Welcome fellow Fantom fans to the July edition of the State of the Opera. We’ve passed the halfway point in a truly historic year for crypto and the team at Lrn.Fi is glad to have you here for the latest news within the ecosystem. In this edition, we’ll discuss recent retirements, the Reaper Farm exploit, the future for the Fantom Foundation, and some new improvements from Fantom native protocols.
As always, please feel free to reach out on Twitter or Discord for any reason (we just like hearing from you!). We are constantly on the lookout for new Lrn.Fi contributors, so if you’re interested, send me a message on Twitter @Brickfrog_0 or find me on the Byte Mason discord.
State of the Opera
Protocol | TVL on FTM Network (USD) | MCap/TVL |
Beethoven X (BEETS) | $67.09M [4%] | 0.10 |
Spooky Swap (BOO) | $143.71M [25%] | 0.20 |
Geist Finance (GEIST) | $54.34M [17%] | 0.04 |
Liquid Driver (LQDR) | $32.17M [20.5%] | 0.16 |
Scream (SCREAM) | $2.69M [-53.6%] | 0.31 |
Spirit Swap (SPIRIT) | $34.23M [8.5%] | 0.16 |
Tarot (TAROT) | $20.56M [-2%] | 0.12 |
Tomb Finance (TOMB) | $48.88M [18.5%] | 0.77 |
Solidly (SOLID) | $4.4M [-12%] | |
Reaper Farm (OATH) | $16.7M [18%] | 0.53 |
Revenant Retires
Revenant Labs recently announced that they would no longer develop the Singularity and Creditum projects. The development team cited an increased regulatory risk for developers from the US government as one of the main reasons for ceasing production.
This decision was informed by a recent subpoena by the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against Rari Capital. Rari Capital has been exploited three times in the recent past, with their latest hack resulting in the loss of $80 million US dollars. The following legal action and the suspending of their Coinbase account conveyed the risk to Revenant Labs that “the US government is willing to put the blame of DeFi exploits on the devs, even if the project is considered a DAO.”
The team expressed their concern towards their Singularity project, stating, “given the nature of Singularity’s novelty and price oracle reliance, we are highly susceptible to an exploit.” They also expressed hesitancy to continue development until “US regulations become more clear.”
Revenant Labs will continue to oversee the repayment of all Creditum loans through weekly increases of interest rates. Two parties expressed interest in taking over the development of Singularity, and so the team with Revenant Labs put the decision up to a governance vote. FieryDev won the vote and will be leading further development. See their statement here. Further details can be found on their Medium post here.
Reaper Farm Multi Strats Exploited: A Post Mortem and a Path Forward
An attacker exploited Reaper Farm\’s multi-strategy Optimism crypts for approximately 1.7 million dollars on August 1. Only multi-strategy crypts were affected, and all other crypts remain safe. Deposits into the affected crypts have been suspended until the issue has been addressed, pending a full external audit.
The hacker exploited an incorrect implementation of the ERC-4626 interface and was able to withdraw user funds into their account. The ByteMasons were able to save approximately 10% of user funds by white-hatting their contracts on the Optimism network and have already begun redistributing those assets to those affected. A detailed description of the sequence of events and an outline of critical factors that led to the exploit are detailed in this Google document ‘Multi-Strategy Vault Post-Mortem.’.
The ByteMason team is committed to the security of its offerings and open communication with its users. ByteMason Tesseract wrote a technical breakdown report of the security process failures leading to the 8/1/2022 exploit and is available here. Justin Bebis and his team were quick to publish an Exploit Recovery Plan that established their priorities as follows:
- Ensure users are repaid in full
- Ensure users are repaid quickly
- Ensure our company is able to survive and thrive
The document outlines that the team will raise funds by selling vested $OATH tokens from the ByteMason treasury. Those interested in the sale are encouraged to reach out through the details provided in the recovery plan. This initiative, coupled with existing treasury assets, will be used to compensate users in a timely manner fully.
Justin Bebis and the team are working around the clock to deliver an amenable solution to the exploit. Please do not hesitate to contact any team member if you have any questions, comments, or concerns.
Fantom Foundation and Mapleblock Capital Partnership

The Fantom Foundation and Mapleblock Capital have partnered to support projects building on the Fantom blockchain. The venture capital firm released a statement that outlined the new partnership and its aim to provide “a significant funding boost to the Fantom ecosystem, setting the stage for broader adoption for the Fantom community.”
Mapleblock Capital is a web3-focused early-stage venture capital fund with a location-agnostic investments approach. The team has backed over 150+ web3 companies over a wide range of digital asset fields. Their recent investments include LimeWire, Maraverse, Neptune Mutual, Router Protocol, Bitscrunch, and many other undisclosed investments across the sub-domains of web3. CEO of the Fantom Foundation, Michael Kong, sat down with Mapleblock Director of Business Development Samuel Harcourt in a recent Twitter AMA to discuss the new partnership and the future of the Fantom ecosystem.
Ecosystem Support Vault Proposal Passes

Fantom users have voted yes on the proposed Ecosystem Support Vault. The vault will be supported by one-third of the current 30% burn rate from transaction fees which will be used as an alternative avenue for funding projects, ideas, and creations on the Fantom Opera network.
Validators and stakers will vote on all proposals regarding the use of ecosystem funds through the existing voting mechanism via fWallet. The Fantom Foundation is now taking submissions for projects or users seeking funding. Those that wish to submit proposals are advised to do so within the Fantom forum to provide details and establish a place for community feedback. To pass, proposals require a 55% turnout and a 55% agreement rate.
PaintSwap V3 is here!

The popular Fantom native NFT marketplace PaintSwap has upgraded to V3. The project released a Youtube video highlighting the newest features produced by their newest member, Chronicdispositions. Several new quality of life features have been added to the protocol, including
- NFT Vaults – Each user can generate their own vault allowing them to hold NFTs and fNFTs in a custodial state
- No marketplace listing fees for verified collections
- Flash auctions – Like normal auctions but faster, between five and thirty minutes
- An enhanced offer system – Users can now make an offer on any NFT even if the NFT is not listed for sale
- And many many more new improvements
Bulk support is one of the new major features allowing various functions to be performed in one transaction. Users can purchase multiple NFTs in one transaction by adding them to the new Shopping Cart feature. Bulk offers allow users to make multiple offers on NFTs and specify the price for each in one batch. Artists can now list multiple NFTs (up to 15 at a time) with different prices, durations, types, and more in a single transaction. Check out their detailed blog post for more details on the transformative upgrades.
PaintSwap’s token $BRUSH is now available for deposit and trading on Felix Exchange and marks the first listing of the token on a centralized exchange.
Beethoven X Protocol Analytics and 2022 Report

Beethoven X has released its Monthly, Quarterly, and Half Year Performance reports. The post went into great detail, describing the metrics for success for the promising protocol and the challenges it has faced in the last six months. This level of self-reporting acts as a golden standard for users and developers alike, offering complete transparency and valuable insight into the quantitative aspects of the protocol.
The report highlighted some of the milestones that the team has accomplished in the last six months including:
- The launch of Beethoven X on Optimism, powered by Balancer
- $11 million in swap fees for the first half of 2022
- Over $7.2 billion in traded volume for the first half of 2022
- $100k distributed to fBeets holders during Q2
- Six governance proposals passed in Q2
In another step towards greater transparency, the Beethoven X team also released a tool to help users visualize the protocol performance over various statistics. The reporting tool is available here and allows users to check a wide range of protocol statistics such as swap fees generated for each month, monthly TVL, and volume traded. Data-driven users can also filter their search by pool name and track their historical trends over the history of the Beethoven X timeline.
Want to find out more about how this protocol operates? Check out our deep dive in the Beethoven X protocol here.
DeFi Snapshot
Chain | Protocols | TVL (USD) | MCap/TVL |
Avalanche (AVAX) | 239 [+5.75%] | $2.44B [-10.62%] | 2.62 |
BNB Chain (BNB) | 434 [+4.83%] | $5.47B [-14.12%] | 8.26 |
Ethereum (ETH) | 526 [+3.14%] | $39B [-18.75%] | 4.86 |
Fantom (FTM) | 253 [+2.42%] | $669.6M [-22.22%] | 1.22 |
Terra Classic (LUNC) | 30 [-3.22%] | $10.42M [-29.54%] | |
Polygon (MATIC) | 279 [+3.33%] | $1.67B [+4.37%] | 3.84 |
Solana (SOL) | 73 [0%] | $2.04B [-24.16%] | 6.86 |
Outside the Opera
Registration has opened for Avalanche Hacks Summer 2022. The hackathon aims to provide a space for white hat hackers to solve problems in DeFi and GameFi within the Avalanche ecosystem. The prize pool consists of USD 50K (in $AVAX) and will run from the 25th of July when registration opens until September 2022. Details can be found on their Medium post here.
Avalanche’s Ava Labs has teamed up with FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried to raise funds for a web3-focused production hub called Trustless Media. The investment round raised $3.25 million to support the ‘NFT community-owned media company’ and plans to launch “NFTV shows.” These NFTV shows will allow the content of the shows to be owned by community members who have the applicable NFT.
The Avalanche Blockchain Explorer has recently received a new update to expand support for Avalanche Subnets. Ava Labs has upgraded the existing Home Page and Navigation and provided users with more Subnet statistics and validator information. The team behind Avalanche has also announced a partnership with Amberdata.io. The Avalanche network will now be supported by the digital asset data and analytics firm providing powerful real-time insight to institutional investors.

BNB Chain has been busy building and building. The chain recently released DappBay, a dApp aggregator platform with built-in anti-scam alerts. The dApp hub utilizes a contract risk scanning tool called Red Alarm, which identifies potential high-risk projects to help protect users and their investments. For more information on DappBay, check out this link to the BNB chain blog detailing the features of this new project.
Music mania has struck the BNB chain. The BNB chain community has announced ‘Music Mania on BNB Chain,’ a campaign with a $50K (in BUSD) prize pool and 4,000 music NFTs designed to introduce users to an ‘exciting new phase for music’. Users will be able to learn, create and own their very own music NFTs as a result of participation. This comes after the BNB chain blog released an article titled ‘Music NFTs Offer Industry Necessary Alternative’ detailing the challenges the music industry faces and how NFT technology can change the music business landscape.
Continuing with their trend of finding novel uses for NFT technology, a popular Italian Football club, S.S Lazio, announced their new NFT ticketing solution in conjunction with Binance. Users can utilize digital tickets that will give them exclusive benefits such as discounted prices at select club stores, Fan token giveaways, and access to Lazio merchandise. Details can be found on their blog post here.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has filed a defamation suit against a Bloomberg subsidiary (Modern Media CL). The issue stemmed from a translated article that portrayed Zhao as the head of a ‘Ponzi scheme.’ Zhao has expressed his concerns and has publicly asked for the article to be retracted and a restraining order on the defendants to prevent them from tarnishing his name further.
The Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC) was held this month. EthCC is the largest annual European Ethereum event and features a wide variety of speakers (all available here), including a 45-minute presentation from Vitalik Buterin. Vitalik discussed his long-term horizon roadmap for Ethereum and the ‘need to keep an open mind’ in regards to the future of the protocol.
Vitalik has spoken out against transferable governance tokens. The Ethereum founder has warned that “those who most want to rule people are those least suited to do it,” referring to those who support DAOs run by transferable governance tokens. The heavily opinionated developer also predicted that the Metaverse would be built, but those being created by existing corporations aren’t going anywhere. Vitalik would go on to say that anything Facebook makes now will misfire.
The Ethereum mainnet is just one testnet merger away from officially transitioning to a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain. Lead Ethereum developer Tim Beiko announced the ‘Goerli’ testnet transition details of the ‘Goerli’ testnet transition. The transition to PoS began in December 2020, starting Phase 0 of the three-phase process. Phase 1 is the current phase and was initially slated to be completed in 2021. However, due to numerous delays, new estimates expect the end of phase 1 to be completed by the end of September. The final phase of the transition is expected to be completed by late 2023.
The lawsuits continue to pile on for Terra Classic and its founder, Do Kwon. Braga Eagel and Squire P.C, a US-based stockholders rights law firm, has announced a class action lawsuit against Terraform Labs, CEO Do Kwon, and crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC). This comes after the founders of 3AC resurfaced and claimed, in a recent interview with Bloomberg, that their relationship with Do Kwon led them to overlook certain red flags about the firm.
Officials from the US and South Korea have met to discuss the Terra collapse and the subsequent investigation. Several local cryptocurrency exchanges have been raided in South Korea in conjunction with the ongoing investigation. Investigators have seized transactional records and other valuable material that pertains to the demise of Terraform’s TerraUSD and LUNA. Prosecutors in South Korea have also discovered an alleged Terraform Labs subsidiary, known as FLEXE Corporation, that is believed to have been used to facilitate the movement of money from abroad to Terra associates.
European cryptocurrency investment firm CoinShares revealed that the firm “experienced a one-off loss of £17.7 million following the de-pegging of Terra Luna”. The investment firm explained in their Q2 2022 results that the financial impact of the Terra incident had a material effect on their profitability for the quarter.
Polygon has welcomed over 48 Terra projects and their developers to the ecosystem. CEO of Polygon Studios, Ryan Wyatt, expressed his commitment to providing support and resources to help the ex-Terra developers migrate to the Polygon network. 90 NFT collections have been salvaged by Ark*One, a project designed by the OnePlanet team to rescue Terra’s NFT ecosystem and aid them in migrating to the Polygon network.
According to the Polygon team, Polygon zkEVM is the next giant leap for Ethereum. The zero-knowledge (ZK) tech is a promising solution to Ethereum\’s scalability issues. The team released the news in a blog post detailing the next steps for the project. Polygon will release a public testnet for developers to test the new technology and has provided a Github link to its open-source code.

Reddit will launch a new collectible avatar marketplace using NFT technology on the Polygon blockchain. These avatars are limited edition avatars made by independent artists in partnership with Reddit. These collectibles are backed by blockchain technology, giving purchasers rights (a license) to use the art on and off the platform. Users will not need cryptocurrencies to purchase the avatars; each will have a fixed price.
Disney has selected Polygon to participate in their 2022 Accelerator Program. The platform is one of six projects to be accepted in the program, which is focused this year on augmented reality (AR) NFTs and artificial intelligence. Participants will reportedly be provided additional investment capital and guidance from Disney’s leadership team.
Co-Founder of Solana Labs, Anatoly Yakovenko, is confident that the launch of their new mobile phone, ‘Saga,’ could lead to an explosion of Solana users. This coincides with the opening of the world’s first permanent physical retail, educational, and community space dedicated to Web3, titled Solana Spaces. This new venture aims to set up retail venues to provide an educational experience for people interested in the Solana blockchain and web3.
LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman is set to launch his NFT collection on Magic Eden, the leading NFT marketplace on Solana. Hoffman has been experimenting with NFTs created with the assistance of an OpenAI image-producing platform called Dall-E. The platform is known to produce realistic artworks born out of language/text descriptions. Hoffman plans to donate half of the auction proceeds to nonprofit causes, while the other half will go to his creative team. If any NFT fails to fetch a price or remains unsold, it will be permanently deleted or burnt from his collection forever.
A Solana investor has filed a class action lawsuit against major stakeholders in the Solana network. The plaintiff claims that the defendants marketed supposedly unregistered securities and offered the SOL cryptocurrency as securities without legally registering them. The lawsuit characterized SOL as a highly centralized cryptocurrency that favored its insiders at the expense of regular investors.
Key Metrics
Market Cap
Metric – Market Cap (USD) | April 2022 | May 2022 | June 2022 | July 2022 |
Bottom | $ 2,117,706,124 [30th] | $ 751,925,839[13th] | $558,599,166[19th] | $606,862,950[13th] |
Peak | $ 4,093,975,738[4th] | $ 2,183,045,913[5th] | $1,033,001,240[1st] | $919,526,803[25th] |
Monthly Close | $ 2,117,706,124 | $ 1,057,948,615 | $660,373,034 | $850,141,151 |
Fantom fans noticed a minor rally this month as market capitalization shows its first sign of positive growth. The crypto market, in general, has shown signs of life, with BTC and ETH showing growth leading to other L1s enjoying modest gains. FTM has yet to breach the $1 billion mark but was remarkably close towards the end of July. While writing this article, Fantom sits at number 63 on CoinGecko by market capitalization and is slowly climbing back to the top 50 projects.
Price Movement
Metric – FTM (USD) | April 2022 | May 2022 | June 2022 | July 2022 |
Bottom | $0.68 [30th] | $ 0.29 [12th] | $0.22 [19th] | $0.24 [13th] |
Peak | $1.62 [4th] | $ 0.86 [5th] | $0.40 [1st] | $0.36 [25th] |
End of Month | $0.68 | $0.40 | $0.25 | $0.33 |
The price of the Fantom token has stabilized, having spent most of this month around the $0.29 to $0.33 range. This tighter range from previous months indicates that an appropriate token valuation has been found for the present and near future.
User Engagement
Metric | April 2022 | May 2022 | June 2022 | July 2022 |
Avg daily unique wallets created | 9,534 | 6,497 | 3,858 | 3,094 |
Avg daily transaction count | 748,432 | 864,685 | 903,497 | 880,106 |
Total Distinct Addresses (End of Month) | 2,953,401 | 3,172,282 | 3,288,008 | 3,386,731 |
Crypto users are still showing signs of hibernation as crypto winter continues. This month marks the lowest average daily unique wallets created since the inception of the State of the Opera. However, the average daily transaction count shows signs of life within the ecosystem as Fantom users continue to utilize the network. The total distinct addresses within the Opera network continue to grow steadily, with just under 100,000 new addresses detected this month.
Top FTM Senders and Receivers

Once again, SpookySwap is the only recognizable Fantom protocol within the Top FTM receivers for the closing week of this month. Fantom: SFC makes its debut in this section. The Fantom Special Fee Contract (SFC) maintains a list of validation stakers and delegators. It is responsible for distributing rewards to stakers and delegators alike and will be used to distribute the new Ecosystem Support vault.
Top Tokens by Transaction Count

The POWER team remains in the top tokens by transaction count. The protocol released PowerSign and POWERv2 to their ecosystem, spurring increased action from users.
NFTWorld and NFTWs continue to plague Fantom wallets, so I decided to delve deeper into FTMscan. First, an advanced lesson in using a blockchain explorer. If you have the token contract, you can track all transactions of the said token and find out the top holders. If you find a token where 99.43% of the total supply is held by one address, you’re most likely looking at a nefarious project.

If you check the transfers of the NFTW token, you’ll notice that the primary bag holder address sends out one NFTW token to FTM wallets every few seconds, which would explain the high transaction count. The NFTWs token also shares a similar story, with one address sending out the token to other Fantom addresses periodically.
Top Tokens by Unique Wallets

As always, USDC and WFTM reign supreme. POWER continues to show popularity within the ecosystem, and thousands of wallets receive unwanted NFTW and NFTWs tokens. Just a friendly reminder to not interact with these tokens or any tokens you are unfamiliar with. FTMScan does offer a Token Ignore List for those logged in with an FTMScan account.
Pulse of the Network
This section will hope to aggregate and compound on your own interest within the FTM network space. If you’re looking for some research to claim as your own or just the headlines for all the latest news and gossip, this is the Pulse of the Network, the information you don’t want to miss out on.
FTM Ecosystem Headlines
The Fantom Foundation releases a research report regarding Client Performance – One of the first pieces co-authored by new Cheif Research Officer Professor Bernhard Scholz
LlamaPay arrives on Fantom – DeFiLlama’s LlamaPay allows Fantom ecosystem protocols the ability to automate payroll processes and incorporate real-time payment streams
Dedaub announces partnership with Fantom – The blockchain security firm will bring smart contract explorer Contract-library and Watchdog, a smart contract security analyzer to Fantom\’s mainnet
FTM listed on WhiteBIT – FTM token listed on one of Europe\’s largest exchange
The Fantom Foundation interviews Grainpa of The Granary for the inside scoop in their Ecosystem Spotlight
fWallet receives performance update – Mobile optimizations, Improved web + mobile interface, and minor bugs fixed
Fantom-sponsored Formula 1 driver Pierre Gasly places 12th in the 2022 French Grand Prix
Fantom celebrates over 7,300 nodes across 60+ countries – An impressive achievement (Note: this includes validator nodes + RPC nodes + read-only nodes)
Exodus wallet now supports FTM – The popular self-custodial wallet now supports FTM in their latest update
The Piece announces partnership with Fantom – EU-based NFT marketplace will offer fractionalized blue-chip NFTs for people to invest in. For the first time, users will be able to own pieces of huge collections such as Bored Ape, CryptoPunk, and many more
Keep your eye on
SpookySwap announces Farm V2 Migration – Spookyswap has now made it possible for other projects to add incentives from their own treasuries on top of BOO rewards (or independent of them)
Shadow Farms: The Ultimate Maximization Layer of SpiritSwap V2 – Liquid Driver unveils the longly awaited Shadow Farms and how they integrate with the upcoming SpiritSwap V2 release
Liquid Driver proposes the creation of a cross-chain fund – LQDR holders can vote to support the protocol\’s potential cross chain expansion
SpiritSwap introduces DAO proposal to launch V2 – Voters are able to decide on how emissions will be handled for V2
The Granary celebrates $1 million in TVL on the Optimism chain with a giveaway
The ByteMasons are looking for a junior front-end developer – Message 0xBebis for the details
Deus Finance announces the launch of DEUS v3 testnet – Users can now interact and trade on the testnet to test functionality and have a say on DEUS V3
Felix Exchange now allows for fUSDC and fUSDT deposits for trading on the CEX
Revest Finance introduces Resonate – Using Resonate, DAOs can trade time for money, offering up-front payouts on yield in exchange for the rights to interest on locked and staked tokens
FTM Podcasts and Videos
The Fantom Unchained rap! – Worth Less DeFi drops fat bars about some Fantom homies
Fantom CEO Micahel Kong talks Macro, Inflation, Politics, Fantom, and more on the CoinJournal Podcast
Stader Labs and Michael Kong discuss the recent ecosystem support governance proposal + building in a less than ideal market in an AMA discussion on Twitter
Spooky Swap and Qi Dao discuss the future of FTM in this Twitter AMA
DollarCostCrypto interviews Justin Bebis – The two discuss developers, development, the future of OATH and how to get involved
Check out the SpiritSwap Fireside Chat #8 – This installment of the educational series talks about Macroeconomics and how they impact the crypto market
DeFi Sparks with Nick Drakon Episode 4 – The man himself talks with Chad Barraford, technical lead for Thorchain
Fantom Unchained Episode 46 – The team at FTM alerts discuss the new Mapleblock Capital partnership, Revenant Labs shutting down and cross-chain action on Optimism
Industry Reports
Messari releases Q2 reports on Harmony, Solana, BNB Chain, Avalanche, and more
Glassnode: The Week On-Chain – The week 31 report discusses BTC and the rest of the digital market\’s response to the Federal reserve. What does this signal mean?
CoinGecko releases Q2 2022 Cryptocurrency Report – Find out the Q2 crypto highlights from the largest independent cryptocurrency data aggregator
The Mozilla Foundation released their Internet Health Report for 2022 – The team dig deep into the critical topic of AI and machine learning – Could AI disrupt the crypto space?
FTM Education Community and Art
Crypto Clay reflects on the future of FTM, what’s working and what are the gaps here
Subli goes deep into Synthetix – This Twitter thread is a great guide discussing the fundamentals and financial figures of this DeFi project
Naly explains Automated Market Makers (AMMs) and their role in the DeFi in this amazing Twitter thread
Worldofumans announces Ancestral Uman avatars in the Slothtopian Metaverse
Help 0xOreo conduct some DeFi market research in their survey
FantomIntern publishes his data-driven findings on the Fantom Foundation in this great Twitter thread
Nick.ftm introduces Chief Research Officer Bernhard Scholz in this Twitter thread – who is the man behind the research team?