What Is Avalanche (AVAX)? Subnets, Supply and How It Trades

What is Avalanche? It is a proof-of-stake layer 1 network whose coin, AVAX, pays fees and is staked by validators. Its pitch is a Primary Network of three chains plus independent Avalanche L1s, the networks once called subnets. For a trader the working facts are different: over the 90 days to 17 October 2026 AVAX's average daily range was 5.95%, 2.2 times Bitcoin's 2.76%, the coin gained 51% against Bitcoin's 26%, and its rolling 30-day correlation with BTC fell from 0.86 to 0.35 in one month.

Below: what Avalanche says it is, the supply figures from CoinGecko, our 90-day hourly profile, where AVAX trades, how it moves with BTC on up days and down days, a 1h structure read and the risks. Every number is computed from dated data or taken from a source we fetched on 18 October 2026.

What is Avalanche and what are subnets (L1s)

Avalanche's developer docs describe an Avalanche L1 as "a sovereign network which defines its own rules regarding its membership and token economics" (checked 18 October 2026). One L1 is run by its own set of validators and can host several blockchains. The Primary Network is "a special Avalanche L1 running three blockchains": the P-Chain (Platform), the C-Chain (Contract) and the X-Chain (Exchange).

AVAX is the asset behind all of it. The docs say transactions on Avalanche are paid with a fee "denominated in AVAX", and that a node becomes a Primary Network validator by staking 2,000 AVAX.

The subnet idea changed with ACP-77, titled "Reinventing Subnets". It separates L1 validators from Primary Network validators. L1 validators do not carry the 2,000 AVAX stake requirement. Instead an AVAX-denominated continuous fee is charged to keep each validator active, and the fee rate rises when active validators exceed a target count. The docs add that since the Etna upgrade L1 validators only sync the P-Chain. We found no source that measures how much L1 activity feeds into AVAX demand, so we do not claim a price link. What we can measure is how the coin trades, and that is the rest of this guide.

CoinGecko (18 October 2026) files AVAX under "Smart Contract Platform", "Layer 1 (L1)" and "Proof of Stake (PoS)" and ranks it 27th by market cap. Smart contracts on chains like this usually get prices from an oracle network such as Chainlink, which delivers outside data to them.

AVAX price analysis: the 90-day fingerprint

We took every 1h AVAXUSDT candle on Binance from 20 July to 17 October 2026 and averaged the high-to-low range for each UTC hour.

• Average daily range: 5.95%. Bitcoin's was 2.76% over the same 90 daily candles, so AVAX's range is 2.2 times wider. The median day was 5.34%, 50 of the 90 days (56%) ranged above 5%, and 6 days ranged above 10%.
• Busiest hour: 14:00 UTC (17:00 MSK), averaging 1.49% per hour, then 15:00 (1.37%), 13:00 (1.36%) and 12:00 (1.32%).
• Quietest hours: 19:00 and 20:00 UTC (22:00 and 23:00 MSK) at 0.87% and 0.89%. The peak is 1.7 times the quietest hour.
• By session (our UTC buckets): 13:00 to 21:00 averages 1.16% per hour, against 1.08% for 00:00 to 08:00, 1.06% for 08:00 to 13:00 and 0.99% for 21:00 to midnight. There is a smaller 01:00 UTC bump at 1.28%.

The busy window is the European afternoon running into the US open. The trading sessions tool shows those hours in your own time zone, and the best time to trade crypto study uses the same method on majors.

By UTC weekday, Saturday was the widest at 7.33% average range, then Tuesday (6.19%) and Sunday (6.03%). Monday was narrowest at 5.06%. Weekend days averaged 6.71% against 5.65% on weekdays, the reverse of what you may expect (see weekend crypto trading). One event drives that: the three widest days were Saturday 19 September (24.0% range, closing 23.0% above the open), Sunday 20 September (20.2%, +12.1%) and 22 August (16.8%, -4.4%). Bitcoin closed 0.5% higher on 19 September. We do not attach news to those days, because we have no dated source that ties them to an event.

Over the 90 days AVAX went from an open of 6.466 to a close of 9.767, +51.1% against +25.9% for BTC. Over the full year (18 October 2025 to 17 October 2026) it opened at 19.95 and fell 51.0%, while BTC fell 23.4%. The deepest drop from a running peak to a daily close was 71.7%. The highest close, 20.82, came on 26 October 2025, the lowest, 5.896, on 19 June 2026, and the last close of 9.767 sits 53.1% below the high.

AVAX supply and valuation

CoinGecko on 18 October 2026: 443.57 million AVAX circulating, a total supply of 470.24 million, a maximum of 720 million, a $4.32 billion market cap and a $4.58 billion fully diluted valuation (FDV). The circulating count is 62% of the maximum, so about 276 million AVAX sit between today's circulation and the cap.

The Avalanche docs page we read does not state a maximum supply, a fee-burn rule or a staking period, so we take the 720 million cap from CoinGecko only and say nothing about burns. We also found no dated unlock calendar in the sources we checked, so we publish none. If you trade around token releases, check the project's own announcements.

Where AVAX trades

We read 24-hour spot volume from the public tickers of nine venues on 18 October 2026 at about 06:26 UTC. Kraken and Coinbase report volume in AVAX, which we converted at Kraken's 24h average price and Coinbase's last price, so those two are approximate.

KuCoin printed $20.7 million, 40% of the $52.2 million across the nine. Binance followed at $16.9 million (32%), then Coinbase ($3.5 million, 7%), Gate, OKX, Bybit, Kraken, Bitget and MEXC. Two venues hold 72% of spot volume. See the listings tracker for new listings across exchanges.

Derivatives are larger. The Binance AVAXUSDT perpetual traded $96.7 million in 24 hours, 5.7 times Binance spot, and the Bybit perpetual turned over $24.6 million with $66.2 million of open interest.

AVAX vs BTC: how it moves in alt rallies

Over the 90 days, AVAX's daily returns correlated 0.50 with Bitcoin's, with a regression slope (beta) of 1.07. The split by direction shows the real behaviour. On the 47 days BTC closed up it averaged +1.50% and AVAX +2.45%, a ratio of 1.6. On the 42 days BTC closed down it averaged -1.11% and AVAX -1.60%, a ratio of 1.4. AVAX moved in the same direction as BTC on 66 of 89 days (74%) and beat it on 41 (46%). So AVAX amplified BTC's up days more than its down days in this window, but it lagged BTC on more days than it led. See the Bitcoin guide for the benchmark itself.

The 30-day correlation peaked at 0.88 on 4 September and was 0.86 on 18 September. It fell to 0.52 on 19 September, the day AVAX gained 23.0% while BTC gained 0.5%, then to 0.32 by 21 September and a low of 0.28 on 6 October. It ended the window at 0.35. A single large day moves a 30-day correlation, and that day stays in the window until about 19 October, so read the reading as unsettled rather than a new regime. For other layer 1s with live pages, compare Solana, NEAR and Sui.

Reading AVAX's structure

The chart shows AVAXUSDT on the 1h timeframe from 15 to 18 October 2026, with the BiasNex engine's structure events and the previous-day levels of 17 October: high 10.102 and low 9.562.

At 12:00 UTC on 17 October the engine marked an internal bearish break of structure at 9.889, and at 21:00 UTC another at 9.704, with the 21:00 candle wicking to 9.562 before closing at 9.653. At about 06:26 UTC on 18 October the engine's 1h label read bias bearish, context trend, with ATR at 1.05% of price (volatility MED), and its note read "Lower highs/lows dominate recent structure (16 vs 14)". Read it against market structure: the previous-day low at 9.56 is the level to watch and 10.10 is the previous-day high. There is no live AVAX markets page yet, so this read is a snapshot, not a feed.

Risks

• Range. At 5.95% a day, with a 24.0% day in the sample, stops sized from slower coins get hit. Size from the stop with the position size calculator.
• Large drawdowns. The year's deepest peak-to-trough fall was 72%, and the coin is 53% below its October 2025 high.
• Unstable BTC link. A 0.35 rolling correlation, after 0.86 a month earlier, means BTC hedges can fail.
• Concentrated spot liquidity. KuCoin and Binance carry 72% of the spot volume we measured, and derivatives are several times spot.

More coins in the same format are in the Coin Library.

FAQ

What is Avalanche used for? Avalanche is a layer 1 network. According to its docs, AVAX pays transaction fees and is staked by Primary Network validators, who need 2,000 AVAX. Independent L1s run on it with their own rules.

What happened to Avalanche subnets? ACP-77, "Reinventing Subnets", turned them into L1s whose validators no longer need the 2,000 AVAX stake or to validate the Primary Network. They pay a continuous AVAX fee instead.

What is the AVAX max supply? CoinGecko lists a 720 million maximum and 443.57 million circulating on 18 October 2026, about 62%. The Avalanche docs page we read does not state a cap.

Is AVAX more volatile than Bitcoin? Yes on our data: a 5.95% average daily range against 2.76% for BTC over 90 days, and a 71.7% deepest drawdown over the year.