About Fantom (FTM)
Fantom is a scalable blockchain project popular with Decentralized Finance (DeFi) users, enterprise applications, and EVM developers. Fantom's mainnet, Fantom Opera, is open-source and fully permissionless and uses an Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance (aBFT) consensus mechanism called Lachesis. This means the network's nodes reach consensus independently without having to exchange finalized blocks. For users, transactions are confirmed and finalized typically within a few seconds.
The network's native token, FTM, has three primary uses cases:
1. To pay network fees on Fantom Opera when making transactions or interacting with smart contracts.
2. To stake and become a validator. Faster nodes that can confirm transactions quicker will receive more rewards.
3. To use in the blockchain's governance mechanism, including voting on proposals.
Fantom has achieved popularity due to its extremely small transaction fees and speed. This makes it more suitable for DApp use than slower, more expensive blockchains. Yield farming, for example, can produce higher returns on Fantom, as yield can be compounded quicker with cheaper fees. The blockchain is also Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible, meaning developers can easily port their smart contracts and projects from Ethereum to Fantom Opera.