Since February 2021, the price of ETH has continued to rise, breaking through the $2,000 mark as high as possible. The high cost of Gas has caused Ethereum developers to complain.
At the same time, Yearn founder Andre Cronje successively mentioned Fantom, a public chain from South Korea, on Twitter, and called on developers to try Fantom for DeFi development.
According to LinkedIn information, Andre served as the chairman of the technical committee of Fantom for about half a year, and still serves as Fantom’s technical consultant. On the Fantom official website, we also found Andre, and in The Erica Show on October 1, 2020, Andre also stated that he is still working with the Fantom team on a daily basis.
From the moment Ethereum was born, public chains under the banner of “Ethereum Killer” have not really affected the historical position of Ethereum in the field of cryptocurrency. More and more public chains choose to embrace Ethereum. , Be a good friend of Ethereum.
As one of the early DeFi developers and fans of Ethereum, why is Andre Cronje, the founder of Yearn, so optimistic about Fantom? Below we will solve the mystery of Fantom for everyone.
As we all know, old public chains have always had problems: the more nodes, the higher the degree of decentralization, but the worse the speed and scalability. Fantom uses a technology called DAG on the contrary. Simply put, the more nodes are added, the faster the speed and the infinite scalability.
In fact, celebrity public chains such as EOS and TRX have also tried to solve the impossible triangle problem of blockchain, which is to weigh speed, security, and degree of decentralization. But the actual effect is not satisfactory. For example, the actual measurement of EOS, which is known as one million TPS, is only a few thousand, and its security is extremely poor. It has become the most famous and worst-performing public chain in the market. Many new public chains have been trying to solve this problem, such as the avalanche protocol Avalanche, the open network NEAR and so on.
So, what is a DAG?
New smart contract platform based on DAG
Fantom is a DAG-based smart contract platform that solves the scalability and confirmation time issues of existing blockchain technology. Fantom is a highly scalable DAG project that supports smart contracts, fast transactions and almost zero handling fees.
Directed acyclic graph is a commonly used data structure in the computer field. From a structural point of view, this is a distributed architecture. In graph theory, if a directed graph cannot start from a vertex and return to that point through several edges, then the graph is a directed acyclic graph. Because a point in a directed graph passes through two routes to another point, it does not necessarily form a ring, so a directed acyclic graph may not necessarily be converted into a tree, but any directed tree is a directed acyclic graph.
DAG has no concept of blocks. Instead of packaging all data into blocks, each user can submit data units (including transactions, consumption, etc.), and multiple users can submit data at the same time, which is the writing of data units. Incoming operations are asynchronous and linked by reference relationships between data units (direct confirmation between nodes).
The Fantom project has made many technological innovations, trying to solve the impossible triangle problem of blockchain technology.
First, Fantom uses a new protocol called “Lachesis Protocol” to maintain consensus. The agreement will be integrated into the Fantom OPERA chain. Its purpose is to allow the establishment of a batch of programs on the Fantom OPERA chain, so that all users can enjoy instant transactions with almost zero cost.
As a new type of distributed infrastructure, OPERA chain aims to solve the scalability problem of existing blockchains through large-scale and fast processing of blocks. At the same time, OPERA chain tries to process transaction information and “StoryData” in a distributed environment in real time.
The OPERA chain consists of three layers: the core layer (Core Layer) is responsible for large-scale transaction processing; the software layer (OPERA Ware Layer) is responsible for supporting smart contracts and other functions; the application layer (OPERA Application Layer) provides support for third-party applications.
Secondly, LCA (Lachesis Consensus Algorithm) consensus algorithm, which aims to use DAG-based distributed ledger technology to improve performance and security. It can not only prevent attacks caused by specific node failures, but also achieve extremely high transaction throughput.
Specifically, LCA will form “Lachesis DAG” on the basis of the Lachesis Agreement. A series of links between event blocks form a DAG. As a distributed system, DAG can store arbitrary data that cannot be changed. The event block includes the following information: transactions, smart contracts, historical information, and the value of previous transactions.
Furthermore, in terms of virtual machines, the Fantom virtual machine aims to significantly reduce capacity and increase processing speed. The register-based virtual machine can reduce OPCODE’s execution cost by more than 50% and nearly double the performance capacity.
Compared with other projects, the innovation of the Fantom project is that Fantom hopes to use the highly secure elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) technology to enhance the security of signatures and data transmission between nodes.
The advantage of elliptic curve encryption is that it can use a shorter key length to ensure higher security and allow high-speed calculations when signing. Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) uses the most effective algorithm to solve the discrete logarithm problem, thereby easily designing a secure cryptographic system.
This encryption system is more efficient because its key length is shorter than other encryption systems with the same security. In addition, Fantom also intends to increase support for software and hardware wallets and enhance the security of these wallets by using ECC technology.
FTM token
The total circulation of FTM tokens is 3.17 billion. Up to now, the circulation of the whole network is about 2.5 billion, with a total market value of more than 2 billion US dollars. An important value capture function of FTM is pledge: pledge FTM to become a verification node, thereby obtaining income, which is very similar to the common PoS consensus mechanism.
According to Fantom network data, there are currently 36 verification nodes with more than 14,000 addresses, and about 54% of FTMs are in pledge, with the number exceeding 1.37 billion.
Fantom’s exploration in the field of DeFi
On May 7, 2020, Fantom announced the launch of Fantom.Finance, which is the first DeFi platform launched with the aBFT consensus mechanism. Most common DeFi projects are based on the Ethereum network, while the project is based on the Fantom platform.
Fantom’s aBFT consensus mechanism has the following advantages:
1. Close to instant confirmation
2. High throughput
3. High security
For DeFi projects, these characteristics are the most basic conditions. Fantom.Finance will provide on-chain transactions, lending, pledge and other services, and at the same time ensure safety and speed. More importantly, users will not have any delay or jam experience on the platform.
Currently, Fantom.Finance has three basic products: fMint, fSwap, and fLend.
1. fMint, stable coin minting. Users can use fMint to lock FTM tokens and mint synthetic assets fTokens.
2. fSwap, a decentralized exchange. fSwap supports the transaction of up to 176 types of synthetic assets, which will be protected on the chain through the Proof of Rights consensus of the Opera network. fSwap has the advantages of good depth, fast confirmation, and zero slippage.
3. fLend, lending. Users can borrow and borrow through fLend. Different assets form a capital pool. The borrowing interest rate is automatically adjusted according to market conditions, similar to Compound.
Recently, Fantom announced that it has reached a cooperation with Coinbase Custody, and then successively reached cooperation with the decentralized oracle ChainLink, the decentralized exchange Sushiswap, the cross-chain agreement Ren Protocol, and the Web 3.0 index agreement The Graph. We can also see Fantom wants to vigorously develop the ambition of DeFi ecological construction.
Yearn founder Andre is also actively testing its new cross-chain atomic swap (Atomic swap) product through the features of Fantom’s compatibility with the Ethereum EVM. Cross-chain asset trading is also one of the upcoming tracks.
At present, including the work network Keep3rV1, insurance agreement Cover Protocol, lending agreement Cream.Finance, derivatives agreement Frax, decentralized exchange Sushiswap and more Ethereum DeFi protocols have also announced that they will start migrating to Fantom for subsequent development. To create a cross-chain ecosystem .
On February 25, Alameda Research, a digital currency secondary market quantitative company, invested 35 million US dollars in Fantom Foundation. Alameda Research will cooperate with Fantom’s core team to integrate Solana, Serum, Raydium and other cross-chain products. In addition, Alameda Research will also A verification node will be run on the Fantom Opera mainnet to help improve network security.
Up to now, FTM tokens have broken through 0.8 USD, rising nearly 15 times in just one month and nearly 100 times in 9 months. In the current environment where the cost of Ethereum Gas is high and the Layer 2 solution has not made much progress, Fantom has actually successfully gained market recognition by innovating on the mechanism.
However, the current DeFi project on the Fantom platform is more difficult to get started than ordinary projects, and liquidity mining revenue does not have obvious advantages. Whether the amount of locked positions can continue to grow in the future, the influx of developers is still unknown, and we will continue to pay attention to this low-key “killer.”
