Fantom’s Upgrade Sparking Price Rally

• Fantom is an outlier in the market, soaring 70% as BTC and ETH dropped.
• The optimism around Fantom hinges on the broad ecosystem rebrand.

FTM, the native digital asset of Fantom protocol, has skyrocketed 70% in the past 30 days despite the broader market downturn. On Wednesday, October 2, FTM traded at $0.6850, representing a 5% increase from the previous week.

FTM Upgrade Buzz Sparks Price Rally

The price surge comes amid anticipations of an upcoming “Sonic” upgrade, scheduled for later this year. The upgrade promises improvements to the blockchain’s performance. These include improved Carmen database storage, developing a new Fantom Virtual Machine (FVM), and reducing finality time to approximately one second. 

Additionally, the upgrade will help optimize the Lachesis consensus mechanism and increase transaction processing speed from 30 to over 2,000 transactions per second. In addition to these technical upgrades, Fantom is also undergoing a major rebranding. The rebranding aims to provide clarity and visibility to the project’s community, which includes FTM holders, network developers, and validators.

This journey started a few months ago when Fantom relaunched itself as Sonic Labs in preparation for the upcoming launch. Sonic Labs is now fully operational across all of Fantom’s platforms. Plans are to change the native token ticker from FTM to ‘S’ by the end of 2024. Thus, existing FTM holders can convert their tokens to S at a 1:1 ratio during the migration process. 

The excitement surrounding these advancements has reignited interest in the Fantom ecosystem. According to data from DefiLlama, Total Value Locked (TVL) across Fantom’s DeFi applications increased by 55% over the previous month to $108.8 million. While the increase falls below its March 2022 peak of $7.93 billion, it indicates renewed interest in the platform.

An increase in network activity further reinforces the growth in the Fantom ecosystem. According to Glassnode, daily active addresses spiked 162% between September 1 and October 1. FTMScan also revealed that daily transactions rose by 66% in the same period.

Fantom Stands As an Outlier

The broader crypto market is witnessing a bloodbath, with top cryptocurrencies in the red. Bitcoin (BTC), the world’s biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, is trading at $60,433, down 2.5% in the past 30 days.

In a similar move, Ethereum (ETH) has dropped 4% of its value within the past month to $2,359.

Amid this market downturn, FTM surged 70% in the last 30 days to $0.6359 at press time. The token’s price is currently ranked the 48th-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, at $1.7 billion. 

CNF mentioned earlier that on-chain metrics suggest increasing network activity could push FTM to around $0.86. Meanwhile, some bullish FTM price predictions for 2024 range from $1.02 to $1.72. More optimistic forecasts suggest FTM could reach $3 soon.

Investors should, however, remain cautious, as the crypto market is synonymous with volatility. Additionally, bearish predictions for 2024 put FTM’s potential low at $0.32.