Blockchain
There are at the moment over 20,000 blockchain initiatives in the marketplace, every competing with the others to realize market share and dominance. And For the reason that onset of the crypto bear market, the worth of those tokens have tanked throughout the business.
For now, Fantom is among the many comparatively better-known chains. Its FTM token (No. 67 by market cap) is down 93% since its all-time excessive of $3.46 on October 28, 2021, and at the moment buying and selling at $0.22, based on CoinGecko.
However the down market and crowded area of competitors haven’t deterred the CEO of Fantom Basis’s hope for the longer term.
“Competitors is sweet as a result of it will probably get you a greater end result, higher know-how,” Fantom Basis CEO Michael Kong instructed Decrypt at Chainlink SmartCon in New York this week, including that as a result of crypto customers have gotten used to utilizing a couple of blockchain, a number of chains will survive into the longer term.
“I believe sooner or later, you may not have 20 or 30 totally different chains… however I believe you will have a couple of chains on the market, and I believe they’ll get a big market share,” Kong mentioned. “Individuals use a number of totally different blockchains, that is the case as we speak, and I believe that may proceed to be the case into the longer term.”
What’s Fantom? The Quick Blockchain Taking over Ethereum
Launched in December 2019, Fantom is a layer-1 blockchain aiming to supply an alternative choice to the excessive prices and low speeds Ethereum customers typically complain about and hoped that the now-completed Ethereum merge would resolve. Layer-1 protocols like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana make the most of their very own blockchain, permitting decentralized functions to be constructed atop their protocol.
On September 15, Ethereum accomplished its long-awaited transition from the energy-intensive proof-of-work consensus algorithm to the extra environmentally pleasant proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.
However ETH is down 320% since then, and Kong believes many within the Ethereum group did not fairly perceive what the merge would imply.
“I believe lots of people have been anticipating, wrongly, locally, that the Ethereum merge would considerably improve community throughput or considerably make the know-how much more scalable. However the Ethereum Basis repeatedly got here out and mentioned no, the aim of the merge is to mainly take away the proof-of-work element of the chain.”
For Kong, the misconceptions surrounding the merge had extra to do with the group’s pleasure and fewer with any mistake by the Ethereum Basis in managing expectations.
The merge was “not about rising scalability, not about lowering gasoline charges dramatically,” Kong mentioned, regardless of what Ethereum flag-wavers may need hoped. Any disappointment individuals have within the aftermath “wasn’t actually the fault of anybody, particularly, or the Ethereum Basis, who have been simply telling individuals the reality,” he added.
And as for the way Fantom can compete with Ethereum and different chains? “We nonetheless have our aggressive benefit, at the least in the meanwhile, in the case of our skill to course of transactions asynchronously,” Kong mentioned.
What issues him most transferring ahead is the alarming current rhetoric from regulators. “I believe the massive damaging for the time being is the regulatory uncertainty,” he mentioned. “I believe that is what’s scaring lots of people [in the industry].”
Kong pointed to the current actions of the SEC, which claimed that every one Ethereum transactions fall below U.S. jurisdiction, and the CFTC, which sued Ooki DAO and its founders final week.
“To me, the regulatory uncertainty about who’s supposed to control what, just like the SEC and the CFTC publicly disputing with each other, is de facto what might damper innovation, and actually trigger individuals to assume twice about blockchain know-how and never need to get into any hassle,” he mentioned. “And so it type of has a little bit of a chilling impact on the business.”