FANTOM is declared as the world’s first DAG (a directed acyclic graph) based smart contract platform. The idea is to solve the issue of scalability and confirmation time of the existing blockchain technology. Mathematical basis is that DAG is a directed graph that has a topological ordering, a sequence of the vertices such that every edge is directed from earlier to later in the sequence. So a directed acyclic graph is used in applications connected with:
- Scheduling
- Data processing networks
- Causal structures (Bayesian network)
- Data compression
- Genealogy and version history
- Citation graphs
Targets
As it is mentioned in Whitepaper, the vision of FANTOM is to grant compatibility between all transaction bodies around the world using fast DAG technology that can be deployed at scale in the real world.
It’s declared that FANTOM can be used on a large scale in various industry verticals, such as telecommunication, finance, logistics, electric vehicle provision and others.
Anyway – the FANTOM Foundation aims to create the FANTOM platform along with a new Smart Contract-based ecosystem that can be used by all partner companies. To facilitate consistent global transactions, the FANTOM Foundation will lead the next generation of distributed ledger technologies.
And by the way – the platform aims to be open-source. And will provide various application support tools to create dApps.
Technical Overview
FANTOM’s platform uses its own technology called OPERA. The OPERA Chain is a new type of distributed infrastructure that solves for scalability issue of existing blockchain through rapid processing of blocks on a large scale. OPERA Chain processes in real time not only transaction information but also Story data in a distributed environment. It can potentially process hundreds of thousands of transactions per second with large numbers of nodes participating in the network. The FANTOM OPERA Chain will solve the scalability limitations of existing blockchain with the Lachesis Protocol. This is achieved by adopting a method where a single event block verifies the previous transaction, and transactions are verified and processed asynchronously without being approved by the miners as in prior blockchains. Thus, increased transactional load will not lead to delayed approval or bottleneck effects. It can also manage historical information on its own without being assisted by external databases such as Oracle.
The OPERA Chain uses a new consensus algorithm known as the Lachesis Consensus Algorithm (LCA), which aims to improve performance and security using DAG based distributed ledger technologies. The LCA is a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) technology that guarantees a similar level of consensus as existing blockchains. It not only prevents attacks caused by a specific node failure, but it can also process up to 300,000 transactions per second. OPERA Chain uses cryptographic techniques to enhance security when communicating between nodes and uses a functional programming language for full smart contract support.
All event blocks can be created asynchronously from nodes and each of these event blocks consists of a set of transactions (payment, remittance, smart contract, story, reputation, rewards). The new event block is connected to the parent event block, which is the most recent previous event block, and the node can generate the block at a high speed through the Lachesis protocol.
Estimation
So – what does it mean for all of us, crypto-community?
First: Cool idea. Everyone knows that scalability problem exists and it is serious. If one can solve it – it would be great and will move crypto fast ahead.
Second: Cool mathematical apparatus. Not everyone of us is mathematician. But many studied The theory of graphs. DAG seems to be interesting decision for blockchain from the point of view of scalability and fast confirmation time.
Third: Own ecosystem. This means that the project pretends to be autonomous and do not depend on third parties. It’s grant stability. No?
Fourth: Open source. That’s may be the right way for crypto – in any case E. Snowden says it is.
Tokenomiks
Ticker: FTM
Token sale: since 15 June
Token type: ERC20
Fundraising Goal (Hard cap): 39,800,000 USD
Sold on pre-sale: 6,000,000 USD
Total Tokens: 3,550,000,000
Available for Token Sale: 40% (1,270,000,000 tokens)
Whitelist: YES (since 28 May)
Know Your Customer (KYC): N/A
Сan’t participate: CHINA, USA
Accepts: ETH
Token Distribution and Capital Use
Team
Ahn Byung Ik, the CEO of FANTOM Foundation, holds a Ph.D in computer science from Yonsei University. Got President Award for his IT business. Writer at Fortune Magazine and at South Korea’s major business media outlets. In 2010 he established a food-tech platform SikSin, which has since acquired over 3.5 million downloads and 22 million monthly page views. President of the Korea Foodtech Association (90 member companies). But… – has zero blockchain experience.
The Foundation has several serious professionals. Such as:
- Bob Tucker (COO), educated as Finance Modular Programme at LBS(top Uni), Economics at University of Sydney. Experienced business/strategy manager. Worked as an Audit at KPMG Australia and Barclays Bank-both big companies.
- Sean Yun (CFO), MBA, Finance at KAIST (41th World-top Korean Uni). Rich experience as an Auditor and Manager, most notably at Industrial Bank of Korea.
- Issac Lee (CIO), General Partner at BLockWater Capital(VC). Advisor at LiveEdu (eduational ICO-running below ICO price) and Bitindia (Indian cryptocurrency exchange and wallet).
Team of developers is large enough to solve such serious probltasks as stated.
Advisors are:
- Steve Bellotti, CEO of Digital Currency Holdings. Former Managing Director at ANZ (Australian Business Bank) –and Merril Lynch between 1987–2000;
- Eddy Travia, CEO and Co-founder of Coinsilium
- And seven more top-managers.
Roadmap
Roadmap lasts for 2 years and its milestones titled as opera’s terms (Intermezzo- Seria –Buffa- Operetta- Grand OPERA. Somebody from team’s top’s is oldfashioned opera’s fan. Why not?
Partners
Investors
Conclusions
FANTOM is very impressive project with cool team, good advisors, realistic roadmap. It is accompanied with detailed Whitepaper. List of partners includes Oracle, Quantum and 9 more serious companies. There are 4 (institutional) investors. Some doubts are caused by a greater involvement of food business both in team and in advisors stuff. Meanwhile the target is – blochain in common. But – why not, if they are interested?
Token distribution and capital use is standard and realistic.
As for perspective of token growth – it is very presumable and even – credible.
