About Fantom (FTM)

What is Fantom (FTM)?

Fantom is a scalable, fast, and secure smart contract platform that allows businesses and developers to build decentralized applications for use across industries. It is powered by Lachesis, an advanced asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance (aBFT) consensus algorithm that allows transactions to be processed asynchronously. This increases Fantom’s speed and throughput compared to platforms like Ethereum and Bitcoin.
Fantom’s aBFT consensus protocol achieves decentralization and security in a permissionless and leaderless network, where anyone can participate and all nodes are equal. This allows Fantom to optimize the blockchain trilemma by balancing speed, security, and decentralization. Key features that set Fantom apart include 1-2 second transaction finality, ability to scale to hundreds of nodes, absolute finality so transactions can never be reversed, and smart contract compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine. Together, these make Fantom an appealing next-generation blockchain platform for developers looking to build fast, secure, and scalable decentralized applications.

History of Fantom (FTM)

• Early 2018，Fantom is founded by Dr. Ahn Byung Ik, aiming to build a fast, cheap, and secure smart contracting platform.
• 2018，Fantom's consensus protocol "Lachesis" is created, using asynchronous BFT and leaderless DAG to enable scalability.
• December 2019，Opera Mainnet launches as the first additional layer in Fantom, featuring EVM compatibility for smart contracts.
• May 2019，Fantom partners with Binance Chain to improve interoperability across chains.
• Early 2021，Popular Ethereum dApps integrate with Fantom Opera after ERC-20 and BEP-2 support is added.
• March 2022，Andre Cronje departs as a technical advisor to Fantom after helping boost Fantom's DeFi ecosystem.
• December 2023，Fantom Foundation Launches Sonic Labs

Design

Lachesis aBFT

Lachesis is Fantom's groundbreaking asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerant (aBFT) consensus algorithm that allows nodes to process transactions independently without sequential block exchanges, enabling much faster throughput. It works by combining aBFT with Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs), where each validator has its own local DAG and creates blocks from transactions to add to it. These blocks are asynchronously shared between validators and once a majority agree, the block is finalized on Fantom's mainnet, all in 1-2 seconds. Lachesis is structured into epochs which are sub-DAGs that get sealed under certain conditions, keeping storage and retrieval optimized. By leveraging aBFT and DAGs, Lachesis achieves the key properties of being asynchronous, leaderless, Byzantine fault tolerant, and featuring near-instant transaction finality, allowing Fantom to scale while retaining security and decentralization.

Fantom Sonic

Sonic is the newest iteration of Fantom and offers brand-new blockchain technology with a new virtual machine, improved database storage, and optimized consensus anticipated to achieve 2,000+ transactions per second (TPS) at an average finality of one second while consuming less storage than its predecessor, Opera. The upgrade, which requires no hard fork and is compatible with any Web3 EVM blockchain so that existing tooling for deploying contracts will also work on Sonic, is the latest step in Fantom's mission to improve its platform without resorting to sharding or layers. Access has already been released to two Fantom Sonic testnet environments—a closed testnet showcasing Sonic's maximum theoretical limits, and an open interactive testnet allowing users direct experience—to demonstrate the groundbreaking speed offered before Sonic's scheduled spring 2024 mainnet release.

Governance

Governance on a decentralized platform empowers token holders to actively shape and influence its future, ensuring it evolves in the right direction. On Fantom, governance is an on-chain process that lets FTM stakers submit and vote on proposals that determine changes to the platform’s mechanics and tokenomics. To vote on a proposal, simply go to the governance section in your Fantom fWallet, open an active proposal, and cast your vote on the choice with which you agree most. Note that you’ll need to stake FTM tokens in order to vote, with each token equaling one vote.
When one delegates their stake to a validator, the voting power is still equal to the number of FTM tokens that have been staked. However, if choosing not to vote on a proposal, the voting power is given to the validator who adds the votes to their own to help increase overall participation and prevent low turnouts. Once voting, the validator loses that voting power. For example, consider a validator with 1M FTM staked, including 800K of its own tokens and 200K delegated. Until the delegators vote, their staked tokens increase the validator's power. If the validator votes for option A with all 1M tokens, and its delegators later vote 200K for option B, the result is 800K for A and 200K for B. If the validator removes its votes, only its 800K are removed while delegators' votes remain. If no delegators have voted yet, all 1M votes are removed.

Tokenomics

FTM is the primary token on the Fantom network, used for securing the network through staking, for governance, for payments, and for fees.

Supply

The total FTM supply is 3.175 billion.
To ensure easier trading, the total supply is distributed over different token standards—including native mainnet token, ERC-20 token, and BEP-2 token—which taken together will never exceed 3.175 billion FTM.

Utility

The main utility is to secure the network via a Proof-of-Stake system where validator nodes need 3,175,000 FTM and stakers lock up their FTM. In return, nodes and stakers receive epoch rewards and fees. This system prevents centralization and is environmentally friendly. FTM is also ideal for fast, low-fee payments thanks to Fantom’s high throughput, fast finality, and negligible fees—transfers take around 1 second and cost about $0.0000001.
FTM is needed for Fantom's fully permissionless, leaderless, decentralized on-chain governance where stakers can propose and vote on network changes and improvements. FTM is also used for network fees like transaction fees, fees to deploy smart contracts, or create new networks. Without a minimum barrier, the network risks spam attacks which hampers performance and fills the ledger with useless information. On Fantom, fees are very cheap but still high enough to make attacks extremely expensive for malicious actors.

Highlights

2022

Network growth with around 500k to 1 million daily transactions on average, over 33 million unique addresses, and 2.7 billion FTM total value locked. Fantom reached a TVL of $8 billion in March 2022.