- Name: Fantom (FTM)
- Project launch: 2019.
- Protocol: Lachesis (modified Proof-of-Stake)
- Mining method: staking
- Current stage: active project
Performance as of early February 2022.
- Limit: 3,175,000,000 FTM
- Market capitalization: $5.9 billion
- Capitalization rating: #31 according to Coinmarketcap.
- Community: 368,000 official Twitter followers
General info
To begin with, what is Fantom (FTM)? Fantom is a Tier 1 platform. Simply put, its own, just like ethereum or bitcoin.Yes, there are not really “their own” – the second level of superstructure over Ethereum. Polygon Network, for example.
SushiSwap, a decentralized exchange, and USDT Stablecoin use the Fantom – although, the team of the latter has managed to transfer its coin to a dozen different blockchains.
The project was launched in 2019 by scientists and blockchain developers from South Korea. The team is united in a rather large Fantom Foundation organization.
CEO/CIO of Fantom Foundation is Michael Kong. Before the launch he managed to work at Block8, Enosi and Digital Currency Holdings. After the release, he found a real job as a teacher’s assistant in the Sydney Business School.
The CTO is Quan Nguyen. From 2013 to 2016, he did research at IBM. He spent the next two years at the University of Sydney.
The architect is Andre Cronje. Yes, yes, the same one who beat FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor and other heavyweights in DeFi’s 2021 list of most influential personalities. Andre’s main brainchild remains Yearn.Finance. Although his portfolio includes gaming platform Eminence, token LBI and the Keep3r network.
What is Fantom?
Fantom, like the other 15,000 projects, is positioned to be fast, secure and scalable.
It’s a 2nd generation smart contract platform – with low fees and near-instant execution.
Instead of the standard Proof-of-Work or Proof-of-Stake, the network uses its own consensus mechanism, Lachesis. Simply put, Lachesis invites third-party participants to build applications and conduct transactions on the network without validating the network itself. We’ll tell you more about this solution in the Technology section.
Overall, Fantom should seem familiar to Ethereum developers. Moreover, the ecosystem supports an Ethereum virtual machine, and you can code in the Solidity language, which is beloved by blockchain developers.
How and where to use
The calculations are based on FTM’s own token. Although Phantom’s Lachesis is “its own”, it has borrowed the main feature – staking – from Proof-of-Stake. Users can send their coins to special accounts – thereby guaranteeing the safety of the network and profits for themselves. The most profitable option is to bet for 12 months, getting 13% per annum in return.
As with PoS, each token equals one vote. This allows the network to remain more or less democratic.
The ecosystem also includes the now-familiar NFTs. Here Fantom is trying to go further than its competitors.For example, Marketplace Artion offers a quick release of new NFTs without commissions. And another marketplace – PaintSwap – offers not only trading in ordinary tokens and NFTs, but also a game called Ross Studio, where users have to perform quests, demonstrating their artistic skills.
Technology
Lachesis is the aBFT consensus algorithm from the Fantom team. The consensus mechanism, simply put, is a kind of engine that keeps the whole blockchain running.
BFT, Byzantine Fault Tolerance, is the ability of any decentralized network to reach a consensus and continue to operate despite the arrival of incorrect data or the presence of attackers. It gets its name from the problem of Byzantine generals.
Satoshi Nakamoto – the creator of bitcoin – developed a BFT consensus mechanism called the Nakamoto Consensus. With this mechanism, the Proof-of-Work protocol was introduced. It is PoW that requires complex computation to keep the network running, or more simply, mining. And it is the one that eliminates the cost of communication between network participants.
But PoW gets its share of criticism – because of energy consumption and slowness.
Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance, or aBFT, on the other hand, is top notch among consensus mechanisms. At least according to Michael Kong’s team. aBFT solves blockchain. From the programmer’s point of view, the network can remain decentralized, secure and scalable at the same time. Yes, in classic BFT only 2 of the 3 conditions can be implemented.
Unlike other versions of BFT, which require that all messages shared by nodes must be delivered to their recipients, aBFT allows for delay or loss of data – even then, the network will continue to operate. This makes Fantom more resistant to DDoS attacks.
Actually, Lachesis is a consensus aBFT algorithm based on DAG. Each node in a Lachesis network stores a local acyclic graph (DAG) consisting of blocks of events, each containing transactions. A special DAG, captures the relationship between events that have occurred up to a particular point – calculating the exact order of events and transactions.
Unlike Proof-of-Work and many versions of Proof-of-Stake, Lachesis nodes only synchronize events, not exchanging blocks. However, this approach also raises questions.
Well, if you’ve finished this chapter, you can breathe a sigh of relief – it’s much easier from here.
How to mine
Staking. You can stake “on demand”, in which case the Fantom reward is about 4% per annum. If you stack for 12 months, the reward goes up noticeably – about 13% APY.
Plus Fantom has a pretty extensive ecosystem where you can find uses for your FTM, USDT and other tokens – yes, you can print your own here too.
One popular market maker is Balancer-based Beethoven X. The ecosystem also features Ethereum’s leading marketplaces Curve and Sushi.
There are NFT’s own marketplaces, borrowing services, crosschain bridges and more – the list is regularly updated on the Fantom Foundation homepage.
Where to Buy
If you don’t already have FTM, the idea of using Fantom’s own exchanges to buy is unlikely to work for you. You can buy the coin on centralized exchanges:
- Binance;
- Bitfinex;
- Gemini;
- and others.
The good news is that FTM supports not only its own standard. The token is made in versions for Ethereum (ERC standard) and Binance Smart Chain (BEP standard). If you have stocks of other tokens in these ecosystems, you can easily exchange them for FTM via Uniswap or Pancake.
Where to store
You can store tokens – depending on which version of FTM you have – at:
- Online Fantom Wallet
- The native fWallet;
- MetaMask with ETH and BSC support;
- Trust Wallet from Binance;
- Coinbase Wallet;
- MathWallet;
- hardware Ledger;
- and others.
Outlook
One promising market the startup is pouring into is CBDC, or central bank digital currency. Digital yuan and digital ruble that even those who try to stay away from TV have heard of.
The idea is not unfounded – for example, the digital Ukrainian hryvnia launched in December 2021 is based on the Stellar blockchain (XLM).
When developing the platform for future CBDCs, the team is following specific approaches – namely those voiced by the Bank of England.
Given that 2022 promises to be the “year of CBDC”, FTM has every chance to please investors with a rising rate.