What is AVAX?

AVAX is the native cryptocurrency of the Avalanche network. Avalanche is a decentralised public network that uses a ledger technology known as Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG). DAG allows all network nodes to process transactions in parallel with timestamps on each transaction to track their order. Different nodes ‘gossip’ all of the transactions with each other to ensure the entire network tracks each transaction. This allows for the Avalanche network to process more than 4,500 transactions per second. The Avalanche network is made up of three blockchains. The first is the exchange chain, which hosts the AVAX token and other digital assets. The second being the platform chain, which allows for the creation of subnets. Finally, the contract chain uses the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to allow smart contract functionality. Avalanche’s native token, AVAX is used to secure the network, pay fees and provides a unit of account for the multiple blockchains deployed on the Avalanche network.