Fantom’s explosive growth in early 2022 - Firmly leading the Layer 1 narrative
Just as mentioned in the previous Fantom Panorama article, regardless of the market sentiment, the money was still staying in Fantom and data indicated that Fantom would continue to grow even more drastically.
This has become the reality just after 2 weeks into 2022. How has Fantom grown? How far will Fantom be able to go? Let’s find out in this article!
Fantom Ecosystem Overview
Statistics
The infographic below was made right before Fantom reached $10B in TVL (Total Value Locked). The TVL within most projects witnessed more than 100% growth after a month.
Among them, Scream had the most impressive growth when it was able to get into the top 4 (before Scream was in the top 6).
The number of unique addresses on Fantom is still growing gradually. At the same time, the frequency of activities on Fantom dApps is also reaching ATH, indicating that DeFi on Fantom has been able to attract more investors.
This becomes more evident in the number of daily transactions on Fantom. It can be clearly seen that this number is getting close to that on Ethereum since Fantom is technologically outperforming Ethereum: Faster, cheaper, and more scalable.
While DeFi on Ethereum remains technically unusable for retail investors, users have been finding alternative Layer-1s in order to participate in DeFi activities. Among numerous blockchain platforms, Fantom is currently standing out.
Fantom Ecosystem Spotlight
As mentioned in previous Fantom articles, Fantom Ecosystem Spotlight is a program where Fantom Foundation interviews the founders of native protocols weekly.
Not only does this help Fantom projects gain more trust from its users, but it also encourages the projects themselves to develop better so that they can join the program and be a part of the ecosystem.
Up to this moment, the Fantom Ecosystem Spotlight has adopted a total of 20 projects. The interesting thing is that: There exists both native (SpiritSwap, SpookySwap, Reaper Farm,...) and multichain (OpenOcean, Beefy Finance) protocols.
This shows Fantom Foundation understands that even though the program is created mainly for Fantom projects, every project that contributes to the ecosystem should be counted. As a result, we can even expect more protocols like yEarn Finance to join the spotlight, not just only native ones.
Major updates
Felix Exchange
Felix Exchange - a CEX made for Fantom specifically, has officially announced its upcoming release.
The fact is that even though Fantom has been supported by numerous CEXs, the experience has not been actually smooth and “satisfying”. Binance, for instance, occasionally suspends the withdrawal of FTM. This can have a bad effect on the growth of Fantom, especially during bull times.
Hence, the appearance of Felix Exchange at this moment can be the perfect complementation for Fantom. Felix will be able to help improve the money’s inflows and outflows in the ecosystem.
Binance U.S
Binance US announced its support for Fantom long ago. However, not until recently has it fully supported Fantom with multiple features:
- Open deposits and withdrawals for mainnet FTM.
- Enable FTM as an asset in the Buy Crypto portal.
Binance US Wallet now supports Fantom Opera with its token standards.
FTX
FTX - one of the biggest CEXs at the moment, has recently supported the Fantom mainnet.
The more CEXs support Fantom, the wider Fantom is adopted. When Fantom is already ready to receive more cash flow (as mentioned in previous articles), what matters is how the cash flow can get into Fantom.
It is clear that Fantom is trying its best to make it easier for investors to participate in the Fantom Ecosystem. As such, we can believe that more users and money will be poured into Fantom in these upcoming weeks.
Integrations
Besides, Fantom has also integrated with numerous protocols to enhance users’ experience as well as diversify the available features that the blockchain offers. Some of the most prominent updates are:
- DIA: An open-source oracle provider. DIA provides 6k+ digital asset price feeds, 20k+ traditional financial asset price feeds, lending rates, FX rates, and more.
- Movr Network: Movr Network has integrated Fantom into FundMovr - a metabridge that facilitates seamless cross-chain asset transfer.
- Shopping.io: Shopping.io allows Fantom users to purchase items online and globally from popular retailers including Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and The Home Depot.
You can notice that among these new integrations, Fantom has focused not only on developing DeFi but also on emerging practical applications. As a blockchain solution for various countries and businesses, Fantom continues to grow and expand besides the DeFi aspects.
With the goal of mass adoption, Fantom is currently the best performer at implementing real-life applications into blockchain usage. Through these actions, not only is Fantom able to attract more crypto investors, it can also draw more non-crypto users into using its technology.
Fantom Ecosystem Analysis
AMM
SpookySwap continues to stand out in this sector. Most of the trading volume on Fantom heads directly to SpookySwap, which means SpookySwap is making the highest amount of revenue and trading fees.
Looking at the table above, we can see that in 7 days, SpookySwap has received more fees than other AMMs like TraderJoe, QuickSwap, Balancer,... and even blockchain platforms like Avalanche or Fantom itself.
Looking into the TVL and the ratio Fees/TVL of these protocols, we can see that SpookySwap possesses the most impressive percent of 0.042%. This means among these protocols, SpookySwap is utilizing its protocol’s capital (TVL) in the most efficient way.
In terms of TVL, SpookySwap is still behind a lot of other protocols. But as an AMM, SpookySwap is doing a really good job, especially with capital efficiency - one of the most important aspects of DeFi 2.0.
Lending
In terms of TVL, Scream has recently surpassed Geist Finance.
Scream was one of the first native protocols on Fantom. Even though the growth of Scream was not outstanding by any means, it was sustainable.
Before, Geist Finance appeared and reached $10B in Total Market Size in 3 days, while Scream was struggling to reach more than $300M. Nevertheless, the aftermath was clear: Geist Finance quickly went down in TVL and Market Size, to the point where these two were standing in a pretty equal place.
As the difference between the 2 is still insignificant and we need more time to see who will outperform, this sector on Fantom is now finding another leader, so the current competition is getting more interesting and intense.
Meanwhile, Hundred Finance - a multichain lending protocol that forks Compound Finance, has also had a great performance on Fantom. New projects like this one still have the potential to possibly flip both Scream and Geist Finance, hence, we should pay attention to not only the current top 2 but also the competitors behind.
Yield Aggregator
The earning strategy on Fantom has mostly been farming. Hence, Yield Aggregators (doing auto-compound) have been the go-to place for Fantom users.
Reaper Farm and Grim Finance have been the 2 most prominent native Yield Aggregators on Fantom. Before, Grim Finance had surpassed Reaper Farm in TVL and led this sector. Unfortunately, Grim Finance was exploited recently, bringing all the TVL from the protocol to Reaper Farm and doubling its number.
The loss was significant (over $30M), and I was also a victim of the exploit. Nevertheless, through this event, we were able to learn more about not only the exploited protocol itself but also the whole Fantom community.
First of all, Grim Finance. After the exploit, instead of quitting and leaving all affected people, they immediately started to investigate the hack and try to find the best way to return the loss of all their users. Afterwards, before reopening the protocol, the first thing they did was to fix the code and conduct another audit, which was to ensure the safety of users in their revamped product.
Second of all, the Fantom community. Looking into the exploit, many projects in the Fantom ecosystem were willing to help Grim Finance: SecureDAO, Pod Town, Comb Financial,... Even KOLs like FTMAlerts have donated to Grim’s Insurance Fund.
Even though this amount of money will not be enough to cover the loss of all Grim users, it has shown how the Fantom community supports each other, which has led to the successful relaunch of Grim Finance. Started from 0 again, Grim Finance has now attracted nearly $30M in TVL.
With this study case, we can firmly say how connected and strong the Fantom community is. And as we all know, the growth of a crypto project is closely related to its community, which has been proved via projects like DogeCoin, Shiba Inu, or even Cardano.
With this belief, the growth of Fantom might be even more tremendous than the expectation of everyone, as the value of community is usually overlooked and understated.
Yield Optimizer (Vault Strategies)
Another sector that has been growing dramatically on Fantom has been Yield Optimizer. Different from Yield Aggregators which only automatically compound assets’ interest, Yield Optimizers offer different strategies to give users the best yield. These strategies may include using other multiple protocols to navigate users’ funds where there returns the highest profit.
Some of the top protocols in this sector are yEarn Finance, Liquid Driver, Tarot, and most recently, Robot-Vault. Through these protocols (take yEarn as an example), the yield users can earn has been massive, which is the main source of attention for Fantom at the moment.
Through yEarn Finance, users can use stablecoins to earn at attractive rates: DOLA (31.77%), DAI (25.26%), MIM (23.78%),... which are usually much lower on other platforms (15 - 20% for stablecoins).
However, the strategy yEarn uses on Fantom is pretty simple (using Scream mostly). With more complex strategies like the one Robo Vault is using, the APY can be even higher.
You can “skin in the game” in Fantom using these protocols. While the APY remains high, the opportunity for more cash flow to get into the ecosystem is still there. You can also use this metric to value the possible growth of Fantom.
NFT
In previous Fantom Panorama articles, I have mentioned that the NFT landscape on Fantom consists of mostly collectibles without any actual Play-to-earn games, which in my belief has partly limited the growth of Fantom at the moment.
Even though there have been some recent actions from Fantom Foundation on this problem, nothing significant has happened. If developing NFT collectibles is the main focus of Fantom, then looking at NFT Marketplaces can be the best option to track the growth of this sector.
There have been numerous NFT Marketplaces on Fantom like Ovre, Artion,... but the current most prominent one is actually PaintSwap, which has been pretty underestimated as its origin was an AMM.
The total trading volume on PaintSwap has reached nearly 8M FTM, which at the time of this writing was worth about $24M. At the same time, it has been the most active and user-friendly NFT Marketplace on Fantom as it has partnered with various native projects, hence strongly promoting not only native NFT projects on Fantom but also its whole NFT community.
DeFi 2.0
In this sector, Tomb Finance is still the leader and has been capable of maintaining its growth. Specifically, the market sentiment has not been favorable recently, which has led to the price of FTM reducing and being highly volatile.
As the main product of Tomb Finance is TOMB - an algorithmic stablecoin that is pegged to the price of FTM, maintaining the price of TOMB is of the foremost importance. In red markets when people sell a lot of assets, algorithmic tokens usually have difficulties in remaining their peg.
Nevertheless, in the case of TOMB, it has successfully kept its price nearly equal to FTM without witnessing any significant drops. This has partially proved the efficiency of its price stability model, which is the most important factor to value an algorithmic token.
However, the core value of an algorithmic stablecoin lies in its users and their trust. If everyone starts to sell the token, there is no way that the token can remain its peg.
TOMB can still maintain its stability as long as the users of Tomb Finance have faith in the protocol and are willing to keep the token during hard times. Investing in this kind of token can be risky as the situation can change completely at any time, so you should always be careful and think carefully before making decisions.
Meanwhile, Andre Cronje and Daniele Sestagalli are working on a project called ve(3,3), as promised.
In general, ve(3,3) is the combination of the ve tokenomics design from Curve Finance and the (3,3) game theory of Olympus DAO. The project aims to maximize the efficiency of fee distribution, liquidity management, and DAO.
The protocol has not been released yet, but the whole crypto community has already hyped up. ve(3,3) will be released on Fantom, which will bring a breath of fresh air to the ecosystem and possibly change how other similar protocols should be designed.
The crypto community has had a lot of expectations on this project. If the project succeeds, not only will it be beneficial but Fantom will also be able to absorb its hype and growth, which is a promising signal for the continuing development of Fantom.
Conclusion
To conclude, here are some highlights of the Fantom ecosystem recently:
- Fantom is back on track with its drastic growing pattern of both price and TVL.
- Fantom has focused not only on DeFi but also on real-life applications, which makes the blockchain platform unique among others.
- DeFi on Fantom is still growing gradually. While some sectors have witnessed a winner (SpookySwap for AMM), some are still having intense competition to find a leader (Lending).
- A lot of new things are coming on Fantom and the main attention of the crypto market has come here. With this much hype and attraction, Fantom can totally grow even stronger than its current status.
And that's the summary of the Fantom ecosystem recently. I hope it has helped you learn more about Fantom and its DeFi ecosystem, as well as given you useful insights that can enrich your knowledge.