The Future of Fantom/Quantum Miami Recap
Greetings Spiritors, we hope you’re all doing well. We are back with another episode of Soully Weekly. This is our 9th article since starting our weekly program 2.5 months ago, and we’re proud of the positive feedback we’ve received! So, a big thank you goes to both the Fantom Foundation and the lovely Spiritors for their support of SpiritSwap’s weekly article & news series: Soully Weekly.
This week, we’ll be discussing the intriguing topic of the Quantum Miami conference. It took place in Miami from January 25th to 27th and, as expected, did not bring any major announcements. It was simply a gathering of DeFi/Fantom enthusiasts. But what were the topics discussed and what can we look forward to from Fantom in the future? Let’s explore together.
What is Quantum Miami?
Quantum Miami was the flagship Web3 conference during Miami Blockchain Week, held from January 25th to 27th, 2023. It gathered prominent figures from the Fantom community and a few celebrity guests. The conference took place at the James L. Knight Center in Miami, providing attendees with numerous engaging panel discussions and networking opportunities. And it also talked about the future of Fantom in a very interesting, humble, and exciting way!
Recap of Quantum Miami/The Future of Fantom
Quantum Miami lived up to its expectations and provided what was promised. Andre Cronje had stated before the event that it would not feature any major announcements and would instead focus on “boring topics” such as scaling, gas subsidies, gas monetization, FVM, FTM Substrates, and Flat Storage. The choice of words to describe these topics as “boring” reflects a shift in mentality from Cronje, who no longer sought to create hype and announcements for the chain. Instead, he wanted to emphasize that Fantom would continuously progress, even if it may not sound exciting to some, Andre’s approach was clearly strategic not to overhype updates for a quick price pump but rather, respectably opting to focus on foundational updates and direction of the road map in the foreseeable future.
This approach from Fantom, focusing on long-term sustainability and constant improvement, is not surprising for those familiar with the company, especially in light of their recent announcement of a 30 year runway.
On the first day of the event, a 30-minute panel was held that was crucial in setting the tone for both the event and the future of Fantom. During this panel, Fantom declared its aims were focused around enhancing the base chain’s performance to eliminate the need for horizontal scaling solutions such as subnets or layer 2s. This is significant because there has been a noticeable shift in sentiment from layer 1s like Fantom, Solana, and Avalanche towards ETH layer 2s like Arbitrum and Optimism. Fantom believes that through proper chain building, the need for L2s can be eliminated and the sentiment can shift back in favor of itself.
Fantom adopts a calculated risk approach, deploying capital efficiently and being transparent. Their 30-year runway is the result of good planning and efficient capital use. They collaborate with projects through Gitcoin grants and prioritize quality over quantity. Fantom’s exceptional treasury management and DeFi-generated revenue means that there is no intervention from outside CeFi or VCs; this is always an admirable quality, especially for layer1 protocols like Fantom, as it means they are answerable to no one but themselves and their community. This kind of operational setup gives the Fantom team room to breathe and the freedom to make development decisions on their own accord
During the event, the attendees got a glimpse of the highly anticipated FVM. On the first day, Michael Kong unveiled its roadmap. FVM is set to be deployed on testnet in Q3, and with all going well, in quick succession a mainnet deployment in Q4 2023, respectively. The first step, Carmen, is planned for Q1 and Q2 2023, followed by Tosca in Q2 and Q3 2023. Carmen would be a brand new database, which will permit customization and allow for faster cryptographic hashes — which means that the chain performance will increase.
And Tosca will be our new virtual machine, increasing the mainnet performance by a groundbreaking 8 times and reducing the storage by 98%! Those numbers look very exciting for sure, and with these upgrade announcements Fantom looks like the place to be in 2023 and beyond.
The release of FVM is scheduled before the end of the year, and it will be fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). No changes to the development tools are planned, so developers can continue to program as usual, just with different instructions.
Andre also participated in the event virtually and discussed the eight major errors to avoid to achieve success in the blockchain industry. These mistakes include: limiting gas per block, lacking parallel processing, relying solely on on-chain solutions, utilizing PoW/PoS only, repeating past mistakes, lacking innovation, merely duplicating competitors, and, last but not least, listening to someone who only uses the terms “moon,” “pepe,” and “dump”.
To sum up, the Quantum Miami 2023 event was a resounding success. Fantom has been thriving in recent months, and this positive trend has been noticeable especially since the beginning of 2023. We are proud to be a part of the Fantom community and eagerly look forward to the future.
Onwards, and upwards together!
SpiritDAO
