If you’re active on Crypto Twitter, you may have noticed people beginning to talk about Fantom recently. Fantom is an EVM-compatible layer 1 blockchain. It is one of the main projects in the “Ethereum Killers” category.

You may even have just seen that the price was performing well and asked yourself what’s behind the move? Tracking bullish narratives in the cryptocurrency market is vital for investors looking to capitalize on emerging trends. As of right now, Fantom is an extremely hot narrative.

So, today, let’s do a real-time case study to understand what is happening with Fantom and show you how to do this for any project.

Here is an overall gist:

• Fantom’s timeline

• Learning to investigate a narrative

• Fantom ecosystem and opportunities

Fantom’s Timeline

Because of the Sonic upgrade, Fantom has suddenly become a very hot narrative. In the next section, let’s explore how to navigate and analyze emerging narratives like this to make your investment decisions.

How to Investigate a Narrative

Step #1: Monitoring Crypto Twitter and Other Crypto Platforms

Crypto Twitter and social media are crucial for spreading crypto narratives, with influencers, developers, and community members sharing updates and speculations highlighting emerging trends. Subscribing to reputable newsletters like Crypto Pragmatist can also alert investors to bullish narratives. 

Tools like LunarCrush or CryptoMood can help quantify social sentiment, offering a data-driven approach to narrative tracking.

These platforms offer insights into market sentiments and potential investment opportunities, making them indispensable for tracking real-time narrative shifts in the crypto ecosystem. In this case, we can see that Crypto Twitter has been talking a lot about Fantom.

Step #2: Identify the Narrative

The next step is recognizing the narrative. In the case of Fantom, the buzz is around its Sonic upgrade, which is expected to significantly enhance transaction speeds and ease developer migration with the new Fantom Virtual Machine (FVM). Such upgrades can lead to heightened interest and investment in a project, presenting the potential for substantial price movements.

Step #3: Research the Project Deeply

Upon identifying a bullish narrative, delve into the specifics. For Fantom, this means understanding what the Sonic upgrade entails, including its components like the FVM, Carmen Database Storage, and the optimized Lachesis Consensus Mechanism. 

This phase requires studying the project's whitepapers, community discussions, and official announcements to grasp the upgrade's potential impact on the project's ecosystem and the broader crypto market.

Step# 4: Analyze, Analyze, and Analyze Some More

Understanding the market response to the narrative is crucial. The first thing is to see the price action.

FTM’s price has jumped from $0.394 to over a dollar in one month. That’s a pretty impressive price jump. 

What about TVL? TVL or “total value locked” is the amount of liquidity locked up in DeFi apps within a network like Fantom. With ~$140 million, the TVL isn’t really that impressive. That’s number 32 among all chains.

In fact, Ethereum alone has as many as 49 protocols that currently hold more TVL than Fantom! But what about developer contribution?

The number of developers and GitHub commits is minuscule compared to its peak. In comparison, Solana currently has 32 core developers and 758 commits.

Let’s check the Artemis terminal for a few more stats.

First, let’s check the number of daily active addresses. As you can see, the number of active addresses on Fantom is around 40,000 on average. It has maintained this number since Christmas 2023.

While the DEX volumes on Fantom have increased significantly, it still pales compared to the competition. This could mean two things:

1. Fantom doesn’t have a lot of traction.

2. Fantom’s upside is higher, and we are just getting started.

Studying so many metrics allows you to conduct your own study and not just listen to the noise.

Step #5: Evaluate the Leadership and Community Response

Fantom's past challenges, including leadership issues and community setbacks, highlight the importance of strong leadership and community in sustaining a project. DeFi savant Andre Cronje (the creator of Yearn Finance) is one of the most important leaders in Fantom. 

While he is a genius, he can be temperamental. In March 2022, Cronje left the Fantom Foundation. However, in July 2023, news came out that he never left Fantom in the first place. Regardless, he is a respected builder, and sentiment towards Fantom could change based on his temperament.

Step #6: Continuous Monitoring

Bullish narratives can evolve rapidly. Keeping a continuous watch on the developments, both from the project's team and the community's response, is key. For Fantom, following the progress towards the Sonic upgrade's mainnet launch and observing the community's engagement levels are ongoing tasks.

Now that we've covered the fundamentals of investigating a new narrative, specifically focusing on Fantom, let's delve into how you can potentially profit from Fantom protocols. 

Step #7: Drawing Your Conclusions

In the last step, assimilate everything you have studied and researched to draw your conclusions.

In this case, the metrics suggest that Fantom doesn’t have as much value as its competition, and its ecosystem isn’t nearly as rich as the others. 

However, it could be a simple matter of FTM being extremely undervalued - both as an asset and an ecosystem.

Fantom Ecosystem and Opportunities

So now you’ve examined the narrative and decided you want to get involved. Let’s go through what you’ll need. Fantom boasts all the features one would expect from a thriving ecosystem. Most wallets readily support Fantom, making it as easy as adding the Fantom chain to your wallet to get started. You can use Chainlist to seamlessly add Fantom to your wallet or any other chain you wish to interact with.

Wallets

All major wallets, including Metamask, Trust, and Atomic wallets, support the Fantom blockchain. Additionally, Fantom has introduced its dedicated wallet, the Fantom PWA Wallet, designed for handling and storing FTM tokens. Leading hardware wallet manufacturers like Ledger and Trezor also support these chains, offering enhanced security. Ensure to store your Fantom tokens on a hardware wallet for added security measures.

Bridges

One of the most effective methods for potentially earning airdrops is by utilizing bridges that have received significant funding and operate without their own token. Bridges like Hop, for instance, have rewarded users for utilizing their services. 

Taking advantage of these opportunities is typically straightforward, as users often need to transfer their funds across chains anyway. So, why not use a bridge that is rumored to offer an airdrop and reap the benefits for actions you were planning to take regardless?

Bridging technology has made considerable advancements since the last bull market, becoming more cost-effective and user-friendly. With the bridges discussed in this section, users can bridge to almost any desired chain and begin engaging within minutes.

Squid Router

Squid, a cross-chain router facilitating seamless token swaps and interactions across various blockchains, has recently secured $4M in strategic funding. This funding round was led by Polychain Capital, with participation from various investors, including Nomad Capital and North Island Ventures. 

• This funding aims to support Squid's expansion in providing support for chains within the EVM and Cosmos ecosystems, as well as enhancing integrations with decentralized applications. 

• Squid has experienced rapid growth, facilitating over 500,000 cross-chain token swaps, LP deposits, and NFT purchases, amounting to over $950M in volume, serving over 200,000 users. 

• Looking ahead, Squid plans to further develop its capabilities to enable more complex transaction sequences and efficient routing of assets, while also integrating with additional interoperability networks. 

• Given its funding and popularity, the likelihood of an airdrop from Squid is high since it also has no token. So use Squid to bridge to Fantom by clicking the button below. 

Jumper

Jumper Exchange, created by LI.FI, aims to revolutionize crypto exchanges by offering a comprehensive solution to the challenges faced by users navigating multi-chain environments. LI.FI's vision is to simplify cross-chain transactions and provide users with a seamless experience. 

• Jumper Exchange aggregates liquidity from the biggest and best sources, including bridges and decentralized exchanges, into a single interface, supporting 20 chains, 30 DEXs, and 15+ bridge integrations. 

• With Jumper, users can swap, bridge, trade, or transfer tokens effortlessly, with automatic route recommendations based on factors like security, speed, cost, and clicks. 

• LI.FI Protocol, the infrastructure behind Jumper, has received substantial funding, totaling $23M, through fundraising rounds involving prominent investors like Coinbase Ventures, DragonFly Capital, and CoinFund. 

• While Jumper Exchange does not have its own token, its extensive funding and innovative approach make it a platform worth trying out, especially for potential airdrops when bridging to Fantom or other supported chains.

Bungee

Bungee, an innovative bridge aggregator built on the SocketLL infrastructure by the Socket team, revolutionizes token transfers across blockchains. 

• The project has secured $12M in funding from Seed, Pre-seed, and Strategic rounds, with the potential for additional investments. 

• Bungee has achieved impressive daily volumes exceeding $75M and has hinted at the possibility of a future airdrop. 

• Supported by prominent investors such as Coinbase Ventures, Framework, Geometry, Mark Cuban, Folius, and Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, Bungee offers bridging capabilities across multiple chains, including Ethereum, Polygon, BSC, Avalanche, Fantom, and more, with minimal gas fees. 

• While Bungee does not have its own token, its substantial backing and prospects for future development make it a promising platform, particularly for users interested in potential airdrops when bridging to Fantom or other supported chains.

It’s important to keep these bridges handy for whenever an opportunity presents itself and you need to act quickly. Whether it be Solana, Base or Fantom, you need to be prepared to move funds around like a crypto pro.

Top DEX & Apps

Now that you're familiar with the wallets and bridges used to access the Fantom ecosystem let's explore some of the protocols you can experiment with.

Taking a look at the top protocols by TVL on Fantom, we see familiar names such as Yearn Finance, but also some lesser-known protocols. While most of these platforms already have a token, the opportunity for yield farming could be beneficial.

When examining Beefy, we observe some intriguing yields reminiscent of the last bull run, with APYs reaching as high as 236%. Stake tokens here to experience yield farming, but be sure to monitor them closely.

BeethovenX also offers similar yields, although its volumes are still relatively small. However, given the early stage of development, experimenting with yield farming in the Fantom ecosystem could yield benefits in the future.

For those who want to stake their unused FTM tokens or stablecoins, consider staking your FTM tokens on a CEX such as Coinbase for a current APY of 3.33% or stake with the Fantom Foundation for an APY of 6.3%, depending on the duration of your lock-up period. For stablecoin staking, checkout the pool on Stargate Finance and Beefy Finance, which currently have APYs of 22.9% and 10%, respectively.

That's all for today, everyone! We hope you enjoyed this issue and are well prepared to research the next narrative you come across as well as understand how to bridge and have fun exploring the Fantom ecosystem!

We’ll touch base back with Fantom soon to see how the L1 Wars develop.