At its midpoint, FantomDC has offered many hints of what’s to come for the groundbreaking blockchain platform.
The Fantom blockchain token FTM breached new all-time highs this week, just as the Fantom Developer Conference (FantomDC) was in its first full day. Held in Abu Dhabi, FantomDC is a stylish affair, and one would expect nothing less from the organizers Keynote Limited. But beyond the bright lights and spectacle, there is something much larger happening at Fantom: a drive and energy that eclipses crypto trading markets and the ebullient sentiment about price rises.
FantomDC has been, in fact, extraordinarily rich in substance. On Tuesday, for instance, CEO Michael Kong took the stage to offer a detailed but lucid overview of the Fantom consensus mechanism. Explaining how Fantom processes multiple transactions asynchronously – rather than on a first-in, first-out sequential basis ‒ Kong illustrated how Fantom attains very high speeds. “Fantom is for developers,” he asserted, as he underscored the ways the platform seeks to cement its role as key infrastructure for Web 3.0.
Later that day, a panel including CEO Michael Kong, DeFi Architect Andre Cronje, CMO Simone Pomposi, Director of Asia Sam Harcourt, and Austin Rampt, one of the most prominent members of the Fantom community, sat for an illuminating discussion with Harry Yeh, Managing Director of the Quantum Fintech Group. The team stressed being both developer- and user-friendly as central principles of the Fantom ethos. Fantom is sustainable, Andre Cronje and Michael Kong insisted, because it is continually evolving to meet the needs of builders and users.
For his part, Harry Yeh divulged that on the business side, he is spearheading efforts to set up a Fantom hub in Abu Dhabi that will serve as a startup accelerator for the Fantom ecosystem, in an overall manner similar to the renowned Y Combinator. He made it clear that progress for this incubator is beyond the planning phase and that office space has already been secured.
Other talks on Tuesday and Wednesday addressed a range of topics, including practical use of Fantom partner protocols The Graph and Chainlink, best practices for on-chain security, strategies for bringing NFTs to market, and more. Veering from the deeply technical to broad overviews aimed at those entering the blockchain space, the main talks and breakout sessions at Fantom DC reflect the openness and professionalism of the Fantom organization, which has always preferred action rather than hype.
Though speakers have dropped hints of announcements yet to come at FantomDC, the conference has yielded much already.