Avalanche and Polkadot Surge Despite Low Global Trading Volumes

It’s Sunday today, which means crypto trading is keeping the Sabbath like everywhere else. But that hasn’t stopped altcoins Avalanche and Polkadot from hurtling up the crypto market capitalization leaderboard. 

Just yesterday, Avalanche was the twentieth biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, according to data aggregator Nomics. Today, it’s up six places to fourteenth to set a new all-time high price of $61.44, or 23.89% higher than it was yesterday. 

Developer Ava Labs touts Avalanche, which went live in September last year, as “blazingly fast, low cost, & eco-friendly”. Like Ethereum, Avalanche is a smart contracts platform, which means that thanks to its self-executing code, developers can launch a plethora of decentralized exchanges and non-custodial lending apps on the blockchain. 

Ava Labs claims Avalanche can handle 4,500 transactions a second, which is significantly more scalable than Bitcoin’s 7 transactions a second and Ethereum’s 14.

Avalanche is also greener than Bitcoin and other proof-of-work consensus mechanisms, which rely on high energy consumption to validate transactions. Under Avalanche’s proof-of-stake model, anybody staking at least 2,000 AVAX ($122,880) can process transactions and mine AVAX.

Polkadot also jumped, from tenth to ninth place in the biggest cryptocurrencies by market cap. Polkadot surged 8.48% overnight to reach a new price of $33.52.

Like Avalanche, Polkadot is a proof-of-stake that facilitates interoperability between blockchains. Unlike Avalanche, Polkadot doesn’t natively support smart contracts on its main relay chain but supports smart contracts on so-called parachains.

Market leaders Bitcoin and Ethereum are lagging behind today. The world’s most popular cryptocurrency is currently valued at $46,215, just 1% higher than it was yesterday. Meanwhile, Ethereum, the currency for the original smart contract blockchain, is currently worth $3,437, an encouraging 3.21% higher than yesterday.