilities. With the development of infrastructure and developer incentives, it has laid a solid foundation for growth by 2026.