Highlights
- Dapper Labs now controls less than one-third of the nodes of the FLOW Network.
The FLOW Network
Flow (FLOW) is a decentralized blockchain that wants to offer a user-friendly experience for developers. It is focused mainly on the gaming industry – some of its projects are CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot.
The main characteristic of this crypto project is that it avoids sharding: while other blockchains use sharding to improve scalability, Flow focused on creating a framework where everyone can participate without renouncing to decentralization. Leaving the blockchain as a unified environment, they want to allow users to build on the blockchain while cooperating to develop other users’ projects.
Many brands are using Flow, not only in the gaming industry, but also brands related to the entertainment market, startups and top crypto brands. Some of these companies are Warner Music, NNBA, UFC, Ubisoft, Animoca Brands, nWay and Sumo Digital, Circle, Binance and Opensea.
Developers work on Flow thanks to smart contracts written in Cadence, a high-level programming language. The project wants to allow the development of products that can be used by a high number of customers for their simplicity and integrations that enable frictionless paths from fiat to crypto.
Despite its avoiding sharding, Flow achieves transaction speed thanks to the fact that it divides miners and validators into four roles, so that everyone can participate in the blockchain without the need for high computational resources.
Flow has its native crypto, FLOW, used to work on the blockchain. Its characteristics make it the ideal crypto for game and app developers: diverse use-cases – it can be used for applications, games and smart contracts; broad distribution – even if Flow is decentralized, the distribution of FLOW follows a sustainable and specific strategy – and low inflation – as network fees increase, inflation goes down.
Understanding the token distribution of Flow permits understanding the role of Dapper Labs in the project. Dapper Labs, the NFT company behind Flow, is constantly reducing its number of tokens to distribute them to holders – FLOW works according to the Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm.
250 million tokens have been allocated to Dapper Labs, and they cannot be sold without lock-up periods, since these tokens form the long-term reserve of the project. But today, thanks to the rising interest in gaming and NFTs, and in the technology behind Flow, 68% of FLOW’s supply is owned by independent stakers who work as validators.
This is further decentralizing Flow, making the blockchain more secure and ideal to build new projects.
FLOW’s Future
At the time of writing, FLOW is traded at over $14 – with a price increase of over 15% in the last 24 hours and a market capitalization of $4,560,025,050 (+16.16%).
FLOW has a total supply of 1,378,211,739 FLOW, and a circulating supply of 306,893,775.
The interest in FLOW has increased, and this may result in a bright future for this cryptocurrency – but if you want to know more, you can visit FLOW’s page on CoinMarketCap.
