Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence division of Alibaba Group, is partnering with layer-1 blockchain Avalanche, the companies told MinRegion exclusively ahead of an announcement at the Avalanche Summit II conference.
The partnership will provide Alibaba’s customers with a launch pad, Cloudverse, which aims to help companies customize, launch and maintain their own metaverse spaces on Avalanche’s blockchain.
There is also a third partner, MUA DAO, the service layer that will help implement integration and customization for metaverses, John Wu, president of Ava Labs, told MinRegion. “For [Alibaba Cloud], asking their partners to be part of web3,” Wu said. “So we’ll dedicate resources to make it easy for them to create their own SDKs on top of ours.”
Avalanche has subnets, short for “subnetworks”, which are a series of nodes (or validators) that can be built on top of the blockchain. Subnets are application-specific blockchains that can be customized for one’s needs on top of a blockchain. This infrastructure will also help create customizable blockchain solutions through the Cloudverse.
The ability to launch metaverses quickly and easily can open doors for enterprises that don’t have the time or resources to launch these platforms, but want space exposure.
“You and I can now create a metaverse. The chain hangs up within 15 minutes; within hours the wallet is gone and the key is ready,” said Emin Gün Sirer, the founder and CEO of Ava Labs. The technology is made “really easy” and all tools are open source, he added.
Builders on the Cloudverse will get support for visuals, meta-economy, interactive features, events, ongoing activities and more, the companies said. Any metaverse space can be ready for use in about a month after the initial outreach, she added.
This is not the first time the two organizations have collaborated. In December, Alibaba Cloud began providing infrastructure and tools to help users in Asia launch validators on the Avalanche network. That original iteration offered plug-and-play and node-as-a-service initiatives to expand blockchain adoption in Asia, the companies said.
Alibaba Cloud has about 4 million customers and 10 million developers, according to John Wu, president of Ava Labs. “It’s a great way for Asian users to manage and validate nodes, and now we’re expanding this partnership with Cloudverse.”
From Alibaba’s perspective, one of the ways to get the Asian business ecosystem into web3 is through the metaverse, Wu said. “For us it’s a great way to get access to 4 million potential builders, and when they come through [Avalanche]there will be tons of transactions in the chain.