Avalanche mainnet activates Banff upgrade, supports Avalanche subnet validators to use subnet tokens for staking

Avalanche announced that its mainnet has successfully activated the Banff upgrade, which enables Avalanche subnet validators to stake and earn rewards using subnet tokens, and also enables subnet creators to remove validators from the subnet before the staking period ends. This change does not apply to all subnets immediately, and for a subnet to behave this way, the subnet creator must change it to an elastic subnet. Additionally, the Banff upgrade is a hard fork and validators will need to upgrade to the latest version or face being marked offline and seeing reward reductions. Patrick O'Grady, Director of Engineering at Ava Labs, said, "Elastic subnets are Avalanche's biggest feature since the network launched in 2020, and when converting their subnets to elastic subnets, the creator pays Validators are open to staking and are directly rewarded for providing additional security. But validators will still need to stake AVAX tokens, which will be required for the upcoming native cross-subnet messaging feature.”