As users seek out the next biggest thing in DeFi, transactions on emerging layer 1 blockchain Fantom crossed those on Avalanche this week. Layer 1 blockchains are individual platforms like Solana, Fantom, and Ethereum, which can support services and products on their networks.
Fantom processed over a million transactions
The Fantom blockchain processed more than 1 million transactions. In comparison, Avalanche processed 728,000 according to a research note by Delphi Digital. The note states:
As the narrative rotates from Avalanche to Fantom, it’s not surprising to see it reflected in transactions. Opportunistic capital moved over to yield farm on Fantom with high yields on stablecoins of around 30-60% APR (annual percentage rate).
In the last 24 hours, the two networks have processed more than 853,000 transactions in total. The growth in Fantom is largely attributed to user interaction with current DeFi projects and interest in upcoming ones.
Developers Daniele Sestagalli and Andre Cronje, who worked on launches on Avalanche, Ethereum and Fantom with TVL of billions, announced a partnership on an upcoming project that would deploy on Fantom. This may have contributed to a shift in focus on Fantom. Yun Heng Lin, a special projects analyst at Delphi Digital, told CoinDesk in an email:
The news of collaboration on an upcoming project that will use Fantom as the foundation for multi-chain deployment with a new token model quickly shifted the L1 narrative away from other Layer-1s such as Avalanche, and toward new Fantom project launches. Hundred Finance is a new project on Fantom that has recently received a lot of attention, and it is leveraging the now-popular ve-token model with high stablecoin yields of up to 30% APY (annual percentage yield). This, in turn, generated a lot of hype and speculation, as evidenced by Fantom surpassing Avalanche in daily transaction count.
Stakeholders abandoning Ethereum
As investors and stakeholders seek DeFi opportunities away from Ethereum, blockchains like Terra, Avalanche, Fantom, and Solana are seeing growth in both the value locked on DeFi protocols and their native tokens. Last year, DeFi activity on Avalanche skyrocketed as projects like Trader Joe and Wonderland became more and more popular.
Avalanche’s total value locked (TVL) rose from $72 million in February to $13 billion in December, making it the fourth-biggest DeFi ecosystem in the world by TVL. Now, it looks like Fantom and other competitors are catching up. The TVL of Fantom-based DeFi protocols increased from $2.9 million last April to $6 billion on Friday, January 7.
