Avalanche Foundation

Since 2021, the foundation has run an ongoing liquidity mining program called Avalanche Rush, using AVAX to incentivize the use of DeFi protocols on Avalanche. On October 4, 2021, the Aave protocol was deployed on the Avalanche C-Chain, launching in tandem with Avalanche Rush; the foundation allocated AVAX rewards to AaveAaveAave is a decentralized, non-custodial lending protocol deployed on Ethereum and several other public blockchains, where users can deposit crypto assets into liquidity pools to earn interest or borrow on an overcollateralized basis. The protocol is governed by the Aave DAO, made up of AAVE token holders.Open the full entry users, and Aave’s Avalanche market quickly became its largest after Ethereum. In January 2022, a proposal on the Aave governance forum to deploy Aave V3 on Avalanche stated that the foundation would continue to incentivize Aave V3 through Avalanche Rush and focus on a safe migration from V2 to V3.⁠[1][2][2][2][2][2]

In March 2022, the foundation launched the Avalanche Multiverse incentive program to accelerate the growth of Avalanche L1s (scalable app-specific blockchains). In August 2023, the program provided up to $3 million in AVAX to Dexalot, a decentralized exchange running a central limit order book on its own L1, with the funds distributed over 12 months contingent on milestones.⁠[3][3][3][3][3]

On July 25, 2023, the foundation announced Avalanche Vista, allocating up to $50 million to purchase tokenized assets (often referred to as “real world assets”) minted on Avalanche, covering equity, credit, real estate, commodities, and more, to showcase the value of tokenization in asset issuance, settlement, transfer, and administration.⁠[4][4][4][4]

On September 21, 2023, the foundation launched the Ted Yin Grant Program, named for computer scientist Maofan “Ted” Yin, to fund open source software projects building on the Avalanche public blockchain or otherwise benefiting public, permissionless blockchains.⁠[5][5][5]

On April 3, 2024, the foundation launched the Icebreaker Program to expand its own on-chain activities, with goals including helping new projects enter the market, deepening certain markets on Avalanche protocols, and diversifying the ecosystem; its first phase focused on liquid staking tokens, contributing up to 500,000 AVAX to related projects.⁠[6][6][6][6][6]

In July 2024, the foundation airdropped AVAX and the community token COQ to eligible wallets, primarily participants in the Memecoin Rush program and long-term holders (“Diamond Hands”), ranked into tiers by historic on-chain activity; the foundation said it had sought to filter out exchange wallets, bot wallets, and wallets engaged in wash trading.⁠[7][7][7][7]

On August 29, 2024, the foundation launched the infraBUIDL() Program, supporting infrastructure developers working on wallets, oracles, bridges, explorers, indexers, and more through direct and milestone-based retroactive grants. On September 26, as part of the Avalanche9000 upgrade, the foundation funded Retro9000, a retroactive grant program of up to $40 million that uses a public leaderboard driven by community votes to reward developers who build L1 blockchains and critical developer tooling on the Avalanche9000 testnet and deploy them on mainnet.⁠[8][8][8][9][9][9][9]

On September 16, 2025, the foundation appointed Lord Chris Holmes of Richmond MBE, a member of the UK House of Lords and a long-standing advocate for responsible technology policy, to its Board of Directors to help the foundation engage with policymakers around the world. Foundation director Nicolas Lemaitre said that, as blockchain adoption accelerates globally, his guidance would be invaluable.⁠[10][10][10][10]

In October 2025, Avalanche Treasury Co., which aims to amass AVAX, announced a business combination agreement valued at over $675 million with Mountain Lake Acquisition Corp., a Nasdaq-listed special purpose acquisition company, targeting a listing in the first quarter of 2026. The company has an “exclusive relationship” with the foundation: an initial $200 million purchase of AVAX from the foundation at a discounted price, plus an 18-month priority on the foundation’s token sales to U.S. treasury companies.⁠[11][11][11][11][11]

On December 10, 2025, the foundation announced the formal incorporation of a distributed ledger technology foundation, the Avalanche DLT Foundation, in Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), to serve as Avalanche’s primary regional entity in the Middle East and North Africa, through which ecosystem programs, enterprise partnerships, government collaborations, and startup engagement in the region will flow.⁠[12][12][12]

On June 8, 2026, the foundation appointed Marta Szluinska, who had led the operational delivery of the privacy blockchain Midnight from inception through mainnet launch, as Chief Operating Officer. On July 30, the foundation published its economic research agenda, dividing the work into three steps: measuring the value the ecosystem creates, capturing that value at the protocol level, and distributing it in a way that maximizes AVAX value accrual; Chief Investment Officer Matias Antonio said the connection between ecosystem output and AVAX value accrual is the central problem the foundation is working on. In September, the foundation used a keynote at Avalanche Summit 2026 to present proposals to tie on-chain economic activity directly to the value of AVAX.⁠[13][13][14][14][14][14][15][15]

On September 16, 2026, Brooklyn-based fintech company Tare announced a $13.25 million seed round in which the Avalanche Foundation participated. The round closed in March 2026 and was led by Blockchain Capital, with Janus HendersonJanus HendersonJanus Henderson is a global active asset manager whose predecessors were the British Henderson Group and the American Janus Capital Group; the company was formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker JHG) and is now a private company.Open the full entry, Strobe VenturesStrobe VenturesStrobe Ventures is a crypto-native venture capital firm headquartered in New York. Formerly BlockTower VC, it was renamed Strobe by the same team in March 2025; it invests in DeFi, infrastructure, and consumer crypto projects, and in 2026 it participated in fintech company Tare’s $13.25 million seed round.Open the full entry, the Venture Dept, and Neoclassic CapitalNeoclassic CapitalNeoclassic Capital is a digital asset and blockchain investment firm headquartered in Miami, co-founded by Michael Bucella and Steve Lee. It mainly invests in early-stage blockchain applications and distinguishes itself by connecting East Asian and North American markets.Open the full entry also participating. Tare plans to build private credit software on the Avalanche blockchain that creates digital records of loans and automates the administrative work of managing them.⁠[16][16][16][16][16]

The foundation’s mandate is to ensure the long-term economic sustainability and growth of the Avalanche ecosystem. It engages with the community directly through its grant, seed, and investment programs and indirectly through service providers including Ava Labs and its subsidiaries, funding, publicizing, and otherwise encouraging software development such as smart contracts, subnets, bridges, and wallets, as well as staking tokens, operating validator nodes, and creating content. Some of the foundation’s activities still generate revenue or investment returns, which are reinvested in the community and used to pay service providers; the foundation and its staff may buy, sell, lend, and borrow crypto assets such as AVAX through private sales, open market transactions, or DeFi protocols, sometimes offering or receiving preferential pricing based on volume.⁠[17][18][18][18][18][18][18][18][18][18]

The foundation stresses that the Avalanche public blockchain is a decentralized, permissionless platform, that the foundation has no greater inherent power than any other participant, that it does not control the blockchain, and that it cannot change data or transfers recorded on it.⁠[18][18][18]

Avalanche Foundation: Official website: https://www.avax.network/about/foundation (opens in a new window).⁠[17]

X: Public account: https://x.com/AvalancheFDN (opens in a new window)⁠[17]