Fantom showing clear signs of getting into the Top 20 Cryptocurrencies

At the end of Q3 2021, Fantom is proving to be the primary catalyst to lead the crypto market. Besides breaking multiple records in terms of Total Value Locked, Market Cap, and Number of users, Fantom has been gradually growing into more than just a “common” blockchain. 

You may ask, how can that be said? You have come to the right place! In this article, let me provide you with a comprehensive update on the whole Fantom ecosystem. Now, let’s get started!

Fantom Ecosystem Overview

Fantom Ecosystem Spotlight

First, let’s talk about Fantom Ecosystem Spotlight. 

On September 6th 2021, Fantom introduced a separate category in its blog: Ecosystem Spotlight, which is a program created to allow different Fantom projects to discuss and interact directly with the Fantom Foundation, hence creating a close bond between the project and the Foundation as well as its community.

Since then, once every week, Fantom has released one Ecosystem Spotlight article in the form of a Q&A (Question and Answer), or in other words, an interview, featuring founders and CEOs from various protocols. These articles have brought invaluable insights to users, therefore gaining a deeper understanding and more trust in the project. 

The most recent project being featured in Fantom Ecosystem Spotlight is Geist Finance - one of the biggest projects on Fantom, whose details will be mentioned later in this article. Learning more about Geist Finance, their vision and their mindsets will never be possible without the implementation of Ecosystem Spotlight.

Fantom Developer Conference

One of the biggest events on Fantom is here. Fantom Developer Conference (Fantom DC) takes place in Abu Dhabi from 25-29 October 2021, where a massive variety of founders, developers, influencers,... will join as both speakers and audience members. 

Some of the notable names can be mentioned as CZ (Binance CEO), Andre Cronje (DeFi Architect and Creator), Roger Ver (Bitcoin.com Founder), Harry Yeh (Quantum Fintech group), Micheal Kong (Fantom Foundation CEO),... and many many more.

So how will this event affect Fantom? 

First of all, it will be the first step to put Fantom’s name on the map. The conference is supposed to be the place where uniform beliefs, visions, and people gather and spread their words to the crypto community through revolutionary workshops and presentations. People will understand more about Fantom, thus knowing and believing in its process in a more certain way.

Second, as speeches and presentations will be conducted, a lot of information, or should I say, “alpha leaks”, will be given out as well. One of the biggest announcements so far has been Binance supporting Fantom tokens through Binance Cloud, which means getting access to the Fantom ecosystem will be much easier.

A lot of expectations have arisen both before and during the Fantom Developer Conference. This has been reflected in the price of $FTM: Almost 2 weeks before the event started, one FTM was worth $1.9; whereas right when the event kicks in, its price has already skyrocketed to $3.46 (+80%), marking a new ATH.

Fantom Incentive Program

Fantom Foundation has recently announced its 370M FTM Incentive Program, which will be used to support projects and developers on Fantom. Up to this moment, the value of this package has exceeded $1B.

Compared to Incentive Programs from other blockchain ecosystems, that of Fantom can now be considered the biggest. This is promised to turn DeFi on Fantom into an even more promising and explosive one, which is worth paying attention to.

Fantom statistics

The way both Fantom’s price and TVL (Total Value Locked) have been increasing concurrently is absolutely phenomenal. To understand how enormous the growth of the Fantom ecosystem has been, let’s take a look at some of its statistics:

• $FTM broke ATH every day, reaching $3.46 per FTM, which has put Fantom into the top 30 tokens with a Market Cap of $8.7B.
• DeFi TVL surpassed $5.8B, exceeding that of Polygon - the current biggest Ethereum Layer-2.
• Got more than 1,000,000 unique addresses, more than 100,000,000 total transactions with a maximum of 1,800,000 transactions/day (almost outperformed Ethereum).

These numbers have been growing day by day. The notable point is that the TVL across different Fantom protocols has increased altogether, instead of just “one takes all”. This is a good sign showing that the Fantom ecosystem is actually growing instead of possible speculating purposes, especially with native AMMs like SpookySwap or SpiritSwap growing in both prices and TVL.

Fantom Ecosystem Analysis

The Fantom ecosystem has increased drastically in its diversity. A few months ago, there were only about 50 projects deployed on Fantom. Nowadays, there are over 200 protocols, with a wide range of famous Multichain ones namely Curve Finance, SushiSwap, KyberDMM,... 

Fantom has become the go-to place for myriads of projects and developers. Now let’s go deeper into its ecosystem!

Infrastructure

Nansen is one of the most outstanding analytics platforms that are currently available on the crypto market. As Nansen supports Fantom, Fantom users can now access its diverse tools and track interesting yet useful indices such as whale addresses, wallets’ activities, Smart Money tracking,...

This implementation is massive for not only Fantom users but also the whole ecosystem itself. As more statistics are available (instead of only ftmscan or ftm explorer), investing and/or getting into the Fantom ecosystem will be easier and more secure. 

At the same time, it proves that Fantom has been attracting much interest among investors, hence creating a demand for Nansen to set out this decision. 

On the other hand, as other infrastructure pieces like Bridges, Oracles or Wallets on Fantom have been fortified to some extent, there is not much to say about those segments. Some prominent newcomers can be listed as Celer (Bridge), TokenPocket (Wallet),...

Stablecoin

Stablecoin is a perfect indicator to track the growth of an ecosystem as it is the direct reflection of users’ demand for spending within that ecosystem. On Fantom, the number of Stablecoins was really insignificant, mostly wrapped USDT and a small number of USDC. There were some native algorithmic Stablecoins, but ended up ineffective and became bygone.

However, there has been quite a huge improvement recently. Some notable Stablecoins have arrived on Fantom, namely MIM (Abradacabra Money Stablecoin, one of the DeFi 2.0 leading projects), TUSD (True USD, one of the top centralized Stablecoins), showing how they have realized the problem and have been attempting to ameliorate the situation.

The reason why the Stablecoin index is an imperial indicator to track Fantom is that, in the past, when the number of Stablecoins on Fantom increased dramatically through Anyswap (a bridge supporting mainly Fantom), the Fantom ecosystem also witnessed tremendous growth.

With that in mind, we can clearly see that this situation is being repeated. Through Anyswap’s dashboard, it is not difficult to recognize that Stablecoins on Fantom have increased not only in diversity but also in quantity. This has indicated a continuingly massive growth for Fantom, and it is proving to be correct again.

Visit Anyswap’s dashboard: https://anyswap.net/tokens

AMM

Besides numerous new names being introduced like Beethoven X (Balancer Fork), YoshiExchange, KyberDMM,... the existing names have also developed pretty solidly after a few months. The two native AMMs of Fantom, SpookySwap and SpiritSwap, have slowly turned into DeFi stations, adopting the approach of PancakeSwap.

They have no longer remained conventional AMMs providing swapping and farming services by implementing multiple features such as NFT, Lending & Borrowing, Bridging,... Everything can be done simply through one application, which helps DeFi users perform things more efficiently and conveniently.

This is clearly shown after SpiritSwap recently introduced its SpiritBridge, Lending network,... SpookySwap introduced its NFT collections,...

Lending

Geist Finance has taken over this market segment completely. Before the advent of Geist Finance, the leading protocol was Scream Finance, with just nearly $100M TVL. When Geist Finance appeared, it took only 2 days to reach $10B Market Size, over $3B TVL, and generate up to $1.6M in protocol fees.

Moreover, it is worth noting that Geist Finance is the native lending protocol on Fantom, not a multichain one. Fantom’s lending sector has long needed improving, and Geist Finance came in as a perfectly suited solution. 

With this add-on, the potential for Fantom to grow even further has become more clearly determined. As it has completed the two most imperative DeFi Legos which are AMM and Lending, Fantom now has the foundation to attract more users and cash flow.

Yield Aggregator

Yield Aggregator has been an extremely well-developed sector on Fantom. The most highlighted project recently must be Grim Finance.

Ever since its appearance on Fantom, which is roughly in May 2021, there was nothing special about this project. Until recently, it has emerged as one of the most commonly-used Yield Aggregator platforms, as it partners with SpiritSwap to bring about 2.5x boosted farm along with the auto-compound feature, which has dramatically increased farming APYs.

GRIM - its native token, has also carried out an astonishing run from about $0.1 to $1.7 (+1,600%) in approximately 2 months. The TVL inside the protocol has also impressively increased from roughly $7M to now more than $77M (+1,000%).

Furthermore, we are starting to see more Multichain Yield Aggregator platforms coming to Fantom. Starting with Beefy Finance, now we have OpenOcean - one of the largest Yield Aggregators for both DEXs and CEXs, now available on Fantom.

NFT

In the NFT sector, Artion is taking the spotlight. Artion is an NFT marketplace developed by Andre Cronje, at the same time supported by the Fantom Foundation. Some exceptional features that Artion provides can be listed as:

• Super fast transaction speed.
• Near 0 transaction fees.
• Costs only 1 FTM to mint NFT.
• Use ChainLink price feeds.
• 0 Commission.

Some competitors of Artion can be seen as Ovre, X,... But they have little to no uniqueness compared to Artion. However, all of them are still lacking usable products, so the competition is still worth following as the first-mover can possibly be more advantageous.

You may ask, why have I only mentioned NFT Marketplaces as highlighted projects? The reason is that the NFT sector on Fantom currently consists mostly of NFT Collectibles. There are only a few NFT games, nevertheless, they have not released their products so far. Therefore, following the movement of NFT Marketplaces is our best decision at the moment.

Conclusion

To conclude, here are some highlights of the Fantom Ecosystem recently:

• Fantom Developer Conference is being held to bootstrap the Fantom ecosystem.
• Fantom has skyrocketed in terms of both price and TVL, getting into the top 30 cryptocurrencies. Although the phenomenon seems to be cooling down, its bull run is still expected to continue.
• Fantom announced its 370M FTM Incentive Program to support projects and developers.
• Every DeFi sector on Fantom is growing and developing, with the most prominent being Lending with Geist Finance. All DeFi Legos are ready to receive more cash flow, so the next market wave of Fantom is expected to be even more tremendous.

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