• Validators on Avalanche hit a new all-time high at 1,729 on January 29 in a push towards making the network more decentralized and handing a boost to AVAX.
• The total stake hit a new record at 232 AVAX tokens, a staking ratio of 53%, signaling high confidence by investors in Avalanche as the price spiked 14% in the past week.

As its price has surged in the past week, Avalanche has also hit new heights with its validators. Data shows that the number of validators hit a record high above 1,700 this week, signifying continued interest from investors in a bullish sign for the AVAX token.

Validators are nodes that stake AVAX tokens and are configured to verify transactions on the Avalanche network. To become a validator, a node must stake a minimum of 2,000 AVAX tokens (worth $69,080 at press time) and meet the minimum hardware requirements, which include 16GiB RAM, 1TiB storage and Ubuntu 20.04 or MacOS >= 12 operating systems.

As recently revealed, validators on the network hit a new high at 1,729 recently. This number has slightly declined; at press time, there were 1,707 validators.

Over 225 million AVAX tokens are staked by the validators. The staking ratio maxed out at 52.82% but has since slightly declined to 51.30%. This number represents the ratio of the staked tokens to the overall circulating supply; in this case, the number of tokens that have been staked is over half of all the AVAX in the market, a massive nod to the network and indicator of the high level of confidence investors have in the future of the network.

For context, the staking ratio on Ethereum is 24%, despite the network having the highest number of DeFi and yield farming platforms in the industry.

Allnodes dominates Avalanche staking, accounting for 56.5% of the validator stake. Allnodes is a non-custodial platform that enables users to host nodes and stake in over 70 protocols.

As Validators Spike, What’s Next for Avalanche (AVAX)?

AVAX trades at $34.41 at press time, shedding over 5% as trading volume dipped 10% in the past day.

Despite the dip, Avalanche has been on an uptrend in the past week, gaining over 11% in that time. From a low of $29.75 on January 25, the token went on a run that saw it hit $37.02 five days later, a 24% spike.

That momentum has waned, and it has steadily declined since hitting that two-week high. AVAX has yet to recover the price level it kicked off the year with, where it traded above $43.

While the price struggles to get back to old heights, other factors within the ecosystem continue to improve and grow. Its total value locked stands at $832 million, the sixth highest in the market. While its growth has slightly waned, it’s still significantly higher than the $500 million it started off October with. Benqi remains the biggest DeFi protocol on Avalanche at over $500 million, with cross-chain platforms Aave and Trader Joe the other significant players.

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