Dapper Labs was the original creator behind the Flow blockchain. They are the team behind the ūber-successful and well-known NFT projects Cryptokitties and NBA Top Shot. Founded in 2018, Dapper Labs’ goal is to leverage blockchain technology to bring new forms of digital engagement to users around the world.
Flow was created with the mainstream in mind. As NFTs and P2E gaming exploded, existing Blockchains such as Ethereum wasn’t in a position to handle this adoption due to scaling (low speeds, and high costs).
Instead of waiting around for blockchains to fix their own issues, or for other projects to offer scaling issues, the Dapper Lab’s team decided to capitalize on the opportunity and throw their own name into the hat.
What is Flow blockchain?
Flow is a decentralized blockchain, designed to become the foundation for the next generation of games and applications. Flow is a layer-one blockchain similar to Ethereum and Solana.
What is the FLOW token?
The FLOW token is the native currency for the Flow network. It’s what Ether is to the Ethereum blockchain. It’s the fuel that powers the network. FLOW is used for transactions, fees, securing, and governing the network.
The ecosystem
FLOW has now attracted some of the largest brands, and competent developers into its ecosystem. This has meant the games and applications being built on FLOW are top-tier. This is a huge selling point. The big issue that users find with most alternative blockchains is that despite improvements in speed and affordability, the quality of the product is not the same. It’s common sense, right? Who cares if the blockchain works smoother if the NFTs, games, and communities are subpar?
Brands and companies already endorsing, building on, and using FLOW include everything from sports giants NBA and UFC, to gaming powerhouses Ubisoft, and crypto industry leaders Binance and Circle.
With this type of backing and support, the ecosystem would appear to expect a very bright future. At the end of the day, oftentimes the quality of a product is determined by the quantities and quality of people using it. If the aforementioned powerhouses make FLOW their blockchain of choice for building their apps, games and NFTs, how would FLOW stack up to the dominant layer ones?
What makes Flow special?
Flow was designed for the mainstream. The onboarding is seamless and barriers to entry compared to other blockchains are minimal. Smart contracts on Flow are written in a very easy and safe programming language called Cadence. This makes it a very accessible blockchain for developers. Where the developers go, the users will flow. Flow is able to do this without compromising on its decentralization or scalability.
What is Flow’s Multi-role Architecture?
Most blockchains looking to solve the scalability issues focus on offloading transactions from the main chain and reducing strain on the main network. A typical way this is done is through sharding which we’ve discussed before. However, there can be issues with sharding. This is where Flow comes in.
Flow has something called a ‘multi-role architecture’. This means it has multiple node types, each with a specific purpose: collection nodes, consensus nodes, verification nodes, and execution nodes. We won’t dive in and explain this process now. But in short, having specific nodes for different tasks is how Flow is able to address the scalability issues we mentioned above.
