Fantom’s FTM token has experienced a remarkable surge of over 190% in the past four weeks, making it the top-performing non-meme cryptocurrency among the top 100 digital assets by market value. This rally, which has seen FTM’s price soar from 40 cents to $1.16, reaching its highest level since April 2022, has notably captured the attention of investors.
One significant factor contributing to this bullish momentum is Fantom’s impending Sonic upgrade, designed to enhance transaction processing speeds on the network. Anticipation surrounding the Sonic upgrade has sparked increased interest in the cryptocurrency. The Sonic mainnet, set to replace the current Opera mainnet in the upcoming spring, has undergone successful testing, showcasing faster transaction speeds and quicker finality times.
During closed testnet trials with simulated traffic, Sonic demonstrated a theoretical throughput of up to 2,000 transactions per second (TPS) with a time to finality of just 1.1 seconds. This is a significant improvement compared to the current Opera mainnet, which operates at a throughput of only 3.2 TPS. Such enhancements in processing speeds and finality times hold promising implications for the Fantom ecosystem, particularly in decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, blockchain gaming, high-frequency applications, and the Internet of Things (IoT).
The Sonic upgrade also introduces the Fantom Virtual Machine (FVM), designed to significantly accelerate smart contract execution speeds. The FVM’s backward compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) facilitates a seamless transition for developers, allowing popular Ethereum-based decentralized applications to migrate smoothly to the Fantom network.
Despite the excitement surrounding the impending upgrade, investor interest in Fantom’s decentralized finance ecosystem has yet to see a revival. Data from DeFiLlama reveals a decrease in the number of FTM tokens locked in Fantom’s DeFi applications, dropping to 123.85 FTM, the lowest level since May 2021. Nonetheless, the overall outlook for Fantom appears optimistic, fueled by the anticipation of the transformative capabilities of the Sonic upgrade.
