Ava Labs, the team behind the Layer 1 smart contract platform Avalanche, announced on January 11, 2023 a strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to accelerate blockchain adoption across enterprises, institutions, and governments. Founder and CEO Emin Gün Sirer called the collaboration a “big deal” and emphasized it is a meaningful partnership, unlike previous blockchain announcements involving AWS.
What the Partnership Includes
According to the announcement, AWS will support the Avalanche network and its decentralized application (dapp) ecosystem. Critically, Avalanche node operators can run nodes in AWS Govcloud for FedRAMP compliance – a vital prerequisite for enterprise and government use cases.
Howard Wright, Vice President and Global Head of AWS Startups, stated: “At AWS, we are all about bringing the most cutting-edge technologies to builders, no matter if they sit in a multi-million-dollar enterprise, a government office, or a dorm. The new capabilities brought by Avalanche enable us to do just that. We’re thrilled to add an innovator like Ava Labs to our partner network and to support new tooling for Avalanche’s infrastructure and ecosystem, helping to expand its adoption to new geographies and customer segments.”
Emin Gün Sirer: 'This is the Real Deal'
Emin Gün Sirer took to Twitter to clarify the nature of the partnership: “In the past, other chains have paid AWS to host some nodes, and pitched this as ‘AWS partners with Some Chain.’ In reality, ‘Some Chain’ was paying AWS — they were a client. There was no meaningful partnership. This announcement is the exact opposite. AWS recognizes how blockchains are evolving, with subnets serving as appchains, and wants to be one of the hosting providers for the many subnets that people are about to launch.”
He stressed that AWS now acknowledges the value of Avalanche's subnet architecture, which is becoming a standard for enterprise-grade blockchain deployment.
Market Reaction: AVAX Surges 16% but Still Down 89% from All-Time High
Following the news, the native token AVAX surged 16.2% against the U.S. dollar within 24 hours. Over the past seven days, AVAX has gained 29.1%. Its market capitalization stood at approximately $4.51 billion, ranking it the 19th largest cryptocurrency. Trading prices ranged between $12.31 and $14.83.
Despite the rally, AVAX remains about 89% down from its all-time high of $144.96 on November 21, 2021. Like Solana (SOL), Avalanche has been hit hard by the crypto winter and struggles to hold a position just below the top 20.
Implications for Enterprise Blockchain Adoption
The partnership marks the first time AWS has directly supported a Layer 1 blockchain as a hosting partner rather than simply being a cloud vendor. Ava Labs aims to leverage AWS’s global infrastructure to lower the barrier for enterprises and governments to deploy blockchain applications, especially in regulated sectors like finance and government.
Notably, Ava Labs highlighted that the subnet model allows Avalanche to support customized app chains, and AWS will be a primary cloud provider for these subnets. This could provide the blockchain industry with a more mature infrastructure option and encourage more traditional institutions to enter the Web3 space.