The Ethereum (ETH) network continues to enjoy the status of being the top smart contract platform in the blockchain industry, but the competition is slowly gaining market share because high costs and network congestion are still challenges for the protocol.
One project that has been gaining traction in the month of August is Fantom (FTM), a layer-one smart contract platform that utilizes a directed acyclic graph architecture as a means to solving the problems of slow transaction speeds and high transaction fees.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that since hitting a low of $0.15 on July 20, the price of FTM has rocketed 500% to an intraday high at $0.90 on Aug. 30 as its 24-hour trading volume exploded by 1,250% to a record $1.26 billion.
Three reasons for the surging momentum in Fantom include the launch of a 370 million FTM incentive program, a significant increase in social media engagement and the continued increase in the amount of value locked on the protocol.
Fantom launches a liquidity incentive program
The biggest momentum boost for Fantom came on Aug. 30 with the announcement of a 370 million FTM incentive program ($320 million), designed to attract new protocols and liquidity to the Fantom ecosystem.
Announcing a 370 million FTM incentive program for builders!
If you’re a protocol team, we’ll reward you for sustaining and increasing your TVL on Fantom.
Start building today! #buildonfantom https://t.co/AFvAayhsEe
— Fantom Foundation (@FantomFDN) August 30, 2021
Under the program, developers who launch on the Fantom network will be able to apply for rewards from the Fantom Foundation and will receive between 1 million to 5 million FTM depending on the total value locked (TVL) in the protocol in question.
In order to qualify for rewards, a protocol must maintain a TVL above a time-weighted average (TWA) of $5,000,000 or $100,000,000 for an extended period of time. If at any point the TWA falls below the $5,000,000 minimum, threward distribution will be paused until the TVL once again reaches the required minimum.
Social media engagements surge in August
The building momentum for Fantom was registered by social media metrics from Lunar Crush throughout the month of August. The platform showed a 34% increase in social media mentions when compared to the month of July and social media engagements also shot up by nearly 96%.
Fantom’s 1-Month activity:
Price $0.50331312 +98.04%
67,305 social mentions +34.08%
95,793,815 social engagements +95.86%
1,660 average daily social contributors +22.24%https://t.co/UNc78mnwoG $ftm #fantom pic.twitter.com/Us6Lz8Mw1A— LunarCRUSH Social Listening for Crypto (@LunarCRUSH) August 28, 2021
On-chain data for the network also shows a steadily increasing rate of engagement because the network now has 415,000 unique addresses that conduct more than 300,000 transactions per day.
These numbers could significantly increase in the weeks and months ahead thanks to the release of the FTM incentive program, which has already lead to a new record high in the number of transactions on the Fantom bridge.
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Significant gains in DeFi
The third reason for Fantom’s explosive growth is the increasing TVL of its DeFi ecosystem which is led by SpookySwap exchange ($192 million TVL).
According to data from DeFi Llama, the total value locked on the Fantom blockchain has now surpassed $657 million with a 19.52% increase coming over the last 24-hours.
As seen in the chart above, the launch of the Fantom Incentive Program helped spark a significant rally in the TVL on Fantom, but the network was already seeing impressive gains in the metric even before the launch of the program.
Between Aug. 4 and Aug. 23, Fantom’s TVL increased from $269 million to a high of $510 million without any special incentives. This proves that interest in interacting with the platform has been on the rise for multiple weeks.
VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for FTM on Aug. 29, prior to the recent price rise.
The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historic and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.
As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score climbed into the green zone on Aug. 28 and reached a high of 70 on Aug. 29, around four hours before the price increased 80% over the next day.
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