TLDR:

• Fantom is a blockchain platform with a unique consensus mechanism called Lachesis that aims to offer consensus-as-a-service for distributed ledgers. Lachesis is compatible with The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)- and seeks to enable builders to easily deploy applications on top of it. The first blockchain built on Lachesis is the Opera Network.
• The Fantom Foundation’s claims to solving the Blockchain Trilemma are unfounded, however, it will be interesting to see how the team can improve the scalability, decentralization, and security of the platform going forward.
• The growth of the Fantom ecosystem over the past year has been very impressive. However, in order to become a top-tier blockchain greater developer activity is required and more public-facing teams would be desirable.
• Fantom’s developer-focused incentive scheme is a positive sign for the growth of the ecosystem and the long-term focus of the Fantom Foundation.
• Solidly is a new protocol-to-protocol AMM on Fantom with unique tokenomics and incentives that has created enormous hype for the ecosystem. Interestingly, its locked ve tokens that determine emissions are represented as transferable NFTs.
• An ecosystem has already sprung up around Solidly, with 0xDAO and Solidex seeking to become to Solidly what Convex is to Curve. The Solidly Wars will be interesting and likely a good yield farming opportunity. However, the long-term value of this remains to be seen.

Introduction

Fantom is a blockchain platform with a unique consensus mechanism called Lachesis that offers consensus-as-a-service for distributed ledgers. Lachesis is compatible with The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)- and seeks to enable builders to easily deploy their applications on top of it. At present, Fantom comprises one blockchain called Opera - which is a high-performance EVM-compatible blockchain. Fantom has surged in popularity over the past year, due to its very cheap transaction fees and fast transaction times. Fantom’s growth has been phenomenal, increasing over 50x from $165m TVL in June 2021 to approximately $8.5b today. Fantom now has a thriving ecosystem of dApps ranging from native protocols like leveraged yield farming protocol Tarot and Balancer fork Beethoven X, to DeFi bluechips such as Yearn Finance. Andre Cronje’s involvement has also given the project legitimacy due to his reputation in the space. The announcement and launch of Solidly brought enormous hype - and TVL - to Fantom, and it will be interesting to see if the ecosystem can harness this momentum to create value beyond the short term.

Tech

Lachesis

The Fantom blockchain uses an asynchronous byzantine fault tolerant (aBFT) consensus mechanism called Lachesis. Fantom ultimately seeks to have multiple different blockchains for different use cases built atop Lachesis. Opera is the first of these blockchains.

Lachesis has four main properties:

Asynchronous

• Different nodes can process commands at different times.

Byzantine fault-tolerant

• It can support up to ⅓ of faulty nodes.

Fast Finality

• Transactions are often confirmed in 1-2 seconds as there is no need to wait for block confirmations.

Leaderless

• No participant plays a ‘special’ role in block production, nodes have equal power (regardless of the number of tokens).

Essentially, nodes on Fantom ‘gossip’ - by communicating with other random nodes the information they have received, which is passed on to other random participants (who all do the same). Through this, information spreads exponentially among the nodes until all nodes are aware of it.

In addition, only events are synced between nodes - they do not vote on the state of the network - but rather periodically exchange observed transactions and events among each other. Lachesis is able to achieve fast finality due to smaller communication overhead compared to other consensus mechanisms like synchronous BFT.

The Fantom Opera Mainnet is built on Lachesis. It is EVM compatible - which has been a significant contributor to the growth of Fantom dApps and users alike.

DAG

Each Lachesis node stores a local directed acyclic graph (DAG), comprising event blocks - each of which consists of transactions. The DAG records the exact order of transactions independently on each node.

Event blocks are either

• Confirmed (past 2-3+ frames) and ordered by honest nodes or
• Unconfirmed (new).

Consensus is achieved with finalized blocks forming the final chain. These are calculated independently from the local DAG on each node.

Does Fantom solve the blockchain trilemma?

Fantom prides itself on being the blockchain to solve the blockchain trilemma. The blockchain trilemma is a widely held belief that blockchains can only have 2 of the following three characteristics: decentralization, scalability, and security.

It is worth examining further if and how Fantom can solve the blockchain trilemma.

Decentralization

The Fantom Foundation and its proponents frequently argue that Fantom is a highly decentralized blockchain. The foundation states that it achieves this through Lachesis’ permissionless and leaderless consensus, “in which anyone can join and leave the network at any time and all nodes are equal.” This statement of itself would suggest that Fantom is highly decentralized. However, Fantom has a relatively low validator count. Ultimately, anyone cannot become a validator as the capital requirements are very high - at 500,000 FTM. At present, there are only 59 validators on Fantom. Ultimately, this suggests that Fantom in reality is actually relatively centralized.

That said, a high validator count is not a precise metric for decentralization. Fantom’s Lachesis consensus mechanism is an interesting innovation - as it means no node is given priority. This differentiates it from traditional proof-of-stake networks that can be relatively centralized as the largest stakers have the greatest chance of validating transactions. However, Fantom being ‘leaderless’ could also be circumvented by a single entity using a number of addresses to run multiple validators. While it remains unlikely that there will be collusion between nodes, it is still noteworthy.

Ultimately, Fantom needs to find ways to scale its validator set in order to justify its marketing messaging of being a decentralized blockchain. On February 3rd 2022, three proposals were put forward to reduce the validator requirements. The options are: 50k FTM, 100k FTM, and 250k FTM. Although any of these would be a significant improvement from 500k, it is noteworthy that Fantom requires 90% of token holders to vote. This in itself is very inefficient and makes proposals extremely difficult to pass, but the threshold to vote may be lowered in the future.

The Fantom Foundation has recognised the need for more validators to improve decentralization and state that they are assessing different approaches to allow more validator nodes to join the network.

Scalability

Fantom has prided itself on being highly scalable, with Lachesis supporting a number of application-specific blockchains. However, Fantom experienced performance issues during the spike of activity around the Solidly snapshot. In the Fantom Whitepaper 2.0, the team stated that they are exploring some scalability alternatives.

These are

• Layering-based Model
• Frame assignment.

The technicalities of these scaling models go beyond the scope of this report, but you can read about them here.

Ultimately, Fantom is not as scalable as its marketing materials suggest. Its recent congestion suggests that there is significant work to be done on this front.

Multi-blockchain Fantom Fantom aims to become an ecosystem of blockchains that use the underlying Lachesis consensus mechanism (consensus-as-a-service). Fantom uses the analogy of Ethereum being a decentralized computer, whereas Fantom is potentially an infinite number of decentralized computers - independent of one another but using Lachesis. At present, there is little evidence of the team making progress in this direction. Opera is the first of these blockchains. Importantly, blockchains built on Fantom are said to be customizable (no evidence to confirm or refute this claim) and can be integrated with EVM (like Opera) or the Cosmos SDK. This is important as a transition to a multi-chain world becomes more clear. It is interesting how the visions of Fantom/Avax/Cosmos/NEAR appear to be converging towards having many app-specific chains to scale on top of their underlying consensus mechanisms/blockchain.

It is clear that Fantom needs to improve its scalability in order to become a leading blockchain in the years to come and to live up to its messaging of solving the blockchain trilemma. The challenges are not insurmountable, and Fantom remains an interesting project for those with conviction in the team being able to deliver.

Secure

Below is a table from the Fantom Foundation outlining Lachesis’ security relative to other consensus mechanisms, namely Proof of Work, Proof of Stake, Delegated Proof of Stake, and Lachesis (a hybrid of Proof of Stake and directed acyclic graph).

Source: Fantom Foundation

Ultimately, it is important to bear in mind that this table was produced by the Fantom Foundation and may include biases. However, it appears that Lachesis is in theory a strong consensus model. Over time, this will be tested more to determine a more concrete answer.

Conclusion - Has Fantom Solved the Blockchain Trilemma?

No. It is clear that Fantom has not solved the blockchain trilemma and has further development before it can rightfully claim this feat. However, since Lachesis can process transactions in an asynchronous manner (i.e as soon as they enter the network instead of waiting for blocks to be mined), it could have the potential to optimize the tradeoffs in the blockchain trilemma, improving scalability while still maintaining a degree of decentralization. Time will tell if the Fantom Foundation can execute in a way that brings it closer to solving the trilemma than its current state.

Incentive Scheme: Developer-First Focus

Fantom has an interesting ecosystem rewards programme. Many blockchains used their ecosystem war chests to attract users through liquidity mining initiatives. However, this is an unsustainable approach, as many of these ‘liquidity locusts’ move on to the next fertile farming ground as soon as rewards dry up. Fantom prides itself on being a ‘developer first’ blockchain, and instead, its rewards will be distributed to protocols building on Fantom - who can use the tokens as they want. The rationale behind this approach is that successful protocols are the best allocators of resources - rather than the Fantom Foundation itself. This is a more sustainable approach, and the 370m FTM war chest is one of the most valuable in crypto.

Enterprise

Fantom is also positioning itself as an enterprise blockchain, providing services to companies/nation-states that can use private and/or public blockchains. This is because Fantom itself is capable of hosting multiple blockchains for different applications. It appears that this division of Fantom is yet to see substantial progress. Fantom describes its services as ‘consensus-as-a-service’.

FTM Token

Tokenomics Fantom’s tokenomics are a relic of 2018. They have a huge private investor allocation with no lockup (40%). However, as this was almost 4 years ago, investor unlocks and selling pressure is less of an issue for Fantom than some of its competitors like Avalanche and Solana.

Key ecosystem participants

Ultimately, the technology of a blockchain is irrelevant if it is not widely used. A blockchain is only as strong as the projects building atop it, and Fantom has had some very interesting ecosystem developments over the past year.

Yearn Finance

Yearn Finance is a blue-chip yield aggregator that launched during DeFi summer in 2020. Yearn is a very highly regarded project and boasts $3.8b total TVL, of which $650m is on Fantom and the rest on Ethereum. Yearn deployed on Fantom in 2021, describing it as “a robust chain with lots of yield opportunities”. Yearn deploying on Fantom is a strong endorsement of the blockchain, however, part of the decision is likely due to Andre Cronje’s involvement in both projects.

Beethoven X

Beethoven is a Balancer V2 fork that is native to Fantom. Beethoven essentially enables anyone to participate in the unique investment strategies offered by Balancer, except without the high transaction fees associated with Ethereum (and Arbitrum which are notably much higher than Fantom).

• Beethoven has recently become the subject of the ‘fBEETS wars’. Beethoven recently enabled the community to vote for pools 30% of emissions should flow to. This has resulted in a surge in demand from other protocols that are seeking to direct emissions towards incentivising their pools.
• Beethoven facilitates LBPs for projects launching on Fantom. This is key infrastructure for Fantom native projects to launch and bootstrap their protocols.
• Beethoven has a strong community - as exemplified by its highly active Discord. It is a great example of a bluechip Ethereum protocol (Balancer) made accessible to the masses on Fantom.
• Beethoven has risen to be one of the most prominent protocols on Fantom.

TVL: $320m FDV: $250m Team: Anonymous Team Vesting: 4 years Code: Balancer Fork

SpookySwap

SpookySwap is the number one Dex on Fantom. SpookySwap has an xSUSHI tokenomic model, where its token BOO is converted to xBOO which accrues fees and can be leveraged as collateral in partner protocols.

TVL: $1bn FDV: $280m Team: Anonymous Team Vesting Schedule: 1 year: This is arguably too short and reduces the incentive for the team to contribute to the project in the long term. Code: Originally a Uniswap v2 Fork

Geist

Geist is a Fantom-native lending protocol that is a fork of Aave. Geist managed to attract a very large TVL due to its generous liquidity mining programme that started this year. This has significantly fallen as rewards have fallen.

TVL: $700m FDV: $160m Team: Anonymous Code: Aave Fork Team Vesting: 1 year linear unlock: This is arguably too short and reduces the incentive for the team to contribute to the project in the long term.

TOMB

TOMB is an algorithmic stablecoin pegged to FTM. TOMB aims to become the primary medium of exchange on Fantom. TOMB seeks to maintain its peg with FTM by dynamically adjusting the supply relative to the price of FTM.

TOMB has been controversial as it arguably reduces demand for FTM and dilutes its price. In addition, as an algorithmic stablecoin - it carries higher depeg risk than a fully collateralized stablecoin.

Market Cap: $220m Team: Anonymous

Enter Solidly

Introduction

Solidly is a protocol-to-protocol AMM that was originally brought forward by Andre Cronje and Daniele Segestalli in early January. It generated enormous hype due to Andre’s reputation as one of the best builders in DeFi, and Daniele’s string of successful projects in 2021. This hype was dampened due to the controversy surrounding Daniele and serial-scammer 0xSifu, as well as the war between Ukraine and Russia. It was announced that the token would be distributed among the top 20 protocols on Fantom by TVL (in the end, it was distributed to the top 25), prompting a TVL war between protocols and major movement of funds to Fantom.

veNFTs

The top 25 protocols received a ‘veNFT’ - which grants them perpetual emissions of SOLID in proportion to their TVL at the time of the snapshot. This will be 25% of the SOLID supply in perpetuity.

The veNFTs were distributed as follows:

• 7 to DeFi protocols that had migrated to Fantom from other chains
• 15 to Fantom native projects - of which 3 were set up specifically for the purpose of acquiring one of the NFTs (0xDAO, veDAO, Radial).
• 3 to bridge protocols (Synapse, Multichain, Ren).

Most protocols are using their veNFT to direct emissions towards their token pools - in order to give their tokens more liquidity. This is of great benefit to these projects as users will be rewarded with SOLID for providing liquidity to their pools - not the native token (which ultimately dilutes its value).

While it may seem wasteful that protocols were set up specifically to acquire the NFT, it will be very interesting to see how they evolve over time and contribute to the ecosystem. Notably, 0xDAO was set up by a consortium of OG Fantom projects and has pivoted to being to Solidly what Convex is to Curve.

• Interestingly, when locking up SOLID as veSOLID, the veSOLID will be represented as a transferable NFT.
• The NFT can be transferred, but the SOLID cannot be unlocked until the lock up expiry.
• This is likely to increase volumes on Fantom’s NFT platform PaintSwap.

What is Solidly?

Solidly is a protocol-to-protocol AMM with a similar design to Uniswap V2 and is probably the most high-profile project on Fantom at present. Solidly is designed to support low slippage swaps between pegged assets like stablecoins (similar to Curve), and incorporates unique incentive structures and tokenomics - which are a key feature of the protocol.

In order to understand Solidly, it is necessary to understand its tokenomics and incentives.

SOLID and veSOLID

• SOLID is tradeable but has no voting power or revenue share.
• SOLID can be converted to veSOLID. This is locked SOLID and enables the holder to participate in governance and receive protocol revenue.
• Similar to Curve, locks can last between 1 month and 4 years. The longer it is locked for, the greater the rewards.
  • As noted above, veSOLID is represented by NFTs which are transferable.

Tokenomics and Fees

• Users who provide liquidity to whitelisted pools receive liquidity mining rewards in SOLID.
• Swap fees go to ve lockers rather than LPs.
• Solidly seeks to align emissions and incentives. While traditional AMMs incentivize liquidity - this can result in a situation where there are really large pools with low volume receiving high rewards. This is inefficient. Solidly seeks to change this by having emissions flow to pools with the most volume. This means that there is liquidity provided where it is needed most.
• This is incentivized by only rewarding ve token holders who successfully vote for the most active pools
• The result - Solidly incentivizes deep liquidity where it is needed, directing away liquidity from low volume pairs where it is not needed, therefore, making it in theory a highly efficient AMM.
• In addition, Solidly enables anyone to create a bribe to incentivize liquidity.

ve(3,3) This is the name of the tokenomic model used by Solidly, which combines Curve’s ve tokenomics with OlympusDAO’s tokenomics - commonly referred to as ‘(3,3)’.

• (3,3) is a meme for the game theory of interacting with OlympusDAO where the best outcome for all users is if they all stake. Source: Olympus DAO

• This is controversial and outside the scope of this report. Note that it has failed in practice, with OHM and its forks down significantly. You can read more about it here from Olympus DAO.
• ve(3,3) combines the incentive to lock up tokens for fees (ve) with the additional incentive to lock up with (3,3). This is because not locking tokens would result in dilution.
• If all tokens are locked up, there will be minimum emissions. If no tokens are locked up, there will be maximum emissions. This is designed to create a strong incentive to lock up tokens as a SOLID token holder.
• The ve(3,3) token model means that early SOLID tokens are far more valuable than later tokens.
• This means that the vast majority of SOLID should be locked up, resulting in illiquid markets and subsequently large price moves for buying and selling SOLID on the market.

Solidly is intended to be valuable for protocols and the Fantom ecosystem as they can have incentivised pools with SOLID, rather than their native token (which dilutes its value). The SOLID rewards themselves should drive additional demand towards their incentivised tokens in the short term. However, it is very unclear if this will drive any fundamental value in the medium to long-term. In the short-term, buying FTM protocol tokens could be like indirect purchases of SOLID and the earlier one farms, the greater the value they may accrue.

Getting Exposure to Solidly A potential strategy to gain exposure to Solidly is to provide liquidity for the pool of your choice on Solidly, then lock it up in either 0xDAO or Solidex for boosted rewards and tokens. This gives exposure to Solidly and boosted rewards.

Point to note veSOLID gives holders governance rights over deciding future emissions. However, this is the only governance function of the token. Solidly is not a DAO - it is an immutable protocol-to-protocol, efficient DEX. However, one could also take the view that this sacrifices future flexibility as the ecosystem evolves.

It is expected by many that Solidly will be one of the most important projects in the Fantom ecosystem, and that the majority of SOLID will be locked, as it accrues fees and controls emissions. It will be interesting how the impact of their innovative tokenomics plays out in practice.

Solidly Wars

Just like the ‘Curve Wars’ - there is competition between protocols to accrue as much Solidly voting power as possible - the Solidly Wars. While the Curve Wars have arguably been all but won by Convex, two projects are competing for Solidly voting power: 0xDAO and Solidex. The following graph shows which veNFT recipient protocols have partnered with: 0xDAO, Solidex, or undecided/going solo.

Source: WagmiAlexander

As seen - 0xDAO managed to accumulate more veSOLID in partnerships. However, their failure to launch on the day of the Solidly launch has put them on the backfoot.

Solidex

Solidex was created in order to be to Solidly what Convex is to Curve. Basically, Solidex will seek to acquire a large share of Solidly voting power. This will mean Solidex will receive bribes from protocols in order for them to vote for their pool to receive emissions.

Notably, Solidex is not a Convex fork but was built from scratch. This may be a point of caution - Convex is a relatively battle-tested and secure protocol, whereas Solidex is primarily new code.

However, Solidex has landed some impressive partnerships with the likes of

• Yearn
• Abracadabra
• Multichain
• Geist
• Curve
• veDAO.

It is clear that Solidex will accumulate a large share of SOLID tokens and wield significant power over the exchange. That said, Solidly already has a built-in function for direct bribes so it will be interesting to see how this affects Solidex’ model.

Solidex code has not been audited and it is currently suffering from UI issues.

0xDAO

0xDAO was created by developers from Beethoven X, Scream, SpookySwap, and Liquid Driver (among other Fantom OGs) as a countermeasure to projects such as veDAO which were set up by opportunists seeking to acquire one of the veNFTs. 0xDAO was set up as a community-centric alternative from proven Fantom builders. A number of major projects have partnered with 0xDAO for voting power - resulting in what is already the ‘Solidly Wars’ between Solidex and 0xDAO. 0xDAO also seeks to become the Convex of Fantom (for Solidly). The OXD token will be used to reward LPs and SOLID lockers, and for voting power over 0xDAOs veSOLID.

0xDAO is yet to launch as the team apparently were unable to ship the product in time for the Solidly launch.

0xDAO has acquired an impressive list of launch partners, which include:

• SpookySwap
• Tomb Finance
• SCREAM
• Reaper Farm
• Beethoven X
• Liquid Driver
• Tarot

0xDAO ultimately seeks to maximise voting power for its partners while maximising returns. Its tokenomics have been designed with this purpose in mind.

Key characteristics:

• Stakers do not get diluted as rebases will be distributed to stakers as more oxSOLID
• oxSOLID is liquid, and will enable stakers to exit their position at any time.
• Stakers will accrue a 10% share of the SOLID earned by 0xDAO protocol LPs
• Solidly trading fees.
• Claim on any veSOLID aidrops.
• Solidly gauge bribes.
• 5%< share of all OXD emissions.

Ultimately, 0xDAO should be a prime competitor in the Solidly wars and will seek to establish a dominant position by optimizing returns and maximizing voting power for its partners. Interestingly, it is offering ‘partners’ - i.e those who contribute significant SOLID, greater benefits than other oxSOLID stakers. This demonstrates how Solidly and the protocols that have sprung up around it are truly protocol-to-protocol operations.

The competition between 0xDAO and Solidex should result in better overall outcomes for their partner protocols as they compete with each other. However, 0xDAO’s failure to launch on time has left it at a very serious disadvantage, with Solidex already gaining $1.5bn TVL within 2 days.

A potential way to accrue some SOLID is to provide liquidity on SOLID and stake the LP token on 0xDAO (when it launches) or Solidex for boosted rewards.

Are bribes healthy? There are obvious benefits of bribes for projects - projects can invest in having emissions directed toward their project to incentivise liquidity. However, the sustainability and externalities of having a bribing system are yet to be seen. One risk is that bribes could contribute to establishing monopolies - e.g. a project performs very well over a period of time and can bribe to receive a large proportion of emissions. This project could cement its position by always having the most emissions, creating a cycle that is difficult to break.

Bribing in Fantom has really kicked off in recent weeks. Beethoven X has been a big beneficiary, as has Liquid Driver. For example, Liquid Driver is driving revenue to its stakers by buying up governance tokens and directing emissions towards its token holders.

These governance and bribe wars have had positive impacts on the token price of the projects involved. However, they are arguably unsustainable. When emissions run out for many projects, there will be little value in holding governance tokens to direct emissions.

In addition, the phrase ‘bribes’ has negative connotations, and may not create a positive impression of DeFi looking from the outside in.

Nansen Data

Source: Nansen as of 24 Feb 2022

Source: Nansen as of 24 Feb 2022

Fantom’s activity has remained high since September. Its (typically) fast and cheap transactions have made it a hive of activity for DeFi. The above graphs shows that active addresses/transactions peaked around September/October which was shortly after the ecosystem incentive fund was announced and projects and users flocked to Fantom. It has managed to maintain high levels of daily addresses which is a good sign of general ecosystem health. The uptick in activity towards the end is the beginning of the Solidly craze. It remains to be seen if Fantom can use this as a platform to grow its ecosystem even further.

Ecosystem Analysis

Risks

Anonymous teams

While the underlying values of crypto include privacy and the right to be anonymous, this creates problems in reality. These problems can be seen by Wonderland’s 0xSifu transpiring to be a convicted criminal. 0xSifu was pseudonymous, whereas many of the people behind Fantom protocols are fully anonymous. This increases the risk of rug pulls, team accountability and commitment to their projects going forward. In order to become a top-tier blockchain, greater developer activity is required, and more public facing teams would be desirable. In addition, tokens typically have ~2-year vesting periods which is likely too short for a startup.

FTM-pegged token issues?

One possible reason for suppressing the price of FTM is FTM-pegged tokens such as TOMB. These artificially dilute the supply of FTM and result in less demand than there otherwise would be for FTM. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

Scaling & Decentralization Challenges

Ultimately, Fantom needs to address its scaling and decentralisation issues in order to be a long-term viable competitor blockchain. However, Fantom is well capitalized and has a growing developer community. That said, competitors like Avalanche have received far more funding and have a larger core team. Even though this is absolutely not a definitive factor for success, all else being equal, it gives Avalanche an advantage. However, Fantom’s relative lack of reliance on VCs can also be considered a good thing, and that its growth may be considered more organic than other L1 ecosystems.

Reliance on Andre Cronje?

Andre Cronje involvement as a contributor has given Fantom legitimacy. Beyond that, the deployment of bluechip protocol Yearn on Fantom was likely influenced by Andre, and the Solidly exchange built by Andre created huge hype and drove enormous TVL to the blockchain. While Andre Cronje is not the supreme leader of Fantom, his contribution to the project has given Fantom significant attention and he is by far the most influential person affiliated with the project. This is for good reason - he has proven himself to be a superb developer. That said, if Andre loses interest in Fantom, this could have negative effects on the community’s perception of the project.

Takeaway

• In order for Fantom to become a top blockchain, they will need more high-quality and public teams to build innovative protocols. This is definitely attainable, and the number of applications and users that have flocked to Fantom within the last year is highly impressive.
• If they can maintain momentum going forward, and continue to improve scalability, decentralization, and security - Fantom has a chance of becoming a top-tier blockchain.
• It will be interesting to see what other blockchains get built atop Lachesis and if their enterprise applications gain traction. In addition, it will be interesting to see how these blockchains will accrue value to FTM (if at all).
• Fantom’s developer-first approach with incentives is interesting, as developers/project teams are in a better position to efficiently allocate resources than the Foundation. The developer focus also demonstrates the Fantom Foundation’s long-term approach to building out a thriving ecosystem.
• Solidly is a fascinating addition to Fantom, and its unique tokenomic and incentive design could make it a key value-add to the ecosystem.
• The Solidly Wars are an interesting development to pay attention to. It will be interesting how sustainable this model proves to be throughout a bear market.
• FTM is undervalued relative to other ecosystems using the very rough metric of MC/TVL. The proliferation of FTM-pegged tokens like TOMB could be effectively reducing demand for FTM.
• Fantom ecosystem projects have also been typically undervalued relative to other similar projects on different chains using the rough metric of MC/TVL. Given current market conditions, it is up to the individual to determine if this makes them a good buying opportunity. That said, the Solidly emissions have had a positive impact on the price of the incentivized tokens - at least in the short term.