Avalanche vs. Fantom

When Ethereum was first introduced, the Crypto World was revolutionized by smart contracts which brought a great amount of utility to the sphere and contributed to its success and adoption. Ever since then, other projects tried to improve Ethereum’s technology and make it cheaper and faster.

In our today’s article, we are going to compare two such projects: Fantom (FTM) and Avalanche (AVAX). 

About Fantom (FTM)

Fantom was launched in 2018, and currently, in July 2023, Michael Kong is the CEO. This is an EVM-compatible blockchain that has been called the “Ethereum killer” many times, but according to the team behind it, is not here to compete with the second-largest blockchain, but to be a helper. It uses a consensus mechanism called Lachesis which is an asynchronous and leaderless version of Proof of Stake. It is based on Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) technology. This consensus mechanism allows for high throughput and low latency transactions, making it a good choice for building applications that require high speed and scalability.

In addition to its distinctive consensus mechanism, this blockchain's security is ensured through randomized node selection. This means that the network randomly selects nodes to take part in consensus, preventing any individual node or group of nodes from monopolizing the process.

About Avalanche (AVAX)

Ava Labs, spearheaded by Emin Gün Sirer, launched Avalanche blockchain in 2019. This blockchain technology aims to facilitate DApp interoperability and high throughput.

Avalanche blockchain leverages the Ethereum Virtual Machine and supports the seamless migration of Ethereum applications to the platform. The consensus mechanism, also named Avalanche, is based on the Proof of Stake protocol.

One key aspect of Avalanche is its novel architecture, which comprises three blockchains: the X-Chain, used for NFTs and fund transfers; the C-Chain, for DeFi and smart contract creation; and the P-Chain, responsible for Subnet-level operations and validator functions.

Similarities between Fantom and Avalanche

1. Smart contract functionality. Both blockchains feature dApps.
2. Proof of Stake. Even though both blockchains have unique blockchain mechanisms, they are based on PoS. 
3. High speed. Fantom transactions only take 1-2 seconds, and Avalanche claims to finalize transactions in less than 2 seconds.
4. Staking. Both protocols allow staking tokens and receiving rewards.

Differences between Fantom and Avalanche

1. Scale. As of July 20, 2023, the market capitalization of FTM is $724,429,748, whereas AVAX’s market cap is significantly higher: $4,914,000,518. As for the TVL (this is the total value of digital assets that are locked or staked), Avalanche also wins with $1,775 billion vs. Fantom’s $119,79 million.
2. TPS. Here, Fantom prevails with up to 10,000 transactions per second, while Avalanche supports up to 6,500.
3. Transaction cost. Fantom's team has stated that the majority of transactions on their network have fees that are below $0.01, even during times of high activity. While this is a commendable achievement, Avalanche has even lower costs. Its fees fluctuate between 75 nAVAX and 225 nAVAX, equivalent to a range of $0.0000014 to $0.0000043.

For your convenience, we made a comparison table with the projects’ main characteristics:

Conclusion

All in all, both Avalanche and Fantom are great platforms that are popular with the developers of DApps. Even though they differ in the underlying technologies, they have some similarities, which are high scalability and performance, low fees, and others. These advantages are likely to contribute to the platforms’ further development and growth.