Avalanche has activated a significant new upgrade known as Granite, a system-wide enhancement intended to deliver faster and more cost-efficient on-chain transactions across its blockchain network, which currently carries a market valuation of roughly $6 billion. The update centers on improving how the platform processes transaction activity under varying levels of demand, ranging from periods of low usage to moments of intense network congestion.
Granite introduces mechanisms that dynamically adjust computing resources based on real-time transaction volume. The approach is meant to allow the network to calibrate throughput to match demand, giving validators a more responsive system that behaves more like traditional financial infrastructure.
Executives familiar with the effort noted that the upgrade is expected to give Avalanche a new level of flexibility as it responds to changing market conditions. Leadership at Avalanche Treasury, an independent digital asset treasury firm valued at approximately $675 million and holding around $200 million in Avalanche tokens, conveyed that the network would now be able to expand or contract throughput depending on whether it is settling tokenized assets during market hours or processing stablecoin transfers during quieter periods. They added that this form of responsiveness is becoming increasingly important as blockchain systems evolve to handle a broader range of financial activity.
Upgrade Arrives During a Challenging DeFi Downturn
The rollout of Granite comes at a time when Avalanche’s decentralized finance sector is facing significant headwinds. Investor deposits in the chain’s on-chain economy have contracted by an estimated $1.5 billion since early October, a decline that has erased nearly all of the gains the ecosystem had accumulated in 2025. When viewed from its peak in 2022, Avalanche’s DeFi deposits have fallen by nearly 90 percent, underscoring the downturn facing the network’s financial ecosystem.
Avalanche Granite is live. The tech is powerful.
This upgrade does three things: pic.twitter.com/l36s4c1wVr
— Avalanche🔺 (@avax) November 19, 2025
Despite these challenges, proponents of the upgrade have suggested that Granite could open new revenue streams and user opportunities for the platform. One of the most anticipated additions is support for biometric-based transaction signing. Instead of relying solely on traditional wallet-signing processes—which many customers find complex—users will have the option to authenticate transactions using biometric data such as facial recognition or fingerprints. Industry observers stated that this feature could be especially advantageous in developing regions with strong smartphone adoption, making it easier to deploy applications that rely on native biometric capabilities.
Enhancements Strengthen Avalanche’s Subnet Architecture
Granite also introduces a new communication standard for Avalanche’s subnet model, the framework used by different interconnected chains within the ecosystem. Subnets communicate using interchain messaging rather than conventional token bridges, with validators approving transfers across chains. Prior to the upgrade, the set of validators responsible for approval changed with each new Avalanche block, a design that occasionally produced unexpected issues for users.
With the Granite update, validator sets will remain fixed for short, defined epochs. Developers believe this change will support more predictable and efficient transaction flow across subnets. Stakeholders have emphasized that improving subnet reliability is critical for institutional adoption, especially as large financial firms increasingly experiment with blockchain-based tokenization services.
Avalanche currently hosts more than $3.4 billion in tokenized assets and has attracted the attention of major Wall Street players such as JPMorgan and Citi, both of which have explored private subnet deployments on the platform. JPMorgan’s blockchain unit, Onyx, has recently tested tokenization and portfolio management solutions on Avalanche, reinforcing the chain’s growing position as a preferred environment for institutional blockchain experimentation.
