Fantom Leaps 14% Ahead of Sonic Upgrade as Bitcoin, Ethereum Struggle

It would seem Fantom (FTM) hodlers have mastered the Zen mindset and don’t want to know about corrections, market FUD, or any of the scary news filling today’s market analysis.

Launched in 2018, Fantom is a Layer 1 meant to compete with Ethereum. It uses a single consensus layer, called Lachesis Protocol, to support the creation of multiple execution chains.

The FTM token has registered a remarkable 13.7% spike in the last 24 hours and is the best performing token of the top 100 by market capitalization. It stands in stark contrast to the overall market performance, with 87 out of the top 100 tokens having seen a downturn in the past day.

Yesterday painted a different picture, with nearly 90% of tokens registering gains. However, today's landscape is a sharp contrast, with only 13 tokens in the green. Among these, Fantom leads the pack, rising from $1.04 to $1.18 within the last 24 hours. This upward trajectory is not a recent phenomenon; the coin was trading at $0.76 just seven days ago, marking a substantial 55.6% increase in value over the past week.

Interestingly enough, the worst performer in the top 100 is the meme coin PEPE, with a 11.6% drop in the last 24 hours and a 17% decline over the past week.

Just weeks ago, Pepe was leading the memecoin frenzy registering two digit gains in 24-hour trading sessions. However—as we can see from this example—memecoins are extremely volatile and can go from the best performing to the worst performing token of the crypto markets in no time.

Fantom's bullish run may be attributed to anticipation surrounding its upcoming network upgrade. The Sonic upgrade, set to transition from testnet to mainnet in the spring of 2024, is expected to significantly boost transaction processing speeds. The Sonic mainnet will replace the existing mainnet Opera, which currently has a throughput of just 3.2 transactions per second.

In contrast, the closed testnet with simulated traffic has demonstrated a maximum theoretical throughput of 2,000 transactions per second (TPS) with a time to finality of 1.1 seconds. This upgrade could potentially revolutionize the network's efficiency and attract more developers to the platform.

The new Fantom Virtual Machine (FVM) is another development that caught the eye of investors and enthusiasts. The team behind Fantom has said it will translate the Ethereum Virtual Machine’s (EVM) code into Fantom's native format, enabling developers to transition smoothly and enjoy faster execution times. This could potentially increase network adoption and further boost Fantom's performance.

From a technical perspective, FTM has been on a bullish streak since late January, showing no signs of correction throughout the year, unlike what Bitcoin, Ethereum and other tokens have experienced. The gap between the EMA10 and EMA55 (the average prices of the last 10 and 55 days) indicates rapid growth, and the relative strength index (RSI) suggests a buying frenzy with 77 bulls and 33 bears in a 100-person market scenario.

Currently, FTM is testing a pressure zone between $1 and $1.10, a level that served as support on three occasions between September 2021 and April 2022. This is the first time since then that the coin has reached such high prices.

If it fails to break this resistance and finally corrects to a lower point of the chart, immediate support seems to be around $0.90. However, if it manages to break through —keeping its bullish momentum— the next target could be around the $1.5 area.

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