On December 27, 2019, the first iteration of the present operational network was introduced based on meticulously researched concepts, including Concurrent Public Knowledge (CPK), Lamport Time Stamps, and others. It was a remarkable accomplishment by Andre and the technical team of Fantom – the first permissionless Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG)-based protocol that considerably enhanced scalability and finality time. The operational network achieved a maximum TPS approaching 200 and finality time of under 600 milliseconds, far exceeding Ethereum’s 12 TPS and greater than 60-second finality at the time. Discover Fantom’s groundbreaking blockchain technology, Sonic, capable of processing 180 million transactions per day with sub-second finality.
The operational network expanded from zero users to become one of the most widely recognized and utilized networks, with over $10 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL) in 2022. There were growing challenges, however. During periods of immense demand, the network became congested and the user experience declined.
Fantom Sonic Achives 180 Million Transactions per day
In response, the Fantom team has been diligently working for the past two years developing our new Sonic technology, the most scalable and secure blockchain technology ever created. Sonic’s ability to process 2,000 TPS at sub-second finality represents a significant leap from the operational network’s 200 TPS, and the team is immensely proud of the product.
With Sonic’s remarkable technical capability, it’s time for Fantom to further evolve and innovate. Sonic will be utilized to create a new best-in-class shared sequencer for Layer 1 (L1) and Layer 2 (L2) chains, capable of processing over 180 million daily transactions with true, sub-second confirmation times, and serve as the foundation to relaunch Fantom as an entirely new community-centric brand. Fantom is working diligently through a variety of details and logistics that they look forward to sharing in the coming weeks and anticipate the new chain to launch in the late summer/early fall of this year.
Fantom Proposals for the New Era
The ecosystem intends to submit a governance proposal suggesting the following:
-Building Secure Bridges for a Connected Future
When the operational network first launched, the blockchain landscape was nascent, and interoperability and canonical bridges did not exist. With the blockchain’s evolution, Sonic requires a secure, trust-minimized bridge with native Ethereum access. Fantom developed a Sonic rollup implementation, a first-class participant in our validator set, to fully decentralize the bridge while utilizing our existing network security and inheriting Ethereum’s economic security. Sonic’s consensus engine is the sequencing layer, providing fast, secure, and convenient usage, while substantially minimizing fees and finality time.
-Simplifying Participation and Unlocking Liquidity
Fantom intends to simplify our participation such that Annual Percentage Rate (APR) will no longer depend on lock time but rather have a fixed 14-day unlocking period. This will unleash an over $1 billion opportunity for liquid participation tokens (LPTs), significantly increasing Decentralized Finance (DeFi) activity and total value locked (TVL). Several LPTs will be supported, ensuring network security is maintained.
-Fantom Labs Grant Program: Fueling Innovation
Fantom will continue to significantly expand and accelerate our Sonic Labs grant program for developers who build unique and valuable applications and public goods in categories including gaming, DeFi, social media, streaming, and now distributed artificial intelligence (AI).
-Rewarding Loyalty and Early Adopters
There will be an extensive rewards campaign for both the current operational network to thank existing users for their support, and for the new chain.
Future Advancements on the Fantom – Sonic Horizon
-Supersets: A Scheduled Performance Boost
When Sonic goes live, supersets will not yet be enabled; they are scheduled for a soft-fork upgrade towards the end of 2024. This will further significantly increase FVM performance.
-Parallel FVM: Exploring Unparalleled Processing Power
Chief Research Officer Professor Bernhard Scholz, an expert in virtual machines, and his team believe that adding parallelization to an upgraded Fantom Virtual Machine (FVM) may significantly boost Sonic’s performance. They will continue to explore parallelization in the next evolution of Sonic.
-ZK Execution Scaling: Balancing Efficiency and Verification
Andre will continue his research in off-chain execution with on-chain verification. Our initial proof of concepts have already shown some success with implementations using zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge (zk-SNARKs), but for now, verification cost is still more expensive than execution cost for simple transactions. This will be further expanded by including pre-compiles in the FVM.
Canonical Stablecoin: A Cornerstone of DeFi Success
For both the current operational network and the new Sonic stack, a canonical stablecoin is a vital ingredient for the success of DeFi. Fantom anticipates this to be in place in the very near future.
