The Fantom Foundation recently announced a significant reduction in the self-staking requirements for validators on its primary blockchain, Fantom. This decision, reducing the requirement by 90%, was confirmed in a January 15 post on X, following through on a governance vote concluded in June 2023. The change lowers the staking threshold for Fantom (FTM) from 500,000 FTM to 50,000 FTM, equivalent to about $19,500.
The foundation believes this adjustment will bolster Fantom’s security while simplifying the process of operating validators. With more validators on the network, it becomes increasingly challenging for malicious actors to conduct attacks. Validators on the Fantom network are responsible for grouping transactions and distributing them among peers, with the final consensus achieved when over two-thirds of validators agree.
Despite the increase in the number of validators, the Fantom Foundation assured that network performance would not be compromised. The foundation explained that as long as the new validators use high-quality hardware, the network's security will be strengthened without affecting its performance, which boasts a finalization time of 1-2 seconds.
Fantom also clarified that the reduced staking requirement does not compromise security, as the influence of a validator in confirming transactions depends on their staked amount rather than the number of validators they operate. For instance, a single validator staking 1 million FTM holds equivalent power to 20 smaller validators, each staking 50,000 FTM. This initiative to lower the minimum FTM requirement for running nodes has been under consideration since at least February 2022.
Currently, Fantom's block explorer indicates that there are 58 validators securing its network. In contrast, as of June 2023, Ethereum, the leading layer 1 smart contract platform, has over 1.1 million validators, while other platforms like Cardano, Solana, and Avalanche have 2,589, 1,876, and 1,119 validators, respectively, per Messari data. In other news, three months ago, the Fantom Foundation’s official hot wallet suffered a hack resulting in a loss of $550,000, less than 1% of the foundation's funds. However, a security researcher was awarded $1.7 million for identifying and alerting the foundation to additional risks related to the hack, potentially preventing losses up to $170 million.
