Avalanche expanded its presence in payments, traditional finance and asset tokenization in the July-September quarter, according to a Blockworks report. Record card spending and tokenized-asset values, alongside new institutional initiatives, contrasted with lower transaction and active-address figures on C-Chain.

Payments and tokenized assets reach records

Payment-card spending on Avalanche totaled $10.05 million in the quarter, excluding refunds, up 74% from Q2. Spending set a monthly record in each month from July through September, with Ethena Pay accounting for more than one-third of September’s total.

Ethena opened early access on Sept. 1 to a neobank on Avalanche that allows users to store, transfer and spend the USDe stablecoin while offering cashback and a savings yield. Funded accounts increased to 842 by quarter-end from 190 at the end of August.

The Uptop card-rewards platform also expanded its Avalanche programs to eight from three. Its partners include college sports teams, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Detroit Pistons.

Trading volume on the Pharaoh decentralized exchange doubled from the previous quarter to $5.33 billion, representing about 80% of total DEX volume on C-Chain. Pharaoh posted a monthly record of $2.86 billion in September and rose to 21st from 28th among DEXs across all networks by trading volume.

The value of tokenized real-world assets on C-Chain reached $1.22 billion at quarter-end. That placed Avalanche fourth among the 24 networks tracked by Blockworks. BlackRock’s BUIDL fund increased its Avalanche assets by 21% to $486.5 million even as the fund’s overall size changed little, while Securitize’s SECZ tokenized asset accounted for another $407 million.

Financial companies deepen engagement

New York Life Investment Management is preparing to launch its first tokenized fund on Avalanche, while Janus Henderson joined the network’s validator set. Charles Schwab plans to make AVAX available to clients of its brokerage service.

Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, is considering Avalanche as one of the possible networks for a planned round-the-clock onchain trading platform but has not announced its choice. Michael Blaugrund, ICE vice president of strategic initiatives, told Avalanche Summit NYC that the network “meets many of the criteria we have set for ourselves.”

Other developments included the launch of Aave V4 on Avalanche, an expansion of tokenized stocks and exchange-traded funds from Dinari, and the migration of Japan’s Progmat platform to a dedicated Avalanche L1. According to the report, 45 of 89 publicly announced Japanese tokenized-securities projects already operate on Avalanche.

Helicon changes processing and staking

Avalanche activated the Helicon upgrade on mainnet on Sept. 22, allowing C-Chain to run consensus and transaction processing in parallel. Blockworks said block-verification time fell to 2 milliseconds from about 20 to 60 milliseconds. The minimum validation period dropped to 48 hours from two weeks, and validators gained the ability to renew their stakes automatically.

After activation, network fees rose 44% to 61,583 AVAX, worth about $519,000. All of that fee revenue was generated after Sept. 22. Helicon also lowered the minimum consumption coefficient in the staking-rewards formula to 7.5% from 10%. Model estimates cited in the report indicated that the change could reduce AVAX’s annual inflation by 0.5 to 1 percentage point.

About 198 million AVAX was staked across 594 validators at quarter-end, equivalent to roughly 42% of total supply.

App revenue rises as C-Chain activity falls

Avalanche applications generated $27.2 million in fees during the quarter, up 14%, and $7.25 million in revenue, up 35%. It was the first quarter in which both measures increased since Q3 2025.

C-Chain transaction volume nevertheless fell 19% to 191.9 million. Average daily active addresses declined to about 144,000 from 621,000 in Q2, while total DEX trading volume on the network dropped 20% to $6.64 billion.

Axiym settlement pools processed a record $529 million in cross-border payments. In July, Hyundai Card and Hyundai Motor tested a $20,000 USDT transfer from the United States to Mexico that took about seven minutes, compared with three to four hours for a traditional interbank transfer.

Other Avalanche initiatives include FIFA’s integration of the blockchain into its ticket-sales system for the 2026 World Cup, where turnover in RTB and RTT digital rights has exceeded $25 million. South Korea plans to move capital-market infrastructure onchain and tokenize stocks and bonds in 2027 using Avalanche technology, while India’s Arya.ag plans to launch an Avalanche-based L1 to tokenize about $2 billion of agricultural assets.

Source: Incrypted