Avalanche rallies after developer stimulus launch

• Avalanche has announced the start of the Retro9000 initiative, aimed at incentivizing developers to build their chain.
• Retro9000 is part of Avalanche’s biggest update to date, called Avalanche9000.
• AVAX is up nearly 7% in the past 24 hours as it tries to recover the psychological level of $30.

Avalanche announced the release of the Retro9000 on Thursday as part of its larger Avalanche9000 upgrade. Retro9000 is a program designed to support developers with up to $40 million in grants to build on the Avalanche testnet.

AVAX rises as Avalanche prepares for upgrade

The Avalanche announced the start of a $40 million retroactive grant program known as Retro9000. This program is part of Avalanche9000, Avalanche’s biggest update to date.

Retro9000 is funded by the Avalanche Foundation and is dedicated to providing incentives for developers who want to build on the Avalanche9000 testnet.

“The Retro9000 incentivized testnet program seeks to jump-start an L1 ecosystem and provide developers with the earliest and most attractive incentives to build their product,” said Luigi D’Onorio DeMeo, Chief Operating Officer at Ava Labs.

Rewards will be determined by a public leaderboard that hosts all entries. Submissions will be ranked based on community votes, which will also determine grant allocation.

Avalanche9000 aims to enable companies to launch projects faster and more affordably, encouraging innovation at different scales.

The initiative will include Upgrade Etna, ACP-77 and enhanced developer incentives to encourage innovation. Developers will also be able to use Interchain Messaging (ICM) for interoperability between L1s, encouraging collaboration and scalability.

“The next upgrade will remove the primary network validation requirement, greatly reducing the cost of implementing and maintaining an L1 blockchain on the Avalanche network,” said Martin Eckardt, director of developer relations at Ava Labs.

AVAX rose nearly 7% after the announcement. The token has witnessed remarkable price growth over the past week as it tries to recover the psychological level of $30 last seen on July 24.

The price of AVAX plummeted in August, falling below $18 following the crypto market crash and a supply injection of 9.54 million AVAX tokens worth $200 million at the time. The token has witnessed a rally since September 7 and looks set to break the $30 level.