Fantom’s impending Sonic upgrade, expected to boost transaction processing speeds, may have galvanized investor interest in the cryptocurrency.
Layer 1 blockchain Fantom’s native token FTM has gained over 190% in four weeks, becoming the best-performing non-meme cryptocurrency among the top 100 digital assets by market value.
FTM’s price has surged from 40 cents to $1.16, reaching the highest since April 2022, according to data tracked by CoinGecko. The token’s market capitalization has jumped to $3.29 billion, making it the 44th largest digital asset in the world.
Bitcoin (BTC), the market leader, has rallied 28% in four weeks and ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, has gained nearly 20%. The CoinDesk 20 Index, a broader market gauge, has risen by 33%.
Fantom’s impending Sonic upgrade, expected to boost transaction processing speeds, may have galvanized investor interest in the cryptocurrency. The Sonic mainnet will replace the existing mainnet Opera in the spring of this year. Sonic’s testnet went live in October last year.
The closed testnet with simulated traffic has demonstrated a maximum theoretical throughput of 2,000 transactions per second (TPS) with a time to finality of 1.1 seconds. As of writing, the Opera mainnet had a throughput of just 3.2 transactions per second.
While TPS measures the number of transactions the blockchain can process per second, time to finality indicates the time it takes for a transaction to become irreversible after it is confirmed and added to the blockchain.
Another key feature of the upgrade is the Fantom Virtual Machine (FVM), which is programmed to boost the smart contract execution speed substantially. The FVM translates the Ethereum Virtual Machine’s (EVM) code into its format, allowing developers to transition smoothly. The backward compatibility means popular Ethereum-based decentralized applications can easily migrate to Fantom.
“Fantom Sonic unlocks new possibilities for the Fantom ecosystem, particularly in decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, blockchain games, high-frequency applications, and the Internet of Things (IoT). The enhanced throughput and efficiency enable smoother operation of DeFi platforms, richer gaming experiences, efficient handling of microtransactions, and secure IoT data exchanges,” Reflexivity Research said in a report published last month.
The impending upgrade, however, is yet to revive investor interest in Fantom’s decentralized finance ecosystem.
Data tracked by DeFiLlama show the number of FTM locked in Fantom’s DeFi applications has dropped to 123.85 FTM, the lowest since May 2021.