• Fantom Foundation has reduced the validator staking requirement from 500,000 FTM to 50,000 FTM, a 90% drop, to increase decentralization.
• More validators on the Fantom network will enhance security and speed, providing faster transaction bundling without slowing the network.
• Despite the staking reduction, FTM prices remain down 89% from their October 2021 peak, unaffected by the recent changes.

The layer-1 blockchain network Fantom had made a major change to its staking system in an effort to become more decentralized. 

The Fantom Foundation recently reduced the validator self-stake requirement, making network participation much more accessible.

On January 15, the Fantom Foundation announced that it had reduced the validator staking requirement from 500,000 FTM to 50,000 FTM tokens. The 90% drop followed a governance vote, it added. 

Fantom Staking More Accessible 

The Foundation explained that having more validators was a key priority for any decentralized network. 

More validators also make it increasingly challenging for malicious actors to launch an attack, it added.

Moreover, transactions will reach a validator faster as there are more from which to choose, resulting in faster transaction bundling. 

The Foundation does not think that more validators will slow down the network. 

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“As long as new validators are running on quality hardware, the network will be more secure and won’t see any downgrade in performance as it maintains the 1–2 second time to finality.”

Smaller validators that can now participate with just 50,000 FTM will become a vital part of the ecosystem.

However, this reduced amount is still a chunk of change at current token prices, equating to an investment of around $19,500. Previously, validators had to stump up ten times that amount to participate. 

A validator’s power to confirm transactions is proportional to their stake amount and not the number of validators a given person runs, it noted. 

Fantom is a fast, scalable, and secure layer-1 blockchain platform that utilizes a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) based consensus mechanism. 

It uses a Lachesis proof-of-stake consensus where validators confirm transactions locally and share transaction batches. Batches are finalized after 2/3 of validators receive and agree.

In essence, more Fantom validators with lower stakes aim to improve decentralization without reducing network speed or security.

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FTM Price Outlook 

The network’s native token, FTM, has declined 1.4% on the day to trade at $0.389 at the time of press. Moreover, it has retreated 30% from its yearly peak of $0.557 in late December. 

Furthermore, the staking reduction has not influenced FTM prices, which remain down 89% from their October 2021 all-time high of $3.26.

Fantom has $74 million in DeFi total value locked. This is a 90% drop from its TVL peak in March 2022, according to DeFiLlama.

In August, the Fantom-based SpiritSwap DEX announced it would shut down the platform due to the fallout from the Multichain hack.