Fantom’s native token FTM has emerged as the top-performing non-meme cryptocurrency among the top 100 digital assets by market value over the last month, recording a staggering surge of over 190%. This impressive rally has propelled the token’s price from 40 cents to $1.16, marking its highest value since April 2022 and pushing its market capitalization to $3.29 billion. This places FTM as the 44th largest digital asset globally.
Sonic Upgrade Fuels Investor Interest
The significant investor interest in FTM can be attributed to the anticipation surrounding Fantom’s upcoming Sonic upgrade, expected to significantly enhance transaction processing speeds. The Sonic mainnet, set to replace the existing Opera mainnet in the spring, has already shown promising results in its testnet phase, which began in October last year.
Breakthrough Performance in Testnet
The closed testnet, simulating traffic, demonstrated a maximum theoretical throughput of 2,000 transactions per second (TPS) with a remarkably low time to finality of 1.1 seconds. This is a substantial improvement over the Opera mainnet’s current throughput of just 3.2 TPS. The upgrade’s standout feature, the Fantom Virtual Machine (FVM), aims to drastically increase smart contract execution speed by translating Ethereum Virtual Machine’s (EVM) code into its format, ensuring smooth transitions for developers and easy migration for Ethereum-based decentralized applications.
Unlocking New Possibilities for the Fantom Ecosystem
The Sonic upgrade is expected to unlock new potential for the Fantom ecosystem, especially in decentralized finance (DeFi), blockchain gaming, high-frequency applications, and the Internet of Things (IoT). According to Reflexivity Research, the enhanced throughput and efficiency will facilitate smoother operation of DeFi platforms, enrich gaming experiences, efficiently handle microtransactions, and ensure secure IoT data exchanges.
Despite the upgrade’s promising features and the token’s recent performance, it has yet to significantly revive investor interest in Fantom’s DeFi ecosystem. Nonetheless, the anticipation surrounding the Sonic upgrade indicates a positive outlook for Fantom’s future capabilities and its potential to attract more projects and users to its platform.
