Project Name: Fantom
Ticker: FTM
Website: fantom.foundation
Twitter: twitter.com/FantomFDN
Whitepaper: Click here for the whitepaper.
What Is Fantom?
Fantom, which was launched in 2018, is a smart contract platform using Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) to provide decentralized finance (DeFi) services to developers with its own consensus mechanism. As the first DAG-based Layer-1 blockchain and smart contract platform that offers users a variety of features, Fantom focuses on scalability and transaction speed. As a platform with high speed and performance, Fantom aims to ensure that developing smart cities are equipped with IT infrastructure. With the goal of processing 300,000 transactions per second and the ability to communicate between multiple service providers, Fantom believes the real solution is to store big data securely, and Fantom hopes to achieve this by making data-driven smart contracts and DApps accessible to everyone.
The Fantom team envisions the platform being used in a wide range of industries, including utilities, smart home systems, healthcare, education, traffic management, resource management, and environmental sustainability projects.
What Does Fantom Offer?
As a platform with high speed and high performance, Fantom has been developed to solve various problems faced by users and developers. The main goal of the platform is to create a secure and scalable decentralized network.
Fantom is one of the best performing networks in terms of Scalability. Fantom developers set the goal of achieving 300,000 TPS. This goal will place Fantom ahead of the world’s best payment processors such as VISA and PayPal. Moreover, the Fantom protocol allows developers to continuously improve their applications on a global scale without compromising the privacy or security of the network.
Therefore, Fantom’s scalability and efficiency makes it applicable and flexible in multiple industries. The Fantom team works to enable the platform to be used in utilities, smart home systems, healthcare, education, traffic management, resource management, and environmental sustainability projects.
Low transaction fees (approximately $0,0000001 per transaction) is another advantage of Fantom. This micro-fee strategy is also beneficial for developers as they can provide their services at a much lower cost.
Fantom eliminates high energy consumption caused by Proof of Work (PoW) thanks to the Lachesis consensus, which is a DAG-based asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance (aBFT) consensus. This strategy allows the network to verify its state with less energy consumption, which makes Fantom sustainable and eco-friendly. Fantom’s Lachesis consensus mechanism can facilitate thousands of transactions per second with an average transaction time of 1 second, while ensuring reliability and security.
We'll take a closer look at the Lachesis consensus later in the Fantom's Technology section.
Fantom is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Fantom’s mainnet is the Opera blockchain, which is EVM-compatible. Therefore, all smart contracts distributed on Ethereum are compatible with the Opera Chain. Thus, developers who build decentralized applications (DApps) on Ethereum can run their applications on Fantom.
Fantom’s Technology
The Fantom protocol has an architecture that is divided into three layers, each having different responsibilities. These are the Opera Core, Opera Ware, and Application Layers.
The Opera Core Layer: It is the core layer and has the responsibility of ensuring consensus among the nodes in the Lachesis consensus. It is also responsible for the creation of activities. It uses DAG to confirm transactions, and thanks to the use of DAG Technology, nodes can process them asynchronously. Every transaction processed is recorded with every node on the network, similar to the way a blockchain records transactions. The difference is that with DAG Technology, data does not have to be saved on each node. Instead, the network uses a second type of node called a “Witness Node” to verify transactions. These nodes are responsible for checking the validity of the data held by nodes on the network.
The Opera Ware Layer: It is the middle layer of the protocol. The platform is designed to execute functions such as reward and payment arrangement, writing “Story Data” by supporting smart contracts and other functions. Story Data is Fantom's method of tracking all past transactions. Each transaction and smart contract app stores a small piece of data called Story Data. This is an incredibly valuable function in industries where ambiguous data records are required, such as supply chain management or healthcare.
The Opera Application Layer: It is the top tier and hosts publicly available APIs that developers use to enable their DApps to interface with the Opera Ware Layer.
Before we look at how Lachesis works, which we mentioned earlier, let's first briefly talk about the asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance (aBFT).
In a decentralized Byzantine Fault Tolerance network, honest nodes are guaranteed to come to an agreement on the timing and sequence of a series of transactions, even if there are malicious nodes. That shows the network’s “fault tolerance”, meaning that the network can tolerate malicious behavior but still reach an honest consensus. The “asynchronous” feature of the Byzantine Fault Tolerance overcomes the problem of fault tolerance, which is timing. Many forms of the Byzantine Fault Tolerance assume a maximum threshold of latency when a consensus is reached. An asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance (aBFT) network eliminates this assumption and allows some messages to be lost or postponed indefinitely, assuming that only at some point will an honest node’s messages pass.
Considered the highest standard held among consensus in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, aBFT has effectively resolved the “Scalability Trilemma”, which are as follows:
- Decentralization
- Security
- Scalability
The aBFT consensus as implemented in Fantom ensures maximum decentralization, high scalability, and security.
In addition to making networks particularly resilient to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, ABFT also reduces the latency of transaction confirmation time, resulting in a faster network. aBFT networks also limit communication to keep the number of participating nodes at a certain level, thus allowing for greater scalability and decentralization.
The Lachesis consensus is a DAG-based aBFT consensus algorithm, as we mentioned earlier. aBFT, which offers many improvements on the classic Byzantine Fault Tolerance, is leaderless and asynchronous. With Lachesis, consensus can be reached for any application, regardless of the programming language used to create the application. Thanks to the Lachesis consensus, it is possible to connect to other Lachesis nodes, so that all nodes are guaranteed to process the same commands in the same order. Unlike other consensus validators, Lachesis nodes focus on synchronizing events between nodes. That is accomplished with the DAG aBFT consensus and peer-to-peer networking.
The Fantom Team & Company
The Fantom Foundation was founded by South Korean computer science specialist Dr. Ahn Byung Ik. Ahn, who is also president of the Korea Foodtech Association, is a contributing writer at Fortune Magazine and has been frequently featured in South Korea's major business media outlets. However, Ahn is not currently affiliated with Fantom and has been replaced by Michael Kong, who is currently the CEO of Fantom.
Kong, who has experience with blockchain as a smart contract developer, was Block8's Chief Technology Officer before becoming Fantom's CEO. Kong also developed one of the first Solidity decoders and one of the first detectors for vulnerabilities in smart contracts. The Fantom team also includes DeFi architect Andre Cronje, known as the developer of Yearn Finance. The Fantom team has extensive experience in blockchain development and aims to create a smart contract platform that prioritizes scalability, decentralization, and security. According to the official website, the Fantom team also consists of experienced engineers, scientists, researchers, designers, and entrepreneurs. Fantom employees are located all over the world in accordance with the values of a decentralized platform.
Fantom’s Digital Asset Economy
FTM, Fantom’s native token, has a total supply of 3,175,000,000, and there are currently 2,545,006,273 FTM in circulation. The total supply of FTM will be distributed until 2023. There are currently three different FTM Tokens in circulation:
- Opera FTM: Launched in 2019 and used on Fantom’s mainnet, the Opera Chain
- ERC-20 FTM: The Ethereum-compatible token
- BEP-2 FTM: The Binance Chain-compatible token
The ERC-20 Token is Ethereum-compatible and cannot be used on the Opera Chain. When a user sends an ERC-20 FTM Token to his wallet, it is automatically converted to Opera FTM.
FTM holders can vote on the future of the protocol through a transparent voting system on the chain. Fantom held its ICO (Initial Coin Offering) in June 2018 and raised a total of $39,650,000. Staking is an important part of the Fantom’s token economy, especially because of the portion of the supply allocated to FTM holders for staking rewards.
Fantom Collaborations
In 2021, the Fantom Foundation announced a joint venture with AG Mentors Group, headed by Elyar Ganiev, former Deputy Prime Minister of Uzbekistan. With this collaboration, Fantom-based blockchain solutions will be used to modernize the country’s IT infrastructure.
In May 2021, Fantom announced a partnership with Chainlink to integrate Chainlink Verifiable Random Function (VRF), which is a secure and verifiable source of randomness developed for smart contracts. With this collaboration, Fantom developers will be able to leverage Chainlink VRF to create high-efficiency and low-cost games, NFTs, and DeFi products, boosted by unpredictable in-game scenarios, fair distribution of a limited number of financial assets, or randomness.
In October 2020, Fantom established a strategic partnership with Travala.com, the world's leading crypto-friendly hotel booking platform, announcing that FTM will be accepted for payments to book more than 3,000,000 travel-related products worldwide, including hotels, through its travel platform.
Evaluation of Fantom
While Fantom is not the only project using DAG technology to address the scalability issue in the blockchain, it aims to add value to the cryptocurrency ecosystem with its infrastructure that supports smart contracts and DApps that can provide more support to the network compared to other projects using the same technology. Thanks to its TPS capacity and low transaction fees, Fantom's adoption rate in some industries is increasing, and recent collaborations are also helping to increase its enterprise adoption.
One of the biggest advantages of Fantom is its EVM-compatible mainnet, which allows developers creating DApps on Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency project, to run their DApps on Fantom.
