AVA Labs Announces Final Testing of Ethereum Bridge; Bringing ETH to Avalanche Blockchain

AVA Labs, the creator of Avalanche blockchain, is on a mission to topple the Ethereum dominance in the decentralized applications and finance (DeFi) market as the top blockchain for developers to build on. The latest release of the ‘Avalanche-Ethereum bridge’ will allow the seamless transfer of ETH tokens to the Avalanche chain and back to Ethereum.

The Avalanche-Ethereum Bridge: What You Need to Know.
by Ava Labs https://t.co/X5KuVmomkq pic.twitter.com/oQT5eZqPtF

— Emin Gün Sirer (@el33th4xor) November 23, 2020

Avalanche is an open-source platform for launching decentralized finance applications and enterprise blockchain deployments. The blockchain boasts of having a faster, more scalable, and interoperable system than Ethereum. The latest development could set forth an exodus from the largest smart contract platform, which has had its troubles with the rising DeFi market.

Developed by ChainSafe, the Avalanche-Ethereum bridge is in “its final phase of testing before deploying it on the mainnet,” a statement from AVA Labs reads. Once complete, the bridge will allow simple, secure transfer of crypto assets (ERC-20 and ERC-721 transfers) across the two blockchains.

The cross-transfer of ETH tokens to the Avalanche platform is an addition to the already well ETH-connected blockchain. Avalanche already supports the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), meaning developers do not need to start coding from scratch when building their ETH-compatible DeFi applications.

To use the ETH token within decentralized applications on Avalanche, you port ETH tokens (or commonly referred to as wrapped ETH) into the ChainBridge smart contract, and an equivalent amount of AVAX-based token will be minted. These tokens are valued at the same price as the ported asset and can be redeemed at any time.

The Avalanche-Ethereum bridge is set to launch on the mainnet after the final testing phase implementations by AVA Labs partners, including Protofire, Hashquark, POA Network, and Avascan.

In September, BEG reported the AVA mainnet network launch to compete with Ethereum in providing the best development platform for DeFi apps. Emin Gün Sirer, the founder of AVA Labs and a computer science professor at Cornell, stated at the time,

“Avalanche is the first major breakthrough in our space since Satoshi’s leap forward, and we intend to follow in their footsteps to have the same, defining impact as we stand on the cusp of a new decade.”