Avalanche is an umbrella platform for launching decentralized finance (DeFi) applications financial assets trading and other services.It aims to be something of a global assets exchange allowing anyone to launch or trade any form of asset and control it in a decentralized manner using smart contracts and other cutting-edge technologies.Developers at Ava Labs claim that Avalanche is the first smart contracts network to offer transaction finalization in under one second as standard.Avalanche launched its mainnet in September 2020. The platform’s native token AVAX performs various tasks within Avalanche and also functions as a rewards and payment system for users.