Alibaba Cloud, Avalanche partner to deploy metaverses on the blockchain

Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence division of Alibaba Group, has partnered with layer-1 blockchain Avalanche, the companies exclusively told TechCrunch ahead of an announcement at the Avalanche Summit II conference.

The partnership will provide Alibaba's clients with a launchpad, Cloudverse, that aims to help businesses customize, launch and maintain their own metaverse spaces on Avalanche's blockchain.

There's also a third partner, MUA DAO, which is the service layer that will help implement the integration and customization for metaverses, John Wu, president of Ava Labs, told TechCrunch. "For [Alibaba Cloud], their partners are asking to be a part of web3," Wu said. "So we will be dedicating resources to make it easy for them to make their own SDKs on top of ours."

Avalanche has subnets, short for "subnetworks," which are a set of nodes (or validators) that can be built on top of the blockchain. Subnets are application-specific blockchains that can be customized to fit one's needs on top of a blockchain. This infrastructure will also aim to help create customizable blockchain solutions through the Cloudverse.

The ability to launch metaverses quickly and easily could open doors for enterprises that don't have the time or resources to launch these platforms, but want exposure to the space.

"You and I can create a metaverse right now. Within 15 minutes, the chain is up; within hours the wallet is up and the turnkey is up," Emin Gun Sirer, the founder and CEO of Ava Labs, said. The technology has been made "very easy" and all of the tools are open source, he added.

Builders on the Cloudverse will receive support for visuals, metaeconomics, interactive functions, events, continued operations and more, the companies said. Each metaverse space can be ready for business in about a month after initial outreach, they added.

This isn't the first time the two organizations have gotten together. In December, Alibaba Cloud began providing infrastructure and tools to help Asia-based users launch validators on the Avalanche network. That original iteration provided plug-and-play and node-as-a-service initiatives to help 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 extending this partnership with Cloudverse."

From Alibaba's perspective, one of the ways to get the Asian enterprise 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 on the chain."