Sergei Romanov

What Is Fantom (FTM)?

Fantom is a directed acyclic graph (DAG) smart contract platform providing decentralized finance (DeFi) services to developers using its own bespoke consensus algorithm.

Together with its in-house token FTM, Fantom aims to solve problems associated with smart-contract platforms, specifically transaction speed, which developers say they have reduced to under two seconds.

The Fantom Foundation, which oversees the Fantom product offering, was originally created in 2018, with the launch of OPERA, Fantom’s mainnet, coming in December 2019.

Fantom is an open-source decentralized smart contract platform for DApps and digital assets that was created as an alternative to Ethereum. Fantom has the goal of overcoming the limitations of previous generation blockchains and balancing three components: scalability, security and decentralization. The project offers a set of tools to simplify the process of integrating existing DApps, as well as a detailed staking reward system and built-in DeFi instruments.

Fantom is a Layer-1 blockchain that uses a scratch-built consensus mechanism and independent consensus layer, Lachesis, to facilitate DeFi and related services on the basis of smart contracts. Lachesis provides security for other layers as well, including Opera, Fantom's EVM-compatible smart contract chain. The long-playing mission of the project is to “grant compatibility between all transaction bodies around the world.”

One of Fantom's key strengths is its performance and efficient transaction processing, namely thousands of transactions per second, where transactions are settled in 1-2 seconds, and the cost is fractions of a cent per transaction. As a result, Fantom provides higher scalability but at a lower cost.

The ecosystem is based on two main technologies: Lachesis protocol and Opera.

The Lachesis protocol is the core consensus layer that secures the Fantom network by providing both transaction speed and security.

Lachesis is an aBFT consensus engine that uses a directed acyclic graph (DAG) algorithm. How it works: network data can be processed at different times, and the network filters the participants, allowing only one third, which are allocated due to erroneous or malicious behavior, without compromising network processes.

Fantom's Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerant (aBFT) Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism maintains the efficiency of the entire network, its design provides security at maximum speed. Fantom developers emphasize that the PoS mechanism is a leaderless phenomenon — there are no leaders of blocks and participants, and anyone can join (or leave) the network of nodes at a convenient moment.

The key qualities of Lachesis are: asynchronous, leaderless, Byzantine fault-tolerant, and near-instant finality.

As for Opera, it's an application development layer or Fantom's mainnet deployment platform, permissionless and open-source hosting DApps. Thanks to EVM integration and support for the Solidity programming language, Fantom has a full set of smart contract capabilities, which allows users to seamlessly interact with Ethereum platforms while maintaining the advantage of Fantom's transaction efficiency.

The Fantom Foundation concluded that removing block leaders improves network security, so Opera uses a PoS model and leaderless validators (validators do not determine which blocks are valid).

In addition to being a fast, secure and cheap payment platform that enables to make fast and secure payments at minimal cost, Fantom also features on-chain governance where users vote with FTM tokens (one token equals one vote). Of the features: users have the right to express the degree of agreement / disagreement on a scale from 0 to 4.

FTM is the native utility in-house PoS token of Fantom that powers the ecosystem and is applied for payments, network fees, staking, and governance. FTM forms the backbone of transactions, and allows fee collection and staking activities, along with the user rewards the latter represents.

Who Are the Founders of Fantom?

The Fantom Foundation was founded by South Korean computer scientist Dr. Ahn Byung Ik. Currently, the platform’s CEO is Michael Kong.

The team behind Fantom has extensive experience primarily in the field of full-stack blockchain development, and aimed to create a smart contract platform which privileges scalability, decentralization and security.

According to its official website, Fantom’s team also consists of specialist engineers, scientists, researchers, designers and entrepreneurs. Employees are located throughout the world, matching the ethos of a distributed platform.

What Is Uniswap (UNI)?

An example of an automated market maker (AMM), Uniswap launched in November 2018, but has gained considerable popularity this year thanks to the DeFi phenomenon and associated surge in token trading.

Uniswap aims to keep token trading automated and completely open to anyone who holds tokens, while improving the efficiency of trading versus that on traditional exchanges.

Uniswap creates more efficiency by solving liquidity issues with automated solutions, avoiding the problems which plagued the first decentralized exchanges.

In September 2020, Uniswap went a step further by creating and awarding its own governance token, UNI, to past users of the protocol. This added both profitability potential and the ability for users to shape its future — an attractive aspect of decentralized entities.

Who Are the Founders of Uniswap?

Uniswap came about as a plan to introduce AMMs on Ethereum to a wider audience. The platform’s creator is Ethereum developer Hayden Adams.

Adams worked in various projects while finalizing Uniswap, and his work was informed directly by Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin. Buterin even ended up giving the protocol its name — it was originally known as Unipeg.

Adams has also said that the original inspiration for the Uniswap platform came from one of Buterin’s own blog posts. His original idea to focus on Ethereum came after a friend convinced him to begin researching and understanding the protocol in 2017.

What Makes Uniswap Unique?

Uniswap exists to create liquidity — and therefore trading and the value that trading provides — for the DeFi sphere.

One of the major AMMs in operation at present, the protocol functions using a formula for automated exchange — X x Y = K. Founder Hayden Adams describes himself as the inventor of the particular implementation of the formula on Uniswap.

Uniswap is not just a decentralized exchange; it attempts to solve the issues that platforms such as EtherDelta experienced with liquidity.

By automating the process of market making, the protocol inceventizes activity by limiting risk and reducing costs for all parties. The mechanism also removes identity requirements for users, and technically anyone can create a liquidity pool for any pair of tokens.

According to Uniswap, their governance token (UNI) was created in order to “officially enshrin[e] Uniswap as publicly-owned and self-sustainable infrastructure while continuing to carefully protect its indestructible and autonomous qualities.”

Uniswap V2 launched on Nov. 2, 2018, and introduced new features like ERC-20 pairs, price oracles, flash swaps and more. The latest version — Uniswap V3, launched on the mainnet on May 5, 2021. It features greater capital efficiency for liquidity providers, better execution for traders and enhanced infrastructure. Uniswap price reached an all-time high (ATH) of $44.97 leading up to the mainnet launch of V3. Since it’s launch there has been substantial interest in it’s UNI to AUD and UNI to EUR price pairs.

What Is DAI [DAI]?

The price of DAI is soft-pegged to the U.S. dollar and is collateralized by a mix of other cryptocurrencies that are deposited into smart-contract vaults every time new DAI is minted.

It is important to differentiate between Multi-Collateral DAI and Single-Collateral DAI (SAI), an earlier version of the token that could only be collateralized by a single cryptocurrency; SAI also doesn’t support the DAI Savings Rate, which allows users to earn savings by holding DAI tokens.

Multi-Collateral DAI was launched in November 2019.

Who Are the Founders of DAI?

One of the defining features of DAI is that it wasn’t created by any single person or a small group of co-founders. Instead, the development of the software that powers it and the issuance of new tokens is governed by the MakerDAO and Maker Protocol.

MakerDAO is a decentralized autonomous organization — a kind of company that runs itself in a decentralized manner via the use of smart contracts — self-enforcing agreements expressed in software code and executed on the Ethereum blockchain.

This organization is managed democratically by the holders of its Maker (MKR) governance tokens, which act similarly to a traditional company’s stock; MKR holders can vote on key decisions regarding the development of MakerDAO, Maker Protocol and DAI, with their voting power being proportionate to the amount of Maker tokens they own.

MakerDAO itself was originally founded by a Danish entrepreneur Rune Christensen in 2015. Before starting work on the Maker ecosystem, Christensen studied biochemistry and international business in Copenhagen and founded the Try China international recruiting firm.

What Makes DAI Unique?

DAI’s main advantage lies in its soft peg to the price of the U.S. dollar.

The crypto market is notorious for its volatility with even the largest, highly-liquid coins such as Bitcoin sometimes experiencing price changes (both up and down) of 10% or more within a single day. Under these circumstances, traders and investors are naturally predisposed to add safe-haven assets to their portfolios, whose stable price might help offset significant market fluctuations.

One such kind of asset are stablecoins, of which DAI is one example. These are cryptocurrencies whose price is pegged to assets with a relatively stable value — most commonly traditional fiat currencies, such as USD or EUR.

Another key advantage of DAI is the fact that it is managed not by a private company, but rather by a decentralized autonomous organization via a software protocol. As a result, all instances of issuance and burning of tokens are managed and publicly recorded by Ethereum-powered self-enforcing smart-contracts, making the entire system more transparent and less prone to corruption.

In addition, the process of developing DAI software is governed in a more democratic way — via direct voting by the regular participants of the token’s ecosystem.