All blockchains aim to solve one or several issues they have encountered on web3 or on Dapps running there, well most of them. Flow aims to be the go-to standard for Dapp gaming and doing what Ethereum is failing to do for that space. Where did it start? Glad you ask, it started with cats.
Background
The team behind Flow is known as Dapper labs. They are the creators of the Ethereum Dapp game called Cryptokitties, where you collect and breed cats to get a collection of colorful and crazy cats. They found the development cumbersome and were dreading the sharding change coming with ETH2.0. In response to this they started development of their own blockchain in 2019. They launched it in may 2020 along with a Dutch Auction (you start at a high price and lower it until people start buying) ICO that ended on a price of 0,38$.
Starting out the chain is very centralized and managed closely by the developers, the main focus being a strong base for building games on top of. Being decentralized is something the dev team have been working on, there is more robust changes needed to be made until it can reach full decentralzation however. It has stayed fairly stable, apart from one incident when the NFT collection for NBA hot shots was released. This triggered a consensus fail-safe as the network got overloaded and it took the nodes 1 hour to recover and resume operations as normal.
FLOW is a smart contract blockchain running on proof-of-stake, this means that the main function of the network is to provide a basis for developers to build upon. It is being developed and maintained by a core team in Dapper labs, any changes that is currently made has go through a governance proposal round before being implemented. Anyone can submit a proposal and it is public, other members can discuss and add onto or propose changes to each proposal. Once that is complete and if there is a majority consensus for the change, the dev team implements it. This is also planned to be further decentralized by making full use of a DAO.
The smart contracts can be created in Rust and Cadence. Rust is a growing programming language which has strong fundamentals which is perfect for game development, and Cadence is going to be FLOW's self created programming language. They feel that solidity will limit Dapp creation which is the reason for the different programming languages used. The chain can currently maintain well over 100TPS and aims to have around 1 sec finality times. In current performance the finality time hovers between 2~3 secs.
The network is being run on several proof-of-stake nodes, node operators stake FLOW to allow to maintain and keep the network secure and receive rewards for doing so. There are 4 types of nodes that can be run on the network: Collector, Execution, Verifier & Consensus nodes. Collector nodes increases efficiency, Execution nodes enable speed and network scaling, Consensus nodes ensure decentralisation and lastly Verifier nodes guarantee correctness and prevents faulty transactions or double spends. The Verifier nodes, however, is being run by mainly by the core dev team currently.
Rewards for running nodes are given from two parts of the network: transaction fees/gas and new minted coins. Anyone can help a node operator by staking their flow. There is a set minimum rewards for what node operators and stakers can receive, if this minimum is not reached it will be "topped up" with freshly minted FLOW. This causes inflation for the network, which is currently capped at 5%, 3% after 1st of June 2022. The plan is to have enough smart contracts and activity on the chain so that the transaction fees will be enough to cover all the staking rewards.
Flow was created with consumers in mind, low fees and fast transactions while giving developers powerful tools. Most of this is aimed at media and gaming. Flow can be used for staking and receiving passive rewards, paying for gas/fees for running Dapps, collateral for stablecoins or Dapps and participating in governance.
For the developer side, app creating and maintaining is easier than on Ethereum. Once ETH2.0 rolls around with its sharding, it's bound to be harder to create Dapps on Ethereum. One feature that developers also have access to on Flow is the creation of Dapps in "beta". This allows for direct changes based on community feedback and allow for quicker error catching before a launch.
Flow today
Flow might not seem like it sets itself apart from the ever growing number of smart contract chains that there are today, but it does have the benefit of having strong partnerships. Some of these include the previously mentioned NBA hotshot NFT collection, Samsung & Ubisoft (on their website). Having good partnerships helps increase adoption from people who are outside of crypto. The main value of Flow will come from Dapps being built and running on it, such as Cryptokitties which is planning on making a move onto Flow. If this chain can manage to do so or will join the more obscure Dapp focused smart contract chains is left to be seen.
- Fast and cheap
- Very developer friendly
- New and early in development
- Dev team still holds majority of nodes
