November AMA recap

Last week we had our first video AMA. We enjoyed it very much, and so did the community.

https://twitter.com/FantomFDN/status/1325891960079589376?s=20

For those of you who couldn't participate, here's a short recap. Make sure to watch the whole video, as we had interesting conversations about NFTs and the future of crypto in a cross-chain environment.

These were the questions:

1. What is the team doing or planning to do to support validator nodes and encourage the growth of other nodes?
2. Will keep3r be part of the Fantom ecosystem? If so, will it be included in the PWA wallet or as a stand-alone dapp?
3. Any word on Ren bridge or other bridges in general? Will the new bridge be able to migrate custom ERC20s deployed to Opera?
4. Can we have the delegation amount shown as the transaction value on the tx page rather than 0.00?
5. How will Fantom build out the economics of Fantom Finance? What will drive users to Fantom Finance to increase TVL?
6. Will the PWA wallet ever support ERC721 / ERC 1155? If it will, would there ever be a marketplace for them there?
7. What is the current roadmap prioritization (not timing)?
8. The NFT market is growing exponentially; how do you see Fantom benefitting from this growth?
9. If Fantom Finance had a sudden 10x increase in users, how would the network behave?

What is the team doing or planning to do to support validator nodes and encourage the growth of other nodes?

We encourage validators to join the network to make it as decentralized and resilient as possible.

In the future, especially with the introduction of on-chain governance, the network could adopt a couple of solutions, such as lowering the requirements to run a validator node and decreasing the total amount delegators can delegate to a single node.

Currently, the minimum requirement to run a validator node on Fantom is 3.175m FTM, and a validator node can accept up to 15 times the amount of self-delegation. Lowering both numbers would limit the node's growth, incentivizing the formation of new smaller nodes.

Another factor that is already present, yet not so evident, is that many, if not all, the current validator nodes started a one-year lock-in in September when Fluid Staking was launched. This means that in a few months, the maximum lock they can offer for new delegators will just be a few months. New validators, instead, will be able to provide longer lock-up, therefore higher rewards.

Will keep3r be part of the Fantom ecosystem? If so, will it be included in the PWA wallet or as a stand-alone dapp?

Yes. Keep3r is currently deployed and working on Ethereum, and we'll bring it to Fantom as well since it's a great tool that adds value to the ecosystem. Porting will be seamless since Fantom Opera is fully compatible with EVM.

For those who aren't familiar with it, Keep3r Network is a decentralized keeper network for projects that need external DevOps and for external teams to find keeper jobs.

Any word on Ren bridge or other bridges in general? Will the new bridge be able to migrate custom ERC20s deployed to Opera?

The bridge is the only missing piece to allow Fantom Finance to work at its full potential and bring assets from other chains over to Fantom.

We'll have multiple bridges for maximum flexibility, and each could serve a different purpose. Ren is building a bridge, AnySwap will be another bridge [live now, see announcement], and we want to have our own fully decentralized bridge.

We had many internal discussions on the topic, and we came up with a few attractive solutions that are going through a reviewing process.

Specifically, regarding Ren, they mentioned that they could have the bridge up and running around November/December. There could be multiple implementations of other chains after that, so it might take a few months.

Delivering multiple bridges will not affect the timeline of other products built on Fantom.

Can we have the delegation amount shown as the transaction value on the tx page rather than 0.00?

Yes. Fantom Finance and the upcoming sFTM (the possibility of using staked FTM to mint synths) make the calculation harder, but it will be done.

How will Fantom build out the economics of Fantom Finance? What will drive users to Fantom Finance to increase TVL?

Fantom as a layer-1 chain can be a reliable layer-2 solution for Ethereum once bridges are in place and offer a much more robust alternative to native layer-2s. Fantom as a layer-2 will allow both to port over assets from Ethereum and unload some of the work from the Ethereum network and use native tokens and synths on Opera.

It's still very early to understand the power of a truly decentralized cross-chain ecosystem, where assets and data flow seamlessly from one chain to another, depending on the purpose and use of a specific chain or a particular app on a chain. Still, we're positioning Fantom to be part of that.

Will the PWA wallet ever support ERC721 / ERC 1155? If it will, would there ever be a marketplace for them there?

We're very excited about NFTs. Since Fantom Opera is fully compatible with Ethereum, it is technically possible to support them, and it's easy to integrate them into the Fantom Wallet.

We haven't planned anything in that direction yet, as we have more pressing deadlines, but we welcome other teams who want to create NFTs and marketplaces on Fantom.

What is the current roadmap prioritization (not timing)?

Bridge, collateralized staking, fLend, fTrade. These are the priorities; later on, we'll add other tools such as Keep3r.

On the backend, the consensus improvements regarding the blockchain's speed and a new version of the SFC contract that is more geared towards the complex finance operations that we're releasing. The University of Sydney is working on the FVM (Fantom Virtual Machine), which will take some time.

The NFT market is growing exponentially; how do you see Fantom benefitting from this growth?

NFTs work quite well on Ethereum, as they don't necessarily require high transaction speeds, unlike trading financial assets. However, Fantom still has the advantage of making purchasing NFTs much cheaper and faster than on Ethereum.

However, NFTs aren't just for art. Many use cases haven't been explored yet for which Fantom's high performance and lower costs could represent an advantage over Ethereum.

We recommend checking out these tweets:

https://twitter.com/AndreCronjeTech/status/1308291667389186049

https://twitter.com/zenithyne/status/1305526142359621633?s=20

If Fantom Finance had a sudden 10x increase in users, how would the network behave?

It would behave as it does right now. Currently, the network is heavily underutilized, and we can't yet appreciate the benefits of Lachesis aBFT consensus at a scale.