Buy Fantom (FTM)

Fantom Opera is their mainnet that went live in 2019. It is a secure and fast environment for building decentralised applications.

Fantom Opera is EVM compatible and powered by their asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerant (aBFT) consensus algorithm called Lachesis. It is capable of processing smart contracts written in Solidity.

Fantom Opera is open source and permissive. So anyone can participate in it and the source code can even be used to start their own cryptocurrency. Older blockchains can also work with Opera.

Fantom Opera works with leaderless proof of stake. This means that validators do not determine whether a block is correct. This makes it a lot more secure.

You can already join stakes for as little as 1 FTM, Fantom's token, but if you really want to join you need half a million FTM. So if you still have a few tonnes lying around somewhere, just languishing there anyway, you can become a validator for Opera in no time.

If you want to get your hands on Opera FTM, you need to swap the ERC-20 FTM token or the BEP-2 FTM token on their exchange.

What is Lachesis?

Lachesis is an arrangement goddess from Greek mythology who determined the length of your life thread.

Lachesis is Fantom's aBFT consensus algorithm. A consensus mechanism is the engine of a blockchain. Lachesis was created to be more scalable and secure than classical consensus mechanisms, such as Nakamoto's.

Developers can use Lachesis to create peer to peer applications without having to create their own network layer.

Features of Lachesis:

Asynchronous. Users can have commands executed at different times.

Leaderless. No validator has a special function.

Byzantine Fault Tolerant. Lachesis can cope if 1/3 of the nodes are faulty or even rogue. The protocol can continue to work as usual within those limits.

Finalised. The outcome of Lachesis can be used instantaneously and within two seconds there is consensus and the transaction is finalised.

The purpose of Lachesis

Older consensus mechanisms have their limitations. If you want high throughput, fast transaction speed and security like banks, you have come to the right place with Lachesis.

If you want to create enhanced versions of existing products like payments, logistics, data in healthcare or target a whole new sector like DeFi, Lachesis can handle it all.

Lachesis can be connected to any distributed ledger.

With Lachesis, a fork is impossible.

How does Lachesis work?

Each Lachesis node puts a local DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) on their computer. This contains the "event blocks" that contain the transactions.

There are approved and unapproved event blocks. New blocks are not yet approved, while blocks from the past 2-3 frames have been approved by the fair nodes.

Consensus happens in batches, where bundled transactions are approved and block at once.

Lachesis nodes do not send each other blocks, as in many other protocols. Only events are synchronised. Validators periodically share observed transactions and events with peers, or peers.

To promote speed, new events are used by validators to vote on multiple previous blocks in terms of validation.

Lachesis epoch

Lachesis has a DAY of events. This is divided into sub-DAGs which they call epochs. Each epoch consists of many approved blocks.

An epoch is closed when a number of blocks is reached, a certain time has elapsed, a fraudulent validator is spotted or by request by the NodeDriver contract.

Each closed event contains the hash of the previous epoch.

The FTM token is their network's cryptocurrency and ticker symbol. It can be used for several purposes:

1. Securing the network. This is done through proof of stake. It is not entirely clear how much FTM you should actually have. There are 3 quantities listed on their website that you need to become a validator or node, namely 500,000, 1 million and 3,175 million. Well, we're not going to do that anytime soon anyway with a price of say 40 cents. Still saving. You get 15% from your delegates and another around 10% APY as a validator. Ordinary strikers get a maximum of 6%. You can strike from as little as 1 FTM.

2. Payments. With its high transaction speed and low fees of 0.0000001 per money sent, FTM is excellent for this.

3. Network fees. To make a payment, smart contract or create a new network, you will have to pay fees in FTM. Most payments are token, to avoid DDoS attacks and other spam.

4. Governance. FTM is also a governance token, which can be used to vote on important new directions to take. Their on-chain governance ensures their permissive, leaderless decentralised ecosystem.

There are up to 3,175,000,000 FTM tokens. Of these, almost 3 billion are on the market, so much dilution will not occur as a result.

FTM comes in three flavours: ERC-20 token, BEP-2 token and their native token on their mainnet. You are encouraged to strike on their mainnet as it is risk-free and you get higher returns.

FTM is very easy if you join DeFi and also very cheap. A combination of strike and DeFi is also quite possible.

In their fWallet, you can stake mainnet tokens and get rewards. You can also use them to get other tokens in the Fantom network, such as fUSDT.

Fantom use cases

Fantom has blockchain solutions for both public and private blockchains with consensus-as-a-service. These solutions are scalable and secure. With their Software Development Kit, you can easily get started with modules and integrate what you build with EVM or Cosmos SDK.

You can think of the following types:

Trust and transparency

In this area, Fantom provides trusted, immutable information that anyone can access. Anyone with permission can check the authenticity of the information. Nobody can change the data because consensus is decentralised.

Security

Information is distributed across many nodes, so no single point of failure exists. Because information is distributed across all these nodes, there is 24/7 availability, increasing reliability. The use of cryptography makes it very difficult to tamper with transaction data.

Efficiency

Because no trusted third parties are needed to keep things running, money and time are saved. By using smart contracts, tasks and manual labour can be automated.

New possibilities

Blockchains bring new opportunities, allowing companies to attract new customers.

What can companies use Fantom for?

1. Financial markets. With Fantom, you can create digital assets to better monetise traditional financial instruments. You gain access to the global investment market with higher liquidity and faster throughput.

2. Financial institutions. Blockchain streamlines all processes by making intermediaries unnecessary and transactions and custody secure. With Fantom, you can save more than 50% on your settlement costs.

3. Central Bank Digital Currency. Digital currency is likely to be the future and with Fantom you can create it.

4. DeFi. Fantom is very useful in decentralised finance because of their technology.

5. Real estate. By dividing real estate into pieces and selling them as digital tokens, anyone worldwide can participate in real estate investing and the market is greatly increased as a result.

6. Healthcare. Pharmaceuticals can be authenticated so that patients get the right medication. Information about patients can be stored so that only trusted parties can access it.

7. Logistics. Fraud is possible in all kinds of areas, from clothing to food products. Real-time tracking allows you to precisely determine the authenticity of a product through chips or barcodes, for example.

The competition for Fantom is not lacking. In the field of DAG (directed acyclic graph), they have competition from IOTA and Nano. On smart contracts, they obviously have competition from Ethereum, but also Cardano, Polkadot, Cosmos and Solana. Hedera Hashgraph has a similar architecture.

Most of these projects are very high in terms of market cap. So there is huge demand for these cryptocurrencies. The question, therefore, is whether they can continue to coexist or whether some of these projects will lose out at some point and disappear ingloriously to page 5 of CoinGecko.

The Fantom Foundation

This 2018 organisation has been dealing with blockchain's classic trilemma since its inception: promoting scalability, decentralisation and security of their network and processes.

They call themselves blockchain developers and integrators. The Fantom Foundation can build a blockchain from scratch and integrate it into other systems, such as EVM.

They want to build infrastructure for a more democratic and efficient future. Their team includes the brightest minds in science, engineering, research, design and entrepreneurship.

To honour their goal, they have employees all over the world for a truly decentralised enterprise.

Michael Kong is the CEO and they have a whole battery of hotshots in the ranks, such as David Richardson and Jakub Stepanik.

Fantom ecosystem

They have already gathered quite a parade of participants over the course of a few years, and that is no mean feat in such a short time.

Among others, they work with ChainLink, Ankr and TheGraph on Oracles and API.

In the field of integrations, they work with Ren, Orion Protocol and Superfarm, for example.

Partners can be found in Travala, Crypto.com, Ethereum Classic Labs, Waves, OkEx, and so on.

On the government and enterprise front, they have cooperation with Afghanistan in a variety of areas and also with Tajikistan.

Fantom whitepapers

If you really want to go hardcore on Fantom, you can plough through ten papers on Lachesis and smart contracts, among others.

This is always the most fun part. We pull out our crystal ball and look into our cup of coffee for clues. Most of the time, however, we see nothing and have to do it brain-wise, so to speak.

Fantom has gone like a train. They have almost hit the three euro mark, while going for less than a penny over the counter in 2018.

Fantom is definitely a good product, and the Fantom Foundation has amassed a whole network of partnerships and collaborations.

The price of a product comes about through supply and demand. Given that most FTM coins are already on the market and Fantom is not sitting still in terms of expanding their network, there is still quite a bit of stretch.

In the next bull market, they could be very successful due to their user value for businesses, governments and individuals alike. Especially if they start working on smart cities in Asia, things could go fast.

Now you probably want to hear a price forecast from us, but we won't burn our fingers on that. After all, it's hard to predict, especially when it comes to the future. As far as we are concerned, however, Fantom is an excellent investment with high potential.