The Avalanche Foundation has awarded research grants to six teams studying token valuation, staking incentives, and validator economics.
The Avalanche Foundation has selected six research projects for its inaugural Call for Research Proposals, awarding grants of up to US$50,000 each to investigate cryptocurrency valuation, validator economics and network security.
The projects were chosen through an independent review process involving leaders from the Avalanche Foundation and Ava Labs, including Ava Labs Founder and CEO Emin Gün Sirer, alongside academic researchers from Duke University. The selected teams include researchers from Stanford University, the University of Oxford, Imperial College London and Nanyang Technological University.
The research covers two main areas, with questions relating to Avalanche’s economic design and the supply of its native AVAX token.
Under Cryptoasset Pricing and Valuation, one project will examine how revenue generated by decentralised applications, including trading venues and lending markets, flows through Layer-1 blockchain ecosystems. Another will investigate how staking affects token valuation, liquidity and network security.
The second research area, Validator Economics and Network Security, covers four projects examining how blockchain networks incentivise validators and maintain security. These projects will compare inflation-based and fee-based security models, including whether recurring fees paid by Avalanche Layer-1 networks to its Primary Network under ACP-77 could help sustain validator security.
Other research will investigate the incentives behind transaction ordering on Avalanche’s C-Chain and the economic returns validators require to keep capital committed to securing the network.
Matias A., Chief Investment Officer at the Avalanche Foundation, said: “Bringing in researchers of this calibre means the hardest open questions get tackled faster, and with a level of independent scrutiny we simply cannot generate on our own.”
To make the research more accessible, the foundation will also launch the Economics of Blockchain Roundtable, a video series featuring grant recipients and members of the selection committee. The series will explore the research questions, methodologies and potential implications for Avalanche’s economic design and governance.
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