Welcome to the latest installment of State of the Opera! Your one-stop shop for everything, Fantom. In this edition, we’ll discuss the return of Andre Cronje, Gitcoin Grants, and the latest governance proposal to turn Fantom into the “Youtube/Twitch of blockchain platforms.”
If you have any questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to reach out on Twitter or Discord. If you’re interested in writing an article for Blockbytes, 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) | $58.5M [-13.7%] | 0.08 |
| Spooky Swap (BOO) | $92.9M [-7.5%] | 0.13 |
| Geist Finance (GEIST) | $141.7M [+67.3%] | 0.03 |
| Liquid Driver (LQDR) | $15.9M [-1.5%] | 0.21 |
| Scream (SCREAM) | $31.5M [+170%] | 0.14 |
| Spirit Swap (SPIRIT) | $13.8M [-16.2%] | |
| Tarot (TAROT) | $20M [+26.2%] | 0.22 |
| Tomb Finance (TOMB) | $13.2M [-11.3%] | |
| Deus Finance (DEUS) | $21.9M | 0.57 |
| Reaper Farm (OATH) | $28M [+14.3%] | 0.69 |
Andre Cronje Returns
The prodigal son of Fantom has returned in one of the most memorable months of crypto history. Andre Cronje announced his return to the space earlier this month by changing his LinkedIn profile to reflect his new role as the Vice President of Memes at the Fantom Foundation. This seemingly innocuous move whipped the Fantom community into a frenzy as speculators began to theorycraft on the return of Andre and what this could mean for the network.
Cronje proved his seriousness and commitment to the community through a series of insightful Medium articles that gave readers a distinct perspective into the engineer’s mind.
‘Learn from my mistakes’ covered an itemized list of lessons learned from Cronje’s various projects and addressed the narratives that have followed him. The next two articles, ‘Fantom: Consensus practically explained’ and ‘Fantom: envisioning a zk future’ compared Lachesis (Fantom Consensus) to its Proof of Work and Proof of Stake counterparts explaining the decentralized future that Cronje has envisioned for the network. Any cursory reading of these articles can tell that Cronje is committed to building and developing the future of Fantom.
Cronje’s latest article, ‘Fantom: an inside financial peek at being a “crypto company” offered a unique look into the financial timeline of the Fantom Foundation with some truly dizzying numbers thrown around and a salute to DeFi.
Sentiment for Fantom has risen as users flooded the network following the news. The builder has since changed his Twitter bio to reflect his serious role as co-founder and architect for the Fantom Foundation. Time will tell how Cronje’s return will shape Fantom, but the outlook remains promising as he and the network continue with their proven track record of technological advancement and delivery.
Foundation Introduces First Round of Gitcoin Grant Recipients
Fantom’s partnership with Gitcoin has become the first chain to beta-test its grants protocol. Teams building on Fantom could apply for the first rounds of grants to qualify for financial support, with the Foundation matching public contributions made to successful applicants.
The matching will be done via quadratic funding, with the introductory round seeing 125,000 FTM available in matching incentives. Over 100+ applicants submitted to the Foundation for consideration, with community voting opening up on December 12th.
Users can find out more about the Gitcoin partnership here.
Fantom User Survey – The Results
The Foundation has released the results of its open survey conducted in October. The study saw over 1000 respondents, with 655 completing the survey. The information was gathered as a way for the Foundation to ascertain its user base and identify areas for improved marketing and communication initiatives.
Here is an overview of the results:
- 79% of users are in the 25-44 bracket
- 56% have been using crypto for more than two years; 64% for more than one year
- The age group for Fantom users skewed slightly older than other general surveys focused on crypto users. This indicated that Fantom users tended to be more experienced and likely were involved in the last crypto bear market between 2019 and 2020
- 62% of users who stake participate in liquid staking
- 69% of users have used a Fantom dApp at least twice a week in 2022
- As seen in the image below, Fantom users are power users when it comes to DeFi
The survey featured a comment section on how Fantom can better align with the values of the community. Respondents highlighted the below as areas for improvement:
- Added functionality to fWallet
- Transparency and clearer guidance on tech development
- A focus on educational content via Instagram and Youtube
- Better NFT tooling
Survey participants who provided a wallet address have each been sent a limited edition Fantom NFT as a thank-you.
New Governance Proposal: dApp Gas Monetization Program
Fantom’s latest governance proposal aims to implement a sustainable monetization incentive program for its builders. The dApp gas monetization program seeks to reduce Fantom’s current burn rate to redirect more network fees directly to dApps building on Fantom.
If the proposal passes, Fantom’s burn rate of 20% will reduce to 5%, with 15% redirected towards gas monetization. This gas monetization will reward high-quality dApps and encourage talented creators to continue to support the Fantom network.
Andre Cronje has weighed in on the new proposal, claiming that Step 1 of 3 for the network is to “Become the Youtube/Twitch of blockchain platforms.” The new proposal aims to emulate the revenue sharing present in both Youtube and Twitch between the platform and its top creators.
Want to learn more? Click here to dive into the details, requirements, and terms and conditions.
DeFi Snapshot
| Chain | Protocols | TVL (USD) | MCap/TVL |
| Arbitrum | 144 [+9.1%] | $1.55B [+47.6%] | |
| Avalanche (AVAX) | 274 [+1.9%] | $1.92B [+45.4%] | 2.2 |
| BNB Chain (BNB) | 508 [+3%] | $7.06B [+19.6%] | 6.7 |
| Ethereum (ETH) | 608 [+3.7%] | $39.75B [+27.4%] | 3.82 |
| Fantom (FTM) | 269 [+0.8%] | $581M [+12.3%] | 1.08 |
| Terra Classic (LUNC) | 30 [0%] | $7M [-20.5%] | 146.73 |
| Polygon (MATIC) | 342 [+3.9%] | $1.31B [+4%] | 6.19 |
| Solana (SOL) | 91 [+12.3%] | $472M [-51%] | 10.78 |
Key Metrics
Market Cap
| Metric – Market Cap (USD) | August 2022 | September 2022 | October 2022 | November 2022 |
| Bottom | $686,986,255[29th] | $571,033,712[19th] | $505,129,071[20th] | $430,636,485[22th] |
| Peak | $1,033,521,662[11th] | $700,511,879[11th] | $602,176,695[31st] | $732,610,344[6th] |
| Monthly Close | $699,420,022 | $578,616,689 | $602,176,695 | $554,752,752 |
The Andre effect was in full force after the enigmatic engineer announced his return earlier this month. The overall market sentiment was given a sliver of positivity amongst the mess that was November as speculators became hopeful once again for the future of the Fantom network.
While writing this article, Fantom sits at number 63 on CoinGecko by market capitalization, shooting up nine places from last month’s edition.
Price movement
| Metric – FTM (USD) | August 2022 | September 2022 | October 2022 | November 2022 |
| Bottom | $0.27 [29th] | $0.221 [22nd] | $0.199 [20th] | $0.169 [22th] |
| Peak | $0.41 [11th] | $0.275 [11th] | $0.237 [31st] | $0.287 [6th] |
| End of Month | $0.27 | $0.227 | $0.237 | $0.218 |
The Fantom token saw a brief resurgence following the positive news flowing from the network this month. FTM set its highest point in the last three months following their news before stabilizing at just under 22 cents.
User Engagement
| Metric | August 2022 | September 2022 | October 2022 | November 2022 |
| Avg daily unique wallets created | 2,489 | 1,620 | 3,771,421 | 15,166,917 |
| Avg daily transaction count | 798,734 | 728,457 | 642,670 | 503,109 |
| Total Distinct Addresses (End of Month) | 3,467,811 | 3,518,338 | 6,058,935 | 22,373,812 |
User engagement has been heavily skewed by the rise of unique addresses created by Xen Crypto. As mentioned in last month’s edition, the Xen encourages using bots to create addresses to mint $XEN tokens. This is the main reason behind the almost 4x increase in total distinct addresses and average daily unique wallets created.
The real gauge for network health now is the average daily transaction count, which continues to slow down to a comparatively glacial pace from the highs of earlier this year.
Top FTM Senders and Receivers
The Fantom Special Fee Contract (SFC) continues to collect FTM to distribute to stakers and delegators. Geist Finance has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity as it claims to be the only publically named address listed in the top FTM receivers this month.
Top Tokens by Transaction Count
Once again, Xen narrowly misses out on dethroning wFTM from its prestigious position.
Top Tokens by Unique Wallets
Unfortunately, three out of the five tokens this month are trash tokens. Xen dwarfs the rest of the competition as users continue to mint the token with reckless abandon.
Pulse of the Network
This section will hope to aggregate and compound 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
- Fantom just arrived on Ledger Live – Users can now send, receive and view their FTM directly through the Ledger Live App
- Morphswap has integrated Fantom – FTM users can swap their coins to other chains without risking centralized bridges or exchanges
- OKLink has integrated support for the Fantom Blockchain Explorer – Explore transactions, tokens, and more
- FTM has been integrated with Uquid Shop as a new payment method – Users can now shop for over 85M products within the Uquid Shop with FTM
- Ramp Network integrates Fantom – Ramp offers fiat-to-crypto services with crypto-to-fiat in beta testing
- Leading decentralized perpetual exchange, GMX, is going to be deployed on Fantom
- LFG! Fantom gets Coin of the Day on crypto social metrics platform, LunarCrush
Keep your eye on
- Retreeb publishes its 2023 Roadmap with lots to look forward to in the coming months
- Final Cypher is positioning itself to be the dawn of competitive FPS on Fantom
- Firebird Finance has hit $4B in total trading volume
- PaintSwap just casually surpassed 200,000 NFTs listed on the platform
- The 2022 #SpookyFiSeason Art Contest Results!
- Felix Exchange has deployed their Mobile App
FTM Podcasts and Videos
- Vertical Blocks: Episode 9 feat. Covalent – The team speaks with the co-founder of Covalent HQ to discuss his multi-chain thesis, the challenge of onboarding Web2 companies into Web3, and how they measure success
- The Future of Fantom: Discussing The Future With Fantom CMO Simone Pomposi – In this interview, Fantom CMO Simon Pomposi discusses Andre’s return, what FTM has learned from the FTX debacle, and what Fantom has planned going forward
- Nick Drakon breaks down the financial insights from Andre Cronje’s article in his highly informative video
- Stephen TCG of the DeFi Dojo talks about the Future of DeFi with Justin Bebis of the ByteMasons – Find out all the fresh alpha surrounding Reliquary and Ethos
Industry Reports
- Coinwire releases their Fantom Ecosystem Q3 2022 Report – Find out why the theme of this report is Building and Upgrading
FTM Education Community and Art
- Nick.ftm praises the virtues of the Vertical Blocks podcast and why they think it will be key for getting new eyeballs on the network in their thread here
- Friend of the team, Subli, has launched his first advent calendar to thank his followers – Join in on over $3000 in giveaways during December
- Hoeem guides you through the creativity and culture that graces our chain here
- Kickflip knocks it out of the park again in his latest Modelling DeFi article – Find out the benefits of Boosted Pools technology
- If you’re not already subscribed to Naly’s DeFiVerse, you’re missing out on some great financial insight
