The L1 rotation is gaining momentum, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. I condensed 50 pg of research into the most comprehensive thread on FTM yet.

@FantomFDN
is an innovative PoS chain with the strongest multichain community in DeFi Frog face and a unique consensus mechanism enabling it to potentially have the fastest finality out of any L1 by far.

@danielesesta and @AndreCronjeTech helped drive Avax’s massive boom, and now they’re shifting their focus to Fantom. FTM is in a similar position to NEAR as one of the emerging L1s with huge untapped potential. https://twitter.com/j0hnwang/status/1477448456499531776?s=20

Fantom has Avalanche’s speed, gas costs, and EVM-compatibility, Solana’s parallel tx processing, Terra’s stablecoin-focused DeFi engine ($SPELL) + a hardcore community and multichain focus. Going to be hard to beat.

Advantages:

1. Most undervalued L1 on a Market Cap/TVL basis by a wide margin, 6th highest TVL overall

2. Set up to have the FASTEST FINALITY out of all L1s (currently 1s), w/ projected 300k TPS in future

3. Lachesis: unique DAG-based aBFT consensus -> parallel tx processing

4. EVM-compatible Opera Mainnet

5. DeFi powerhouse + aggressive multichain strategy

6. @cosmos-SDK-compatible 7. $1.1B ecosystem fund for devs 8. More than 2x the amount of DeFi dApps than Solana, and 9x Luna 9. Native Fluid Staking model + On-chain governance

Metrics: Fantom has 350k MAU, having grown 294x in the past year. # of unique addresses and dev activity just overtook AVAX. Daily tx count in uptrend since mid-Dec, now at 700k like AVAX.

FTM is recovering ATHs and still seems ridiculously cheap using comps analysis. Market Cap : TVL ratio of 1.2 is crazy.

Time To Finality is more important than TPS, and FTM could have the fastest TTF of all L1s. TPS deals with averages, but in reality txs aren’t confirmed linearly WHILST a block is being processed - it looks more like a step-wise function. TTF measures speed more accurately.

FTM’s deterministic, near-instant finality puts it in a league above other L1s as most employ probabilistic Nakamoto Consensus. For Eth this requires waiting ~25 txs to fully confirm.

This is made possible through Lachesis: FTM’s leaderless, DAG-based (Directed Acyclic Graph) aBFT (asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerant) consensus mechanism. Instead of linearly executing blocks, Fantom nodes independently ‘gossip events’ back-and-forth until consensus is reached by a supramajority. Unlike Ethereum, Fantom’s multi-threaded architecture removes single-node capacity bottlenecks and allows it to truly scale with Moore’s Law (like Solana).

“If Ethereum is a decentralized computer, Fantom is a network made of potentially infinite decentralized computers.” Or so Fantom claims. Hot take: “Deterministic and fast finality protocols are limited in terms of number of validators.” https://twitter.com/TobbyKitty/status/1473885382827814912…

Replying to @JackNiewold

Biggest obstacle of FTM: Lachesis consensus cannot really scales more than 1000s of validators. After 2000-3000, network starts to slow down. Its highly unscalable consensus.

EVM Compatibility: In the face of the Great Alt-EVM wars where everything can and will be forked, the most defensible moats are community and multi-chain integrations. Fantom has positioned itself as one of the L1s most likely to come out on top. https://twitter.com/j0hnwang/status/1478479236541616130…

Most aggressive multi-chain expansion strategy: Fantom knows that bridges + yields worked for Avax. With multi-chain dApps, integrated bridges to 30+ L1s, and Fantom as the centerpiece, you can be sure as hell they’re coming for your TVL. https://twitter.com/danielesesta/status/1478280639673778176…

FTM plans on being a new homebase for the multi-chain deployment strategy of blue-chips such as $YFI, $SPELL, $CRV, $SUSHI, $ICE etc.

FTM is Cosmos SDK-compatible, meaning Fantom dApps could interoperate with Cosmos app-specific chains like @Terra_Money and @OsmosisZone .

DeFi stablecoin engine: The stablecoin wars will trigger the explosion of yield farming, lending/borrowing, and leveraged cross-chain finance on FTM, powered by

.The positive feedback loops created by Andre and Daniel’s blue-chip suite of DeFi products reminds me of the core DeFi logos which thrust @terra_money and UST into glory. Crypto is a contact sport, and boy does @AndreCronjeTech know how to box.

• AAVE $FTM integration
• Felix, Fantom’s Binance-powered hybrid CEX/DEX, is coming early Q1 which will finally give retail access to FTM's ecosystem & provide a ton of liquidity
• US CEX Listings
• Artion v2 (NFTs)
• Fantom Name Service

Team:
Religion is a strong drug - shorting Frog Nation is a death wish. As seen w SBF + Solana, financial + human capital follow social capital.
@danielesesta
and
@AndreCronjeTech
have the Infinity Gauntlet: $TIME, $SUSHI, $ICE, $MIM, $SPELL, $YFI, $KP3R, and $CRV.

Modular Architecture:

Ecosystem: One of the most developed L1 ecos, overlooked heavily DEX: @SpookySwap, @Spirit_Swap, @CurveFinance, @SushiSwap, @MatchaXYZ etc 12 Bridges: @MultichainXYZ, @SynapseProtocol, @RenProtocol, @Allbridge_io, CelerNetwork etc

Lending/borrowing:

@MIM_Spell, @TarotFinance, @Screamdotsh, @GeistFinance etc

Yield optimizers: @finance_beefy, @iearnfinance, @reaper_farm, @tombfinance

etc OHM:

@xPhantomDAO, @Spartacus_Fi, @HectorDAO_HEC etc

Oracles: @BandProtocol, @Chainlink, @API3DAO etc

Data: @FTMScanHQ, @TheGraph, @Covalent_HQ

NFTs: Artion by @AndreCronje, ZooCoin, PaintSwap

P2E: @8Bit_Metaverse, @TankWarsZone etc

Wallets: fWallet, @Metamask, Coinbase Wallet, @Ledger etc

Culture of super user-friendly UI and UX design

Tokenomics: Initial allocation 53% to insiders, has been diluted over time but still v high.

Release schedule of $FTM All tokens to team/backers have already finished vesting. With 80% of total supply already circulating, there is little inflationary/sell pressure! Only FTM being released is from staking rewards.

Fantom has ambitious plans, but we are not there yet. Fantom claims 4k TPS and <$0.0001 gas costs. In reality, FTM has ~13.3 TPS (even with blocks nearly empty), and gas costs are closer to Optimism levels of ~$0.25 (even for a simple SpookySwap trade).

OP, does this mean we’re doomed? (cute emoji face). Not so fast anon. #Avalanche still boomed despite having similar gas costs and lower TPS.

If all you want is hopium, don’t read on. Not going to downplay FTM’s risks:

• Lots of execution risk w/ big roadmap
• Andre leaving at this stage could break the bull case. Andre has actually left Fantom before, and without his DeFi guidance

FTM strayed into enterprise blockchain, CBDCs, and partnerships with Middle-Eastern govts like Afghanistan and Pakistan. - L1 Rotatoorr narrative dying: https://twitter.com/zmanian/status/1476960265107243009…

Did FTM steal @Hedera’s DAG-based model? Maybe. They certainly built off their gossip/hashgraph patent which is now licensed under MLA, but the legality is a grey area considering it was initially open-sourced. HBAR is now more enterprise blockchain focused.

The truth is Fantom is currently the least decentralized major L1. I am a FTM bagholder, so please know that I have best intentions at heart here. Only 51 active validators, of which 3 could collude to hijack the network (33%+).

Network crashed in Feb despite these top validators not being malicious, the postmortem showed that they had simply lagged behind in block emissions and domino-halted everything.

Sure, investors have shown they simply don't care (BNB). But to get listed on US exchanges and achieve legitimacy within the crypto-native community, FTM must decentralize. Won’t be easy, but very do-able. I want to help:

1. Only 53% of FTM is currently staked, making it easier to increase Nakamoto coefficient if remaining FTM holders stake equitably
2. Lighten node hardware req (rn 2.5TB vs SOL’s 2TB)

3. @FantomFDN stop using AWS to run ur nodes and stop guiding the community to do the same dYdX literally crashed bc of AWS outage last month. A decentralized network run by centralized AWS nodes is not truly decentralized.

1. Decrease the minimum node staking threshold - currently costs ~$1.5M of self-stake to run a validator
2. Improve read-only/light node model. Light nodes currently have same hardware requirements as full node. This defeats the purpose.

5. In the whitepaper, Fantom initially intended to “manage historical information without being assisted by external databases such as the Oracle Database”. Fantom capitulated on this promise (uses mongoDB) to deal w/ the bloated state from FTM's rapidly growing tx history

More state also means increased hardware reqs for full node storage, a problem for decentralization. Fantom should pursue pruning, and partner with @ArweaveTeam (decentralized storage) like Solana does.

6. Currently, if Fantom slashes a malicious validator node that you are delegating to, you will also get punished by losing all your staked tokens. This dangerously incentives delegating to top, reputable validators only, increasing concentration amongst top validators.

I get the intention here - to encourage delegators to DYOR on validators, but the vast majority of FTM holders will just want to delegate/stake hassle-free. 7) sFTM is basically just a wrapper rn.

Let’s revamp FTM’s fluid staking model by: i) allowing for redelegation to smaller nodes during lockup, or ii) implementing a Lido-like liquid staking derivative which abstracts the need to do validator due diligence away from users, automatically choosing reliable ones.

8. Make governance system more agile, in line with the community. 5/17 of Fantom’s past on-chain proposals have failed to reach quorum, including one to reduce the node hardware requirements

Ultimately, I believe Fantom has the biggest upside and risks of any L1 on a 6-month horizon. Fortune favors the brave. How brave are you, anon?