Fantom’s FTM token has experienced an impressive surge of over 190% in just four weeks, making it the top-performing non-meme cryptocurrency among the top 100 digital assets by market value. This significant increase in price, from 40 cents to $1.16, marks the highest point reached since April 2022. As a result, FTM’s market capitalization has skyrocketed to $3.29 billion, positioning it as the 44th largest digital asset worldwide.
The anticipation surrounding Fantom’s upcoming Sonic upgrade is believed to have played a crucial role in the recent bull run. The Sonic upgrade aims to enhance transaction processing speeds on the network. The testnet for Sonic, which went live in October 2021, has already showcased impressive results, demonstrating a maximum theoretical throughput of 2,000 transactions per second (TPS) with a time to finality of 1.1 seconds. In contrast, the existing Opera mainnet has a significantly lower throughput of just 3.2 transactions per second.
Additionally, the Sonic upgrade introduces the Fantom Virtual Machine (FVM), designed to considerably improve smart contract execution speed. The FVM’s backward compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) makes it easy for developers to transition and allows popular Ethereum-based decentralized applications to migrate seamlessly to the Fantom network.
Market experts believe that Fantom’s Sonic upgrade opens up new possibilities for the ecosystem, particularly in areas such as decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, blockchain games, high-frequency applications, and the Internet of Things (IoT). By enhancing throughput and efficiency, Fantom enables smoother operation of DeFi platforms, richer gaming experiences, efficient handling of microtransactions, and secure IoT data exchanges.
Despite the positive outlook for Fantom’s network upgrade, investor interest in Fantom’s DeFi ecosystem has yet to be fully reignited. Data from DeFiLlama indicates a decline in the number of FTM locked in Fantom’s DeFi applications, reaching the lowest point since May 2021, with just 123.85 FTM locked.
In conclusion, Fantom’s FTM token has emerged as the leading non-meme cryptocurrency in terms of performance over the past 30 days, driven by the anticipation surrounding its upcoming Sonic upgrade. This upgrade promises to improve transaction speeds and efficiency, opening up new possibilities for various industries, although the revitalization of investor interest in Fantom’s DeFi ecosystem is still awaited.