Opera (Fantom) is a permissionless, open-source framework that allows everyone to engage in the network through staking and governance.
What Is Opera Mainnet (Fantom)?
Opera, the Fantom mainnet, was established in December of 2019, making it one of the most recent functional blockchains. Opera is a permissionless, open-source framework that allows everyone to engage in the network through staking and governance.
The Fantom’s native token is FTM. Within the network, it is utilized for staking, on-chain governance, and platform fees. Fantom employs the Lachesis consensus, which combines the Proof-of-Stake and Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance (aBFT) consensus mechanisms for faster and cheaper transactions in comparison to other blockchains, and provides a highly secure environment.
What Distinguishes Fantom From the Competition?
First-generation and second-generation blockchains, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, were not designed to scale. Security and decentralization were their primary concerns. The network’s transaction rates got slow as a result, especially as more nodes were added. A transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain network, for example, may take up to 15 minutes, but transactions on the Fantom network can be completed in a matter of seconds.
Fantom used the unique Lachesis consensus to solve the “blockchain trilemma” of balancing speed, security, and decentralization.
Lachesis’ PoS mechanism, like any other PoS blockchain, allows validators to produce new blocks by staking their FTM. The aBFT protocol, on the other hand, is a key aspect of the Lachesis consensus since it allows nodes to construct blocks independently.
Even if there are broken or malicious nodes in the network, the Byzantine Fault Tolerance method allows for consensus. It could theoretically manage up to one-third of malfunctioning or malicious nodes without causing a network outage.
As a result, nodes can establish agreement on their own via a two-stage block confirmation procedure as long as they obtain a majority of two-thirds. This eliminates the need for a leader node to create blocks, allowing for speedier transactions while retaining excellent security.
Because the blocks in the Fantom network are self-contained, it is more decentralized. Every decentralized application runs on its own blockchain, which is linked to the Lachesis consensus.
What Is the Fantom Virtual Machine?
The Fantom Virtual Machine is used on the mainnet of Fantom Opera. This is Fantom’s software development kit that provides the tools to create and deploy Decentralized Finance apps (also known as dApps on the network.
Furthermore, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is also supported by Opera. It enables developers to migrate their Ethereum-based decentralized apps effortlessly to the Fantom network, ensuring compatibility with the world’s largest smart contract-based platform.
What Is Lachesis?
Fantom employs its own consensus technique dubbed Lachesis, rather than replicating the proof-of-work (PoW) processes used in Bitcoin and Ethereum. According to the project’s creators, Lachesis enables Fantom to run significantly quicker and be more scalable than previous blockchains. The Fantom network’s proponents claim that it is ideal for applications that require a lot of throughput because of its speed.
An asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerant (aBFT) consensus mechanism is what Lachesis is renowned for. Fantom’s creators claim that they have found a solution to the long-standing difficulty of scaling blockchains without sacrificing other important characteristics of the networks, such as decentralization and security. One of Lachesis’ primary advantages over Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerant (pBFT) consensus systems is its resistance to distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS). Furthermore, aBFT systems are designed to be faster than pBFT-based consensus methods.
It should be noted that aBFT also employs Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) technology, which is common in other emerging blockchain consensus systems. Each network node keeps a local DAG, which is later used to compute the final order of events. Unlike previous blockchain systems, transaction events are compared to other nodes on the network rather than the blocks themselves.
The scalability trilemma, which stipulates that only two of three requirements may be included in consensus algorithms at the same time, has been effectively overcome.
Fantom’s Architecture
The Opera Core, Opera Ware, and Application Layer are the three layers that make up the Fantom architecture, like a sandwich.
The bottom bun in the Lachesis Protocol is Opera Core, which is responsible for maintaining consensus amongst nodes. Each transaction is kept on each node, however, Fantom is unusual in that it requires a second type of node called a witness node to validate transactions and relies on the dPOS technique to choose validating nodes. Additionally, in order to operate a validator, users must have at least 1,000,000 FTM.
Opera Ware is the protocol’s “meat” that allows it to carry out tasks such as giving incentives and creating ‘Story Data.’
The sesame-seed bun known as Opera Application has publicly available APIs that allow developers to connect with the Opera Ware layer through their dApps. Furthermore, an intriguing application that develops from it is ‘Story Data,’ which is a fundamental function for keeping indefinite and vast recordings of data that are critical, vital for applications such as supply-chain management.
