We held an AMA with Fantom in our public Telegram channel on May 9th.

Fantom is the world’s first DAG based smart contract platform that solves the scalability issues of existing public distributed ledger technology. The platform distinguishes itself from the traditional block ledger-based storage infrastructure by employing an improved version of existing DAG-based protocols.

The Fantom platform adopts a new protocol known as Lachesis Protocol to maintain consensus. Applications built on top of the Fantom OPERA Chain enjoy instant transactions and near zero transaction costs for all users.

AMA was joined by Fantom’s management including technical advisor Andre Cronje

*This AMA has been edited for clarity.

Daku

Thanks to team and everyone here for this AMA session. We will leave the floor open for questions.

Michael Chen

Thanks for the warm welcome. Glad to be here!

Daku

Before we get too deep into the Fantom , can you outline some specific use cases for Fantom? Why use Fantom over any other Blockchain or DAG?

Michael Kong

Fantom is working on achieving consensus faster than “gossiping about gossip” in the average case. Right now it works well for simple transactions (i.e updating account balances) so could be used for fast, simple payments. It has also integrated with the EVM and LLVM so people can write and deploy turing-complete smart contracts across several languages.

User

Bitmax referred to Fantom as a partner. What did they mean by that?

Michael Chen

We maintain a great relationship with Bitmax since our initial listing there. They’ve been extremely helpful in the listing and also the marketing after it with PR releases and pushing the Fantom name to the rest of Asia.

Since then, we’ve been happy to help them do due diligence occasionally, and we’ve recommended them good projects that can add significant value to the wider ecosystem.

They’ve been awesome to us btw, they scrapped the listing fee for us so they hold a special place with us.

Daku

How soon would we see Fantom token usage in Fantom eco-system which includes node rewards etc. Are we on track for a schedule on mainnet?

Michael Kong/Michael Chen

Yes, We are on track. We’ve solved a big issue with consensus, but further testing is required so more likely early Q3 at this point in time. Node rewards — proof of stake will start upon the mainnet launch which is still scheduled for Q3 2019.

User

What is the ROI for validator nodes ?

Michael Chen/Michael Kong

15% annualized return for validator nodes. Minimum stake for those validator nodes is 3.175 million tokens. Assuming 70% of all circulating tokens are staked (which is roughly how many are baking in Tezos)

User

Do you have a statement in regards to the FUDD from crypto medication ?

Michael Chen

A lot of this is based on rumors, which are based on other rumors, which are based on misinformation. I’d love to dissect any concerns you may have question by question, topic per topic.We as a foundation don’t think it is responsible to target individuals or groups in regards to the spreading of misinformation. What I can say, is that a lot of misinformation has been spread, but we won’t blame or point fingers.

User

Can you give more details on the partnerships in Dubai which Andre attended?

Michael Kong

We have a big partnership soon to be announced with a major player in the Dubai space.

User

Any exchanges to come this month if so how many have been applied for?

Michael Kong/Michael Chen

Working on exchanges more details TBA. We can say that we are definitely working on exchanges, we’re not planning to give any timelines on whether we have anything this day, week, or month though ;).

Else we’re going to play the elimination game by crossing out exchanges and timelines to find out about NDA stuff haha!

User

What can we expect from Fantom within the next 4 weeks?

Michael Kong

New technical paper that addresses prior consensus voting issues, continued Github development, Dubai announcements.

Daku

Is Lachesis protocol is developed by Fantom foundation / or written by core team members ?

Michael Kong

Developed by Fantom Foundation. Key people currently working on it are offscale.io, sfxdx.com, Peter Badenhorst, Brian Acton, Anton Neil, Quan Nguyen.

User

Will the team release a document based on how to set up the validator nodes ?

Michael Kong

Yes

User

When will we hear more about existing partnership development e.g. Smart city Korea ?

Michael Chen

You’ll hear more before mainnet (probably more re smart city Dubai, moreso than Korea). When I see a green light I’ll update you guys first ;).

User

When will we hear more about existing partnership development e.g. Smart city Korea ?

Michael Chen

You’ll hear more before mainnet (probably more re smart city Dubai, moreso than Korea). When I see a green light I’ll update you guys first ;).

User

How are progressing on developing consensus as a service ?

Michael Kong

Mainnet launch is aimed for Q3 2019. Have worked on solving a major issue for consensus scaling for n nodes for the optimized solution that is faster than "gossiping about gossip"

User

Could we see Fantom working with fusion and Morpheus labs in the future both great projects ?

Michael Chen

Fusion — yes absolutely.

Morpheus — no talks.

User

Team are no longer taking tokens from the project ?

Michael Kong

They are but it has been reduced.

User

Regarding Dubai, are these partnerships with the Dubai govt?

Michael Chen

We’re not allowed to say yet I believe. Let’s leave this question blank

Michael Kong

Related to smart cities and the government

Daku

Has the recent bear market shook off team size in any case ?

Michael Kong

No

Michael Chen

Team size is pretty similar still. But the team itself has seen changes. Positive changes, mostly on-boarding new talent, and people who have finished their specific tasks moving on ^^.

Andre Cronje

Added more staff

Users

1. How will FTG contribute to the ecosystem ?

2. What are the advantages of Fantom Pay compared to other cryptocurrency payment apps?

3. How would you compare Fantom and constellation, both are DAG protocol that runs smart contracts?

Micheal Kong

1. FTG is the internal accounting mechanism spent on executing transactions (i.e for each op code executed by the virtual machine). It will not be tradable on exchanges.

2. If we develop a Fantom Pay solutions it should hopefully be more faster and secure compared to other decentralised payment applications.

3. Fantom is developing a register-based virtual machine with University of Sydney and Yonsei University Programming languages teams. The EVM is just for the first iteration of the mainnet. Consensus is achieved quite differently at a technical level.

Daku

Fantom GitHub seems has some redundant repository, Looks like some module is re-written. Do you think it requires some cleanup?

Michael Kong

Some repositories are a bit old. Will clean up at some point.

User

Any big marketing campaigns planned?

Michael Chen

This month is “Fantom validation month” in my eyes. Just going to clear up the backlog that we have in regards to token model related articles we haven’t released yet, multiple tech updates, market analysis, business development items, and such.

Daku

what is your next 100 days,300 days and 500 days goals for project ?

Michael Kong

100 days: mainnet launch

300 days: improved mainnet plus enterprise applications running on top.

500 days: Verifiable computing engine developed and integrated

User

When will have the details of dubai done will it be this month?

Michael Chen

I can’t say 200% sure, but pretty good chance of more details coming this month yessir!

Daku

You’re developing in Rust, Golang and Java. Why 3 different tech stacks ??

Does one provide advantage over others

Michael Kong

It’s good to have several implementations of the technology, just like how Ethereum has a C++ and Golang implementation. Currently Rust and Golang are the most developed. Rust should be faster than both Golang and Java.

User

COTI is a new DAG that is being released soon. Are Fantom worried about COTI or can DAG’s work together?

Andre Cronje

Fantom and COTI are partners.

Michael Chen

And there goes my announcement…

User

When can we see demos of Fantom dAPPS?

Andre Cronje

Not currently hosting the demos. But there are video demos available in all the dAPP repos in the GitHub.

User

Are we moving away from South korea smart city partnership? Or just tacking on Dubai?

Andre Cronje

Dubai has strict deadlines, so they are working faster. Korea competition is also very high, ICON, AERGO, etc

User

Are the team able to utilize YouTube more for updates i find video updates are more beneficial it installs a lot of trust ?

Michael Chen

Yes. We were talking about doing them already, kinda forgot about them but good reminder

User

Do you guys see Flexa as competition for Fantom pay. They allegedly have tech to enable crypto pay using existing payment infrastructure and equipment and fast track funds to merchant in FIAT

Michael Chen

Different region focus. Flexa mostly active in the USA, FantomPay makes most sense in Asia.

Currently, with the existing distribution networks.

Daku

Regarding Dapps, How you are planning to get more and quality dapp to come on platform.

What tools are you providing developers that enable them to build on Fantom?

also what incentive dapp developers will get. We really need more dapp moving/created on Fantom to make crypto mainstream.

Michael Kong

Achieving solid mainnet (which is the foundation of any app) is priority #1. Then guides on how to develop and deploy.

Having various ecosystem tools similar to what Ethereum has.

Incentive is a cheaper, faster, secure, decentralized platform. That is the aim.

User

How is the endeavor to reduce burn rate going. Andre mentioned you guys intend to curb it further

Michael Chen

Burnrate has been reduced by a lot, and because of that we have a good runway now.

We cut the bad spend.

Andre Cronje

MK crushed it. He got it so lean, we could actually hire more core developers

Already on-boarded two more, and looking at another 9

User

How solid is the <100 days to main net?

Michael Kong

Looking good so far, but can’t give specific date until we are closer.

User

How will the token swap be handled? Via a smart contract?

Andre Cronje

ERC20 to Fantom native Bridge.

Daku

As per whitepaper, Opera chain is capable of 300,000 tps, compare to Steem which is 100,000 and EOS has 10,000. How do you come up with 300,000 TPS, what test environment do you use to compare TPS against existing protocol/blockchains ?

Michael Kong

Currently reached 80k tps on a simple localized machine running 65 nodes 0.7s to achieve 2n/3 finality. More testing required on fixed consensus version running on servers across different locations in the world (latency + other factos will probably reduced tps / increase finality).

Daku

How do you explain in layman terms about consensus algorithm vs DAG based consensus which you are using in Fantom?

Andre Cronje

The consensus is still technically BFT. Proof of Work for example isn’t actually consensus.

In layman though. It’s parallel Ethereums that can easily talk to each other.

User

Have you managed ot convince any projects to share development of common infra like wallets and explorers and stuff so you can focus on the real build initiatives

Michael Chen

Yes. We have ecosystem partners working on the wallet.

Andre Cronje

Yes, all of that is being done by other teams. We suck at it

User

How good are we funded for next couple of years? As we know most of the ICOs dont do risk management, which results loss of fund and slow progress of the project

Michael Kong

Solid

Michael Chen

We have a solid multiple year runway.

Andre Cronje

FVM funding is locked in for next 5 years. Verification is funded for next 2. Core team has runway for > 2

And increasing due to consulting income. Mostly consulting how to build on Fantom.

User

Regarding funding, do you feel it is necessary to release more details on finances as requested by certain community members?

Michael Chen

I had all of those in the Messari spreadsheet I sent in for submission, but it wasn’t added into the final messari release.

So excluding token reserves, excluding revenue — 4–5 mil. Burn rate is like 100–150k a month.

Not sure if still 100% accurate, but they were at the time I sent in for messari.

Andre Cronje

Confused what more can be released. Messari had all details and vetted. So did Binance V label

User

Hashgraph also DAG based, how better are you guys compared to them?

Andre Cronje

Not permissioned and network graph dependent. Can scale higher

User

I know you cant elaborate now on Dubai partnerships, but can you say if the journey was a success or not

Andre Cronje

Incredibly

User

We have seen many projects show tps localized at insanely high rates and the fall dramatically in reality. Do you guys feel you can back it up when it comes to it?

Andre Cronje

This is almost entirely network graph dependent. So it’s very difficult to answer. But we try to do multi region tests. But not yet cross data center tests. But I expect it to be less than the current benchmarks.

Daku

To everyone in team: A general question: What went to your mind when starting Fantom, What still drives you.

Also for how long you have been in crypto and what are your biggest holdings? Which other tokens/coins you like.

Michael Kong

Been interested in crypto since 2013. Fantom’s aim was to build better, faster, and secure consensus using aBFT.

I’m driven by my love for Andre and Michael.

Michael Chen

When starting Fantom: man I want a piece of skin in the game. I expected a moon mission like ICON.

Now: drives me to be part of something great. Sexy tech, good bizdev guys around us, and just a great atmosphere at the company.

I like Fusion a lot aside from Fantom at this point. Re: holdings I’m sitting in evil fiat, BTC, ETH, and some Fantom, and a few stable-coins.

Daku

What’s your view on interoperability ?

Will DAG makes it easier/difficult/no effects ?

Andre Cronje

Not really DAG, this is more ECDSA space, for which we have a fantastic partner

Daku

Btw when KRW pair ?

Andre Cronje

2019

User

Andre Cronje is an advisor for ftm as mentioned before and hired ppl to do his job just as good, to clear this up to panic sellers can you confirm he is still an advisor and with ftm

Andre Cronje

Definitely, aBFT and zkVM are my babies. Not abandoning them any time soon. Just decreased my involvement slightly as I had quite a bit of crypto fatigue

User

Rumors that mainnet will move from Q3 to Q2, is this correct?

Michael Kong

Q2 2019 was optimistic. Although we’ve fixed consensus issues more testing is required, so Q3 2019 is more likely.

Andre Cronje

To add onto this. We could launch. But we have more time, so we want to use it.

User

Off topic but I saw someone ask above and is great to hear industry guys perspectives.

What are top 3 coins to hodl?

Michael Chen

The top 3 coins to HODL are the ones that you’ve done your necessary DD + DYOR on + good risk management + haven’t invested more than you can lose.

^ not financial advice

User

Can we see big partnership & listing before mainnet?

Michael Chen

Define big.

Andre Cronje

Most of the big partners are post mainnet. That’s when the real work starts

Daku

Designing Fantom Virtual machine still in the plan? Is it writing from scratch or would be fork of Ethereum Virtual machine ?

Michael Kong

Already being worked on by the professors from University of Sydney and Yonsei University (Assoc. Prof. Bernard Scholz and Assoc. Prof. Bernd Burgstaller respectively). They are actually building the new VM using a few tools and by analyzings the EVM and “transforming” it to a new register-based VM from the stack-based implementation.

Daku

Korean govt announced support for implementing BlockChain on smart cities. Is Fantom involved in any POC project after their association with Danfoss ?

Andre Cronje

Danfoss isn’t involved in the Korea POCs, but yes, there is the complains one, but it’s moving slow

User

Is there a overall message you would like to send to holders in moving forward about the project ?

Michael Chen

We know it’s been a rocky road, and sentiment may have been at a low sometimes, but we’re still dedicated to building sexy tech for you guys and to give you guys something for all the support.

And we plan to keep doing that, even after mainnet. That’s what we do, it’s what we’re good at imo.

Daku

Question for Andre Cronje , Being a developer, writing and testing code in controlled environment is always different than testing your code with heavy transaction/load. Lets say if you need to test Fantom code in one of smart city implementation where your code would need maximum throughput, how do you see it Fantom or any code will perform?

Andre Cronje

That’s why load testing and fuzzers are standard as part of our dev tooling

User

Hows Fantom striving to make the user experience of interacting with dapps the network easy for non BC folks. I mean one of the stumbling blocks in general in this space is that folks dont care about inputting private keys for basic tasks

Andre Cronje

Fantom isn’t the product. Fantom is the infrastructure. Blockchain aren’t meant for users, Dapps are. And we have great UX teams for dapps

User

Thanks , i mean are you guys doing anything on the Dag level to ensure dapp developers have the tools to create dapps that will feel more like like apps without needing to expose elements of the blockchain interaction unless required

Andre Cronje

That’s the VMs job, LLVM and WASM allow that

The DAG is just for asynchronous consensus

User

Do we have a guage of how may dapps will be on mainnet for Launch?

Andre Cronje

3 ~ 12 based on current teams working on it

Daku

Michael Chen, Hows crypto sentiments in Australia? People getting involved unlike USA?

Michael Chen

I saw some headlines about even Hester Peirce in the USA wanting to regulate more heavily. Australia isn’t crypto paradise by any means but it’s better than the USA imo.

User

How many dev in fantom?

Andre Cronje

5 sfxdx 4 offscale 3 sikoba 4 uni 4 local and I’m probably missing some

Daku

How about current bear market. whats your take. and when Moon ?

and how you are planning your financials. I know Fantom team is making sure not to over indulge in unnecessary cost.

Andre Cronje

Brought in traditional financial planning. Payment cycles. Authority cycles. All the stuff you see in big corporate. No cent is spent without a) contract b) budget c) multiparty approval and d) fixed payment cycles

Michael Kong

We planned out marketing, development, travel, admin etc. for minimum of 2 years.

User

From the sounds of it the scaling question of going over 65 nodes has been solved?

Andre Cronje

Yup, but we found an even better way. New paper will be released soon

User

Comments were made about the removal of team tokens today. How many does that remove from circulation — and from what I understand it’s going to the staking rewards pool?

Michael Chen

Back into the reserves, don’t think the team tokens that were scrapped have been allocated anywhere yet

User

From my understanding tx will have a fixed price chosen by Fantom holders right?

Andre Cronje

Simplified, but yes. It is an on chain governance parameter.

User

When the network is congested and if everyone pay the same fees what tx will go first? First come first serve?

Andre Cronje

Up to the miners, but FIFO would be default

Daku

How many hours are for coding, testing in a day ?

Andre Cronje

Probably a 4:1 split. But very dependent on the work being done.

Daku

Guys, I must say reading one of the best AMA in recent times. quality questions, answered well and good behavior of members. Kudos to the team.

Thank you for answering Fantom team

You guys did good. Bring the Mainnet ON with adoption

Michael Chen

STP did an awesome job too. Mike Chen went HAM on the AMA. Hope we compared well to them ;).

Fantom Team

Thanks all!