One Ethereum-Layer 1 competitor that’s been recently in the news is Fantom (FTM)! Over the weekend, the Fantom (FTM) price rallied all the way closer to $3.40 hitting a new all-time high. This comes on the backdrop of a solid 15% pump in the FTM price on Sunday, January 16.
As per on-chain data provider Santiment, the FTM funding rate on platforms like Binance is turning negative indicating heavy shorts. However, these shorter have heavily burned their fingers amid this solid price rally. As data provider Santiment reports:
Fantom is edging close to its $3.47 #AllTimeHigh, made back in late October. A signal to watch closely is $FTM‘s funding rate on exchanges like Binance. When going negative, indicating many shorts, prices have tended to rocket upward.
Another major milestone that Fantom has achieved over the weekend is the number of DEX transactions. On Saturday, January 15, Fantom ranked third in DEX on-chain volumes after Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain. Besides, Fantom has also managed to surpass giants like Polygon and Avalanche in terms of DEX transactions.
Fantom’s Defi TVL Shoots Past $10 Billion
The reason behind the recent FTM price rally is also the high DeFi activity. The total value locked (TVL) on the Fantom blockchain crossed $7.75 billion last week. This was a staggering 26% jump on a weekly basis.
Fantom is emerging as a faster competitor to other Ethereum Layer 1s as its leveraged the DAG-based smart contract platform for DApps that makes it highly scalable. Besides, Fantom is also positioning itself as a cheaper and faster alternative to other Ethereum Layer 1s.
For e.g. Fantom takes only 1s to transfer money with transaction costs as low as $0.0000001. Whereas on Ethereum, the average transaction time is 15 seconds and the average transaction cost is $3.
Fantom’s native token FTM can be useful for various purposes like staking, payments, and governance.