What is Flow Blockchain?
Nearly Consortium levels of NFT hype here.
Dapper Labs, the company behind the NFT-focused blockchain Flow, is launching a $725 million fund to attract developers to the network.
Flow: NFT-specific blockchain
Flow is an interesting experiment. The web3 world is continuing to discover that it’s a lot harder to build a developer ecosystem than it is to build a platform.
The Flow blockchain launched by NBA Top Shot creator Dapper Labs is looking to onboard more crypto developers and it’s built up a dedicated ecosystem fund to coax more builders onboard.
Gigantic NFT Fund
The fund, which is backed by Dapper’s venture arm and Dapper investors Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Coatue, Union Square Ventures, Coinfund, Digital Currency Group and Cadenza Ventures, among others, is aiming to incentivize more crypto devs to choose Flow as the blockchain they build their projects on with investments, token grants and development support.
Dapper Labs uses the power of play to deliver blockchain-based experiences and digital collectibles that are made for you and ready for the real world. So here you should think NBA and UFC, among others. NFTs could be very lucrative at the intersection of Sports and celebrities.
Flow is a fast, decentralized, and developer-friendly blockchain, designed as the foundation for a new generation of games, apps, and the digital assets that power them. It is based on a unique, multi-role architecture, and designed to scale without sharding, allowing for massive improvements in speed and throughput while preserving a developer-friendly, ACID-compliant environment.
It’s important I think you read a16z on why they doubled down on Flow recently here.
a16z are well on their way to having a monopoly share in the future of NFT platforms. To understand a16z’s recent huge hits go here. They include:
AirBnb
Coinbase
Roblox
Robinhood
Let’s just look at the chart:
A lot of these like Affirm or Robinhood you’ll notice, have very volatile stocks. Coinbase is one of the most volatile stocks in the world since many investors see it tethered to Bitcoin and likely the best proxy. Cathie Wood included sees it that way in 2022.
For Flow to be among the chosen ones of a16z then is quite telling.
Dapper Labs have also an interesting case of investors themselves:
Flow, the blockchain platform started by NBA Top Shot maker Dapper Labs, has announced a $725 million fund to invest in applications and growth for its blockchain ecosystem. It’s a massive fund to me, and could really make NFTs take off at a certain point.
Dapper Labs aims to make the blockchain behind NBA Top Shot and CryptoKitties the platform of choice for plenty more NFT experiences to come.
Dapper Labs already has a real hold on major brands inside the NFT spectrum.
a16z itself first invested in Dapper over three years ago when they were working on CryptoKitties. CryptoKitties pioneered an exciting new NFT experience, but also exposed the limitations of the technology of the time, including complex user interfaces and high transaction fees. The Dapper team decided to double down, building a new blockchain called Flow and a new marquee application on top of Flow called NBA Top Shot.
You may remember 2017?
Imagine this: You launch a hugely successful decentralized application (dapp) on Ethereum, but your game is so popular, it renders the blockchain itself almost unusable.
Sound far fetched? That’s the story of CryptoKitties, a hugely viral trading game launched in 2017 that allowed users to buy, collect and breed digital cats.
Fast forward to 2021, NFTs went viral in Bitcoin’s bull market, more or less the 2nd big bull market as far as mainstream audiences are concerned.
Dapper Labs is the original creator of Flow, the blockchain ecosystem that powers its NBA Top Shot, NFL All Day, and UFC Strike NFT collectibles platforms. The commercialization of NFTs is clearly big business in the advent of Web3, whatever it may be.
Flow empowers developers to build thriving crypto- and crypto-enabled businesses. Applications on Flow can keep consumers in control of their own data; create new kinds of digital assets tradable on open markets accessible from anywhere in the world; and build open economies owned by the users that help make them valuable.
This is about a so-called ecosystem fund for Web3. These firms have committed funds to help support developers in creating new Flow-based applications in areas like gaming, infrastructure, decentralized finance (DeFi) and content creation. Here there will be significantly overlap between DeFi, content creators (i.e. the Creator Economy) and of course gaming, both real and the playable kind online. This is like an Entertainment fund meets crypto, if you think about it.
Flow today is a decentralized network supported and built on by a growing community of brands and Web3 builders.
Dapper Labs is Vancouver B.C based. Roham Gharegozlou, the CEO of Dapper Labs, is “the man who wants to make NFTs fun,” according to Fortune. Gharegozlou founded the company just three years ago, spinning it out of Axiom Zen, the “venture studio” that he created in 2013 to nurture startups. You might notice many crypto pioneers have ties to Stanford University.
There are four pillars that make Flow unique among existing blockchains:
Multi-role architecture: Flow’s design is unique, allowing the network to scale to serve billions of users without sharding or reducing decentralization of consensus.
Resource-oriented programming: smart contracts on Flow are written in Cadence, an easier and safer programming language for crypto assets and apps.
Developer ergonomics: from upgradeable smart contracts and built-in logging support to the Flow Emulator, this network is designed for results.
Consumer onboarding: Flow was designed for mainstream consumers, with payment onramps catalyzing a safe and low-friction path from fiat to crypto.
How Big is the Platform in 2022?
Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou says that more 7,500 people are building on the platform. One of the fund’s major challenges will be ensuring that popular projects choose Flow over more popular alternatives like Ethereum, which have usability shortcomings but offer projects a vast network of crypto rich NFT buyers.
It’s really hard to verify the size of developers active in Flow.
With NFTs—provably-unique tokens that can be linked to digital content—becoming increasingly popular, a number of major platform players have emerged. It’s too soon to say which will become the dominant ones. But chances are, a16z have done their due diligence. Royal, OpenSea, Coinbase, Autograph (Tom Brady) Flow, etc.… PleasrDAO, Friends With Benefits (FWB) DAO, etc…
Flow’s token is ranked #29 on Coinmarketcap with a current price of $2.83.
"We are thrilled to see such a strong vote of confidence in the Flow ecosystem from some of the world's leading investors in web3 through their commitment to this fund," Roham Gharegozlou, CEO of Dapper Labs, said in a statement on Tuesday, May 10th, 2022.
Dapper has been one of the bigger venture successes in the crypto ecosystem, the startup raised $250 million at a $7.6 billion valuation in September, 2021.
Flow uses a programing language called Cadence Cadence is the first ergonomic, resource-oriented smart contract programming language. Flow appears to have a good technical foundation and crypto talent in engineering.
Tl;dr Powered by Cadence, an original programming language built specifically for digital assets, Flow is an open, decentralized platform created as a solution to the problem of blockchain scalability for consumer applications such as games and digital collectibles.
Flow has started an advertising blitz, so next time you see one of their Ads, now you will know. Watch the YouTube here for another quick summary.
Anyways that’s the gist of it guys, if you enjoy my content and want to see more deep dives support the channel.