Avalanche (AVAX), the native token powering the Layer-1 blockchain of the same name, has been given a boost by way of Amazon.
Thanks to a fresh partnership between Amazon and Avalanche development studio Ava Labs, Amazon Web Services (AWS) will now support the network, per Wednesday blog posts.
The move — geared towards enterprises and institutions eager to work with blockchains — allows developers to launch Avalanche nodes directly within AWS in support of their dapps.
To that end, Ava Labs is now part of AWS’ member network and AWS Activate, exposing the Avalanche platform to more than 100,000 partners in 150 countries.
“It has been a huge boon for both individual and enterprise developers to be able to spin up nodes and test networks on the fly with AWS in whatever legal jurisdiction makes the most sense for them,” Emin Gün Sirer, CEO at Ava Labs, said in a statement.
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Avalanche is considered an upstart competitor to Ethereum. It similarly supports smart contracts and dapps underpinned by its own take on proof-of-stake-style consensus.
Ava Labs hopes to eventually allow AWS customers to deploy their own Avalanche “subnets” within Amazon’s platform — custom sovereign blockchains operating outside of Avalanche’s mainnet intended to power individual dapps.
Native token AVAX rose up to 28% after the partnership was announced, according to data from Blockworks Research, although it’s still down more than 80% over the past year.
Ava Labs’ reputation took a hit last year following a pay-for-play scandal involving crypto-focused lawyer Kyle Roche, who’d allegedly struck a deal to distract regulators from Avalanche by directing class-action lawsuits at rival crypto startups.
Ava Labs’ Gün Sirer denied the allegations while Roche was eventually ousted from his law firm over the matter.
The Amazon partnership could help shake off those concerns, but this isn’t the first time Amazon has partnered with a blockchain startup to further the technology’s adoption.
In 2018, AWS teamed up with Consensys-incubated startup Kaleido to offer simplified blockchain platforms. That partnership was also geared towards companies eager to adopt the technology without handling nodes directly.
Amazon Managed Blockchain, the tech giant’s blockchain-focused cloud service, already supports Ethereum and enterprise solution Hyperledger Fabric.
It’s not just Amazon pushing to support blockchain development. Last November, Google said its new analogous service, Blockchain Node Engine, would soon incorporate Solana alongside Ethereum, having already launched a validator node on the network (Solana and Avalanche are considered direct rivals).
And in December, Alibaba said it was preparing to launch its own blockchain node service.
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