Blockchain
There are at present over 20,000 blockchain initiatives available on the market, every competing with the others to realize market share and dominance. And Because the onset of the crypto bear market, the value of those tokens have tanked throughout the trade.
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 present buying and selling at $0.22, in keeping with CoinGecko.
However the down market and crowded discipline of competitors haven’t deterred the CEO of Fantom Basis’s hope for the long run.
“Competitors is sweet as a result of it might get you a greater outcome, higher expertise,” Fantom Basis CEO Michael Kong advised 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 long run.
“I believe sooner or later, you won’t have 20 or 30 totally different chains… however I believe you may have a number of chains on the market, and I believe they are going to get a big market share,” Kong mentioned. “Folks use a number of totally different blockchains, that is the case in the present day, and I believe that can proceed to be the case into the long run.”
What’s Fantom? The Quick Blockchain Taking over Ethereum
Launched in December 2019, Fantom is a layer-1 blockchain aiming to offer 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 purposes 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 neighborhood 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 enhance community throughput or considerably make the expertise 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 part of the chain.”
For Kong, the misconceptions surrounding the merge had extra to do with the neighborhood’s pleasure and fewer with any mistake by the Ethereum Basis in managing expectations.
The merge was “not about rising scalability, not about decreasing gasoline charges dramatically,” Kong mentioned, regardless of what Ethereum flag-wavers might 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 a way Fantom can compete with Ethereum and different chains? “We nonetheless have our aggressive benefit, a minimum of in the meanwhile, in relation to our skill to course of transactions asynchronously,” Kong mentioned.
What issues him most transferring ahead is the alarming latest rhetoric from regulators. “I believe the massive detrimental in the mean time is the regulatory uncertainty,” he mentioned. “I believe that is what’s scaring lots of people [in the industry].”
Kong pointed to the latest actions of the SEC, which claimed that every one Ethereum transactions fall beneath 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 absolutely what might damper innovation, and actually trigger individuals to suppose twice about blockchain expertise and never wish to get into any bother,” he mentioned. “And so it type of has a little bit of a chilling impact on the trade.”