Avalanche Foundation has recently announced the launch of Avalanche Rush, a $180M liquidity mining incentive program for blue-chip decentralized finance (DeFi) projects that will introduce new applications and assets to its growing DeFi ecosystem. With the launch of Avalanche Rush, leading DeFi projects Aave and Curve are now headed to launch on the Avalanche protocol. “As DeFi becomes more and more popular, it becomes clear that Ethereum blockchain is currently struggling to fit all the activity. Thus, it is important to expand to other chains and L2s. We find Avalanche offering an excellent opportunity with its unique decentralized consensus mechanism, high throughput and low transaction fees,” shares Curve Finance CEO Michael Egorov. Coming in with the news of Aave and Curve launching on Avalanche, the price of $AVAX, the ecosystem’s native token, saw gains of 37.7% over a 24-hour period. This signals a three-month high, seeing the token increase in value by over 94% over the preceding week, placing it as one of the crypto market’s top gainers. AVAX’s current market capitalization is at $5.8 billion, and ranks as the 27th largest cryptocurrency by this scale. The token now currently trades at around $30 per unit. Avalanche was first conceptualized as a project by Cornell University computer science professor Emin Gün Sirer, and is ranked alongside other “Ethereum killer” projects such as Polkadot, Cardano, and Polygon. Avalanche’s high-performance blockchain offers a scalable and secure platform for the creation and growth of next-gen decentralized applications (dApps). Avalanche has evolved to provide innovative solutions to DeFi users, with developments that include the Avalanche-Ethereum Bridge, and further integrations with SushiSwap, a leading decentralized exchange. “Avalanche consensus is well suited for building DeFi applications due to its scalability features, particularly its high throughput and near-instant finality. The deployment of the Aave Protocol on Avalanche will allow users to leverage low transaction costs without compromising the security of the network,” shared Aave Companies founder Stani Kulechov. The Avalanche Rush program will launch in phases, with Phase 1 providing liquidity mining incentives for Aave and Curve users over a three-month period. An allocation of up to $20 million for Aave users and $7 million for Curve users are currently planned, with further allocations for as Phase 2 settles in for the coming months. Combined, Aave and Curve represent the largest DeFi protocols in the sector with almost $25 billion in total valued locked (TVL). Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.