Avalanche Foundation launches NFT initiative

The Avalanche Foundation has launched an initiative that will see it support non-fungible token (NFT) artists, as announced in a blog post.

Avalanche forms digital artist initiative

Avalanche says that its initiative, titled Avaissance, will be made up of two parts.

The first part of the initiative involves an Artist in Residence (AIR) program that will provide funding, mentorship, and virtual workshop sessions to more than fifty digital artists. Each artist will release a collection of NFTs on the Avalanche blockchain.

So far, Avalanche has announced three mentors: the motion graphics Emonee LaRussa, ALLSHIPS founder Dave Krugman, and Valhalla Chief of Staff Ryan Wen.

The second part of the program is a collaborative digital art curation program called the Mona Lisa Initiative (MLI). This effort aims to give away NFTs to various digital art DAOs. It will also see Avalanche create its own permanent collection featuring certain art pieces.

Avalanche invites digital artists to apply through its official online application form. The project will accept applications until April 28, 2023.

The state of NFTs on Avalanche

Most NFTs are currently created and circulated on the Ethereum blockchain. This is the case in spite of the fact that many competing blockchains attempt to offer a more favorable platform by promising lower fees and faster transaction times.

DAppRadar suggests that NFT trading volume reached $946 million in January 2023. Ethereum was responsible for $659 million of volume, or 78.5% of all volume, that month. By contrast, Avalanche was responsible for just $1.7 million of NFT trading volume in January, amounting to approximately 0.2% of all NFT trading volume that month.

Certain other blockchains, such as Tezos (XTZ) and WAX (WAX), saw volumes very similar to Avalanche, while Ronin (RON) and BNB Chain (BNB) saw at least twice much volume as Avalanche. Other blockchains had significantly greater trading volumes.