To increase safety, Phantom has reduced the stock payment by 90%
The Fantom Foundation has confirmed that it has cut the self-governing requirement for verifiers on Layer-1 blockchain Fantom by 90%, six months after the admin vote.
In a Jan. 15 post on X, the Phantom Foundation said the changes were made “immediately,” following a vote that ends in June 2023. According to the changes, the Phantom (FTM) level cap has been reduced from 500,000 FTM to 50,000 FTM, currently priced at $19,500. .
The foundation says the change strengthens Phantom's security and makes it “more accessible than ever” to run an authenticator.
“Having more verifiers makes the network more challenging for malicious actors to attack,” the foundation said on January 15.
2/ First, it is important to note that the priority for any decentralized network is to increase the number of validators running the network.
By having more authenticators, the network becomes more challenging for malicious actors to attack
— Fantom Foundation (@FantomFDN) January 15, 2024
Fantom validators work by collecting transactions and sharing them with other validators. Conclusiveness occurs when at least two-thirds of the network validators agree.
The foundation says the verification boost will allow transactions to be more selective and get to verifiers faster.
But the foundation has already warned that the increase in the verifier count could be a concern, saying it won't slow down the Phantom network.
“As long as new validators run on quality hardware, the network will be more secure and keep 1-2 seconds to completion, so there will be no drop in performance.”
Phantom Allo emphasized that the low stake requirements do not pose a security risk because its authority to validate transactions is proportional to the amount held, not the number of verifications it processes.
“A validator with 1 million FTM stoks will have the same power as twenty smaller validators, each with 50k FTM stos,” Fantom explains.
7/ Still, we expect the existing large validators to complete at least 2/3 of the validators required for TX in no time.
Therefore, even if many small validators now enter the Phantom network, performance will not be affected.
— Fantom Foundation (@FantomFDN) January 15, 2024
Phantom has been proposing to lower the minimum FTM rate to run a node since at least February 2022.
Data shows that Phantom currently has 58 validators ensuring the security of the network, according to Fantom's block explorer.
In contrast, Ethereum, the largest Layer 1 smart contract platform, has more than 1.1 million validators, while Cardano, Solana, and Avalanche hosted 2,589, 1,876, and 1,119 validators in June 2023, respectively, citing Messari data.
Related: Fantom starts paying developers to generate gas bills
Three months ago, the Phantom Foundation's official wallet was hacked for $550,000, which the organization says is less than 1% of the foundation's funds.
The Phantom Foundation paid $1.7 million to the security researcher who identified additional risks associated with the hack and immediately notified the foundation. The blockchain company says they have helped mitigate potential damages of $170 million.
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