How to Buy Fantom FTM in Canada

“With low fees and costs, and high transaction speed, Fantom is seeking to take over Ethereum.”

Fantom was founded by computer scientists Dr. Ahn Byung Ik. However, Michael Kong is its current CEO. According to their site, the Fantom team is made up engineers, researchers, scientists, designers and entrepreneurs. In 2019, Fantom was launched to the world.

Fantom is a smart-contract platform for decentralized apps (known as Dapps). It was created as an alternative to Ethereum since the latter suffers from low speed and high costs. By being one of the fastest networks in the world – and at low fees – Fantom is trying to solve for the issues around scalability, security and decentralization that plague many blockchains.

With 0% funding fees, free cash withdrawals, and live customer support service seven days a week, we make it simple for Canadians to buy Fantom (FTM) and other cryptocurrencies.

What is Fantom and How Does It Work?

If you’ve been in the crypto space for a while now, you may have heard that Ethereum is sometimes plagued by high transaction fees. Sometimes the fees are so high that they’ll surpass the value of a trade. Unfortunately, Ethereum will likely stay expensive until upgrades or changes are made to it. Fortunately, this is where Fantom comes in (and why many investors buy FTM).

Fantom is a smart-contract platform – much like Ethereum. Smart contracts are similar to a regular contract in which the terms of an agreement are outlined. Except that in smart contracts they are outlined in code. As such, they self-execute once the criteria are met thanks to the code put in place. It’s the use of smart contracts that allows finance protocols and trades to take place without needing third parties.

However, rather than use a blockchain (like Ethereum) Fantom uses a a directed acyclic graph (DAG).

In a blockchain, each block contains data, a block before it and a block after it; effectively creating a chain of blocks with verified transactions. But in a DAG, there are a lot of computers in the network that kind of gossip with each other about transactions they have with their nearby computers. By communicating in this way, they agree on what the ledger is and what data should be stored within them.

The good thing about using DAG is that transactions are confirmed as quickly as possible, which increases finality (when transactions are confirmed. In Bitcoin’s case it can take up to an hour to reach finality, but with Fantom it can take mere seconds).

Fantom also uses a Proof-of-Stake model that is unique to it, called Lachesis. In Lachesis there are 50 validators. To become a validator, you’d have to stake (or give up your crypto as collateral) 1 million FTM tokens. In a way, it’s not as decentralized as other networks. Validators then earn rewards for verifying transactions. You don’t have to be a validator to earn rewards. You could give your FTM tokens to a validator that you trust to participate in the DAG. In this way, you could earn delegated staking rewards, offering participants more than one way to grow their holdings.

As of early 2022, the Fantom network is one of the fastest networks in the space. Between DAG and Lachesis, the Fantom network is very fast, processing about 4,500 transactions per second, reaching finality in a couple of seconds, which positions it quite well to compete with Ethereum.

Related article: The Importance of Checking What Blockchain the Cryptocurrency You’re Sending Is On

Why Buy FTM? What Makes Fantom (FTM) Unique?

Fantom is a network with smart-contract capabilities, garnering a lot of excitement within the space. Its network facilitates fast transactions at low costs (which are just fractions of a cent). This helps Fantom play an important role in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space – like helping to establish ownership of non-fungible tokens (short for NFTs, or digital collectibles that can be traded, bought, sold or exchanged.

Though Ethereum was the first blockchain to offer such capabilities, Fantom has quickly taken over in some ways. Here are a few other reasons that make Fantom unique.

Proof-of-Stake: Fantom uses proof-of-stake model where participants offer up their Fantom tokens for the opportunity to verify transactions. By doing this, they help strengthen and secure the network while earning rewards.

Low costs: Fantom’s unique network, ability to almost instantly confirm transactions and offer low costs can be an incentive to users who want to implement smart contracts without the high fees. 

Governance: By owning Fantom tokens, users can participate in the decision-making of Fantom’s proposals, features and upgrades. They can also propose changes and vote on those changes.

Payments: Using Fantom tokens can be a convenient way to make payments given its quick transaction fees and low fees.

Fantom is considered to be Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible, which means if you build something on top of the Ethereum blockchain you can also build it on top of the Fantom network. Many of the popular applications that exist on top of Ethereum can also exist on top of Fantom.

Finally, Fantom has a maximum supply of 3,175,000,000 FTM tokens. For some investors, a limited supply of tokens is important to help maintain the value of said tokens.

How Do I Securely Store My FTM?

You can buy FTM tokens from crypto trading platforms, like Netcoins, and leave your FTM inside the platform. However, there are much safer options to storing your FTM tokens as leaving them in exchanges can expose them to certain risks like hacking and theft.

The safest option to keeping your FTM secure is to transfer them into a FTM wallet. A FTM wallet is a type of digital wallet that is used to send and receive FTM, similar to a Google wallet or a physical wallet.

There are four different types of FTM wallets: hardware wallets, desktop wallets, mobile wallets and web wallets.

Hardware wallets look like a USB device. They are considered to be offline wallets because they’re not connected to the internet. The fact they’re offline makes them more difficult to find and to hack. As such, they’re typically considered the safest option to store your FTM.

Desktop wallets on the other hand are programs that store your FTM on your computer’s hard drive. Mobile wallets perform the same function as a desktop wallet but on a mobile device instead.

Finally, a web wallet is an online service that sends and stores your FTM tokens on your behalf anywhere, anytime. Similar to checking your email.

Desktop, mobile and web wallets are all connected to the internet (and referred to as “hot wallets”). Like mentioned earlier, they are more susceptible to potential risks. On the other hand, hardware wallets (or “cold wallets”) are considered safer options as they are not connected to the internet.

This is why it’s often advised that Canadians pull out their FTM tokens from crypto trading platforms and send them directly to a hardware wallet. Only in this way, are they in full possession of their FTM tokens and can keep them secure.

What are Fantom’s (FTM) next steps?

Ethereum continues to lose ground in the smart contract-blockchain world with the rise of faster, more affordable blockchains like Solana, Cardano, Avalanche and Fantom. As time goes on, we’ll likely continue to see more innovation happening within the Fantom network, and may even see a plethora of unique applications being built on top of it.

As of 2022, Fantom is offering investors a cheaper and quicker way to participate in the world of decentralized finance (DeFi). Although the future of Fantom can look bright, it’s worth mentioning that it has a significant lower market cap (the total value of coins in existence), suggesting that investors have opted into one of the other smart-contract networks instead.

In March 2022, developers Andre Cronje and Anton Nell announced they were leaving crypto which pushed Fantom’s price down. However, the Fantom Foundation announced that the project is “continuing as normal,” helping to ease some of the nerves users had about the future of Fantom.

With all that said, buying FTM tokens can be a great way to participate in the DeFi space. Remember, it’s always important to heed the age-old advice to never invest more than you’re ready or willing to lose. Time will tell what the future of Fantom will be.

This post is for informational purposes only. For proper financial advice, we recommend you speak to a financial advisor.