A Quick Overview of Fantom's Current Status and Ecosystem Development in the Bear Market
What Fantom has built during the bear market and the future opportunities for the $FTM ecosystem.Written by: Route 2 FI
Compiled by: Shenchao TechFlow
Since the rise in 2021, the Fantom Opera network and the ecosystem built on it have undergone significant changes. Let's take a look at what they have built during the bear market, the current narrative, and all the opportunities for the $FTM ecosystem in the future.
Some quick statistics on $FTM, as of February 16, 2023:
Price: $0.56
Market Cap: $1.5 billion
ATH: $3.46 (-83%)
ATL: $0.0019 (+29,500%)
Fantom attracted a lot of attention from DeFi speculators in 2021 due to its simplicity, low cost, speed, and stability, making it one of my favorite chains.
In 2022, Fantom welcomed a new researcher: Professor Bernhard Scholz. He has been studying the execution, security, and performance of smart contracts, looking for ways to improve network speed and scalability.
Another familiar face also publicly returned to the Fantom Foundation team (although he may never have left behind the scenes): Andre Cronje.
The ecosystem has also not stood still; the Fantom ecosystem treasury has been launched to help projects secure funding in their efforts to build innovative dApps on Fantom.
At this year's Quantum Miami conference, the Fantom Foundation had some bigger news: FVM.
The Fantom Virtual Machine is the foundation's upgrade to Ethereum's EVM.
They announced FVM in February, estimating 4,500 transactions per second based on test results, with a block finality time of about 1 second.
Another interesting thing introduced by Andre Cronje is that in the second/third quarter of this year, they will launch something called "Gas Subsidy," which allows users to join and use DeFi protocols without needing $FTM tokens as gas in their wallets.
This is a step in the right direction, as it will make it easier for newcomers to try DeFi.
According to Nansen, Fantom is one of the chains with the highest number of active addresses. I believe this number will increase if DeFi restarts.
However, what really made Fantom explode again was the news shared by Andre Cronje last November.
In summary: "November 2022 -- over $450,000,000 in FTM, >$100,000,000 in stablecoins, >$100,000,000 in crypto assets, and $50,000,000 in non-crypto assets. The salary burn rate is $7,000,000/year. We have about 30 years left (without touching FTM)."
In other words: Fantom's cash flow is positive, allowing it to operate for another 30 years without selling its own $FTM tokens.
This news came at a perfect time. At that moment, the price of $FTM was $0.18, but it rose nearly 40% in the following days.
Now that the technical aspects are covered, it's time to delve into on-chain projects and the changes happening.
Fantom DeFi:
These statistics from DeFiLama show the total TVL across all chains, which may seem discouraging, but remember, we are in a bear market, and most tokens are down (down 75-95% from ATH).
The current TVL of $FTM is $535 million (ATH was $7.5 billion), and it is competing with Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Binance Smart Chain, and others.
SpookySwap remains the most prominent DEX in the $FTM space, with many using it for swaps or utilizing the new cross-chain swap feature integrated with Axelar. This allows users to swap BNB directly from the Binance chain to the Fantom chain.
It enables you to connect to a new chain without worrying about gas fees.
Do you remember Solidly? It was heavily hyped, attracting a lot of liquidity to Fantom, but it ultimately failed.
With some minor adjustments to the code, it became a large-scale fork protocol on other chains, and eventually, a new competitor emerged on Fantom—Equalizer. So far, it has driven insane trading volumes.
Beethoven X—still strong (the second-largest DEX after Spooky), but with the hype around Solidly forks, Equalizer gained significant traction and their cross-chain feature, not receiving the same attention as in 2021 and 2022.
After the success of the perpetual DEX GMX, it was only a matter of time before a perpetual DEX appeared on $FTM.
$MMY—the first perpetual DEX on $FTM, has grown rapidly since its launch, exceeding everyone's initial expectations.
Morphex ($MPX)—a recently launched project that has garnered significant attention due to the developer (Morpheus) being well-liked in the Fantom community.
They are set to launch some new features and the platform in late February.
In addition, we have OG protocols like Tarot Finance and Liquid Driver soon going cross-chain, along with opportunities for huge returns on Thena.
In the current bear market environment, I wouldn't make any yield farm recommendations, but you can find them through Nanoly.
Personally, I am currently most interested in DeFi protocols: $EQUAL, $MMY, and $MPX.
To summarize why I am bullish on $FTM:
Andre Cronje is back
Stable cash flow
FVM
Gas subsidies
Easier access to DeFi
FTM ecosystem treasury
Known as one of the most Degen chains in DeFi speculation
