Fantom is described by the Fantom Foundation as "a high-performance, scalable, and secure smart-contract platform" with separate components. The basis is the Fantom Opera blockchain. It's an open source directed acyclic graph network that works with the Ethereum Virtual Machine to run current smart contracts and develop new ones that communicate with Ethereum contracts.

Lachesis, a leaderless Proof of Stake system that uses a bespoke asynchronous byzantine fault-tolerant consensus method, validates Fantom transactions. Validations using ABFT are faster and less costly than those using Proof of Work or traditional Proof of Stake systems. ABFT systems complete transactions in seconds rather than minutes. Every Fantom-powered dApp has its own blockchain network. Custom coins, economies, and governance rules are possible on these blockchains. They are all supported by the Lachesis consensus mechanism and may communicate with dApps operating on multiple Fantom blockchain networks. Therefore, Fantom refers to their platform as a network of networks.

History

In June 2018, Fantom's FTM initial coin offering (ICO) took place. Fantom raised 369.65 million USD by selling 40% of the entire supply of 3.175 billion tokens.

Ahn Byung Ik, a South Korean computer scientist, launched Fantom in 2018. Before creating Fantom, Ahn was president of the Korea Foodtech Association and founded SikSin, a popular Yelp-like platform. In 2019, Ahn departed Fantom. Fantom has been led by the Fantom Foundation, a Cayman Islands corporation, since February 2019. The Fantom Foundation is a group of 28 engineers, scientists, researchers, designers, and business owners.

How does it work

The components of Fantom are modules that may be joined together. All of the platform's components have standalone utility as well as integration linkages that allow them to be combined into low-cost applications on the Fantom smart contract platform. One way to think about the Fantom platform is as a full-service ledger for dApps. Every dApp has a user interface, some sort of database, and custom code to conduct computations and other activities. Every dApp also benefits from a trustworthy, distributed, decentralized ledger for validating and recording transactions. Fantom delivers the ledger - not only a blockchain and an API, but a whole suite of utilities and tools with an easy-to-use interface for developers to construct dApps.

Traditional blockchain developers confront the blockchain trilemma, which asks them to balance transaction speed, security, and decentralization. Blockchains built on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other popular platforms can maximize one or two of these characteristics, but not all three. Fantom claims that its ABFT consensus system offers complete security and decentralization while allowing for substantially faster transaction speeds and reduced costs. Simple FTM transactions take roughly one second to complete and cost only 0.0000001 USD.

Total supply and circulation

The total number of FTM coins available is limited to 3.175 billion. There are presently 2,541,152,731 tokens in circulation. During the ICO, Fantom made 40% of the entire token supply accessible for purchase. The remainder is set aside for market development (30%), advisers and contributors (15%), and Fantom project team members and founders (15%).