Welcome to the State of the Opera! Your one-stop shop for everything Fantom. This edition marks the first anniversary of this newsletter. We here at Blockbytes would like to thank the Fantom community for its ongoing support. A Year in Review edition is upcoming so make sure to stay tuned.
In this edition, we’ll discuss Quantum Miami 2023, the FVM project timeline, the latest news on fUSD V2, and some network updates for the ecosystem.
If you haven’t already (and even if you have) make sure to check out the fresh new Blockbytes website. You’ll find the latest news, guest articles, and all the video content from the Blockbytes team.
If you have any questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to reach out on Twitter or Discord. If you’re interested in writing an article for Blockbytes, send me a message on Twitter @Brickfrog_0 or find me on the Byte Mason discord.
Table 1 - FTM community January 2023. Source DeFiLlama
Quantum Miami 2023: Fantom Virtual Machine & Storage coming in 2023
Quantum Miami 2023 offered exciting insights into the bright future of Fantom. Fantom Foundation CEO Michael Kong outlined the projects that will lead to faster block processing on Fantom, and hence a more scalable network.
Project Aida - Aida is a testing framework for identifying bottlenecks and testing. This project identified that an excessive amount of time of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) was occupied with accessing the storage in the State Database (StateDB)
Project Carmen - Designed as a new storage system, Carmen is a radical new design for StateDB and has implemented a new file-based StateDB using ideas of address/key value translations via an index. This allows for a more flexible and scalable way of storing state information.
Project Tosca - Tosca represents the Fantom Virtual Machine (FVM), the penultimate goal for the development team that will replace the EVM and increases the speed of execution on Fantom. The FVM will be fully Solidity and Vyper compatible.
The Foundation experimented on the Fantom mainnet data, using a fully pruned version of the current Fantom mainnet (i.e., what validators use) compared to the new FVM and fully pruned storage system.
The experiment used the first 40 million mainnet blocks and focused solely on block processing. The findings are shown in the charts below:
As depicted above, there were significant improvements in transactions per second, averaging approximately 4500 per second in our experiment alone. The transactions were 8.1x faster, and the blocks used 98% less storage.
Implementing the above projects could drastically improve the performance of the Fantom network. The Foundation anticipates that the testnet integration and mainnet deployment for all these upgrades will occur by Q3/Q4 2023.
Austin from the Blockbytes team sat down with members of the Fantom Foundation to moderate the “Future of Fantom” panel at the conference.
fUSD Version Two Update
Andre Cronje has released an update on the goals of fUSD v2 & how Fantom will migrate from fUSD v1 to fUSD v2 in the future.
V2 will allow the stakeholders to allocate fees in either fantom (FTM) or fUSD and to predict future costs based on usage. It will allow programmers to build additional institutional products for users and provide a more consistent system for planning and budgeting for grants.
The migration to the new fUSD will result in the liquidation of any positions where fUSD debt is equal to or greater than the FTM backing it.
Cronje stated that ample time will be provided to close out these positions and advance notification will be given before liquidations go live.
Fantom Hackathon Q1 2023
The Fantom Foundation has opened up registration for the Fantom Hackathon Q1 2023. The Foundation is calling on builders and developers to build a working software application that integrates with the Fantom blockchain.
The current prize pool is $50,000 which will be spread out between multiple categories. The first place will receive $10,000 in USDC while the second and third prizes will be $7,500 and $5,500 USDC respectively.
Participants can also win prizes in several categories including the most creative app, best trading app, best gamefi app, and best NFT app.
Judges will include Andre Cronje, Michael Kong, Chief Technical Officer Quan Nugyen, and other members of the Fantom Foundation team.
Registration ends on March 8th, 2023.
Ecosystem Vault is Now Live
As part of Fantom’s evolution towards decentralization, the Fantom Ecosystem Vault has been created to offer the community an avenue for funding projects, ideas, and creations through the community-driven decision process.
The on-chain fund is financed by 10% of the transaction feeds on Fantom and is controlled by the community. The initiative was made possible by decreasing the burn rate of FTM and redirecting the resulting 10% to the Vault.
Projects can apply for funding through a two-step process. First, they must create a forum post providing as much information regarding the project and its intentions. Secondly, a governance proposal must be submitted through fWallet to be voted on by the community.
For your application to be successful, your proposal must receive at least 55% approval, with at least 55% of FTM stakers in attendance.
At the time of writing, over 100,000 FTM has been collected by the vault. Specifics on the funding and criteria for funding can be found in the official blog post here.
DeFi Snapshot
Table 2 - L1 + L2 Blockchains January 2023
Key Metrics
Market Cap
Table 3 - Market Cap October 2022- January 2023
Fantom fans have a lot to celebrate this week as the market capitalization breaches the one trillion dollar mark for the first time since August 2022. The market cap has more than doubled this month as the Fantom Foundation has been steadily pumping out updates and news regarding the ecosystem’s future.
While writing this article, Fantom sits at number 42 on CoinGecko by market capitalization, soaring nineteen places up from last month’s edition.
Price movement
Table 4 - Price Movement October 2022- January 2023
FTM bag holders have ended the month happy as the token reached over $0.50. FTM has recorded massive gains after the ecosystem has been flooded with positive news and an overall rise in the global crypto market. It remains to be seen if these gains can be maintained or if a correction in price is upcoming.
User Engagement
Table 5 - User Engagement October 2022- January 2023
Interactions with the Fantom Opera network continue to normalize as non-bot users’ usage statistics begin to return. XEN protocol users are no longer mass spamming bots, showing that the average daily unique wallets created remain quite low compared to previous months.
Average daily transactions also declined as the network fell under the half-a-million transactions mark. The network did celebrate 42 million distinct addresses, but the previous metrics seem to indicate comparatively low usage amongst these new addresses.
Pulse of the Network
This section will hope to aggregate and compound your interest within the FTM network space. If you’re looking for some research to claim as your own or just the headlines for all the latest news and gossip this is the Pulse of the Network, the information you don’t want to miss out on.
FTM Ecosystem Headlines
Fantom welcomes Coinbrain to the ecosystem! Coinbrain provides search engine filtering specifically for Fantom ecosystem tokens
Squid SDK arrives on Fantom. Squid SDK allows developers to index, transform and use blockchain data for free
Pangolin enables cross-chain swaps on Fantom. Pangolin’s BridgeSwap aggregates 4 bridges and 7 exchanges to offer you the best price possible for your cross-chain swaps.
Andre Cronje gives us a peek at active Fantom users around the world
Fantom users can now easily track their portfolio and seamlessly calculate taxes on Binocs
Cross-Chain Bridge Multichain is offering free bridging of ETH to and from Fantom, with only $0.19 gas fee charged
Squid SDK has arrived on Fantom. The pinnacle of web3 data extraction and transformation
Hey Devs! Need some FTM test tokens? ChainDrop now has you covered on the Fantom Testnet
Top analytics firm CoinBrain is available for use by Fantom fanatics! Analyze over 20,000 Fantom tokens from their platform
Keep your eye on
Cross-Chain Swaps are now Live on Spooky Swap - Check out the partnership between Fantom’s #1 DEX, Axelar, and Squid here
Want to see the gold standard in financial reporting and the latest news from your Beethoven X friends? Check out their 2022 Annual Financial Report
Paintswap has integrated Email notifications! Stay informed on all your NFT updates, purchases, offers, bids, auctions, and much more
The Fountain of LIF3 is live on Fantom Opera. Harry Yeh explains what this means for the ecosystem
Ethos Reserve is the latest product from the Byte Masons, bringing the next generation of stable assets
Tarot partners with Multichain. TAROT can now be bridged between Ethereum, Fantom, Optimism, Arbitrum, and BNB Chain
FTM Podcasts and Videos
The Future of the Fantom Network: Austin from the Blockbytes team talks to Michael Kong and Director of Business Development Samuel Harcourt about the FVM, the return of Andre, and what the future holds for the Foundation
Equalizer on the Fantom Network: Austin discusses the hottest new protocol on the Fantom network and breaks down how to get involved
Vertical Blocks: Episode 13 feat. Funeral: The Vertical Blocks team talks with the Artist and Leader of The Cult, Funeral. Find out what it takes to build a meaningful community
Revelo Intel: The Ultimate Crypto Research Platform? [Interview With Nick Drakon]: Marcus Peters sits down with Nick Drakon to discuss his upcoming Crypto Research Platform
Byte Masons are Building a Defi Empire - How to Get Involved! - Decodefi breaks down what the Byte Masons are up to and how they’re bridging the gap between traditional and decentralized finance
FTM Education Community and Art
The Fantom Community Spotlight shines a light on one of the brightest stars in the Fantom ecosystem, Naly!
Not sure what Account Abstraction is and you’re too afraid to ask? Fantom Intern breaks down the need-to-know in this thread
Nick.ftm dives deep into the often overlooked features and functions of the Fantom ecosystem
Head of Marketing for the Fantom Foundation, Juan Angel unravels what's in store for the future of Fantom
Henrystats.eth has plied his Dune Dashboard skills for the Fantom blockchain ecosystem
IntroToDeFi is stepping up to help those in need by raising funds for those affected by the earthquakes in Turkey
DoubleSharp gives us a history lesson and explains where Fantom found inspiration for its consensus algorithm and validation process