What Is Flow: Complete Overview of the Flow Blockchain

Series of lockdowns imposed by the 2020 pandemic pushed us ever closer to working and playing from home. In the first half of 2021 alone, blockchain gaming brought in over a quarter of a billion dollars, making it an important part of this way of life.

Gamers are clamoring for new gaming platforms, and developers are rethinking the tools they previously utilized to build these platforms. Look at the Flow blockchain, one of the protocols that was formed out of this reevaluation.

What is Flow Blockchain?

Gaming and virtual entertainment were key inspirations for the Flow blockchain project. It’s a new type of ledger that’s being considered as an alternative to the Ethereum blockchain.

Dapper Labs, the company that developed the massively successful blockchain game CryptoKitties in 2017, is also the company behind Flow. Following a $11 million fundraising round, Dapper Labs introduced Flow in 2019, formerly known as Axiom Zen.

The creators of Flow, Mikhael Naayem, Roham Gharegozlou, and Dieter Shirley, are all Canadians. They are the driving force behind Flow. Aiming to improve the consensus process of other blockchains, they developed a new protocol.

Scalability

Flow’s creators aimed to handle the issue of scalability while maintaining decentralization and high security when developing the platform. Almost every blockchain protocol has this as its end objective. Following the success of their Cryptokitties project, the Dapper Labs team was obliged to find a solution to the scaling dilemma. Ethereum couldn’t keep up with the influx of new players flocking to the game.
With a prototype capable of processing about 1,000 transactions per second, Flow sees the project on track to meet its target in 2019. (TPS). The Ethereum network, on the other hand, has a throughput of just 13-15 TPS, making it ineffective for large-scale applications. There is a goal of 10,000 TPS for the Flow system.

Costs of doing business

Gas costs are the fees that blockchain users must pay in order to complete transactions and effectively execute smart contracts. Once a contract is signed and the network is busy, a one-time gas price is charged.
ETH tokens are used to pay the gas fees on the Ethereum network. As the price of Ethereum rises, so does the average cost. When it comes to calculating fees, the current average is roughly 10 USD, or about 0.0055 Etherium (ETH) (over 12 CAD).
Flow’s developers were dissatisfied with Ethereum’s high gas prices. They didn’t want to sacrifice affordability, so they came up with a plan to eliminate transaction costs altogether.
Transactions on the Flow blockchain incur two costs: one for creating an account (0.001 FLOW 3 cents) and the other for executing contracts (0.000001 FLOW 1 penny). Flow is practically free to use because of fees like this.

The Technology Behind Flow: How does it work?

https://www.onflow.org/primer

The FLOW cryptocurrency powers the Flow blockchain. FLOW can be used as the principal currency for transactions in decentralized applications and developers can earn rewards for doing so (dApps). However, developers must pay a charge in FLOW to establish their own unique cryptocurrency on Flow if they so choose.

To become a node, users must hold FLOW tokens and stake them. Computers that are part of the Flow network are called nodes. This machine sends data to other network nodes. It necessitates a constant internet connection and the operation of the Flow application. A percentage of the transaction costs are paid to these users in the form of newly generated FLOW tokens.

There are four main types of nodes on the Flow blockchain: collection, consensus, execution, and verification nodes. Through the division of labor, each node takes part in the transaction validation process, which improves throughput.

Cadence: The Programming Language of Flow

Cadence is a programming language designed specifically for smart contracts. Static type system robustness, functions and transactions with built-in pre- and post-conditions, and capability-based security are only a few of its characteristics. With Swift and Rust, two of the quickest programming languages as a source, Cadence’s syntax was inspired. This was designed to be easy to use for programmers.

Some Projects on the Flow Blockchain

More successful initiatives are following in the footsteps of Cryptokitties, which paved the way for the Flow blockchain. Decentralized financial exchanges (DEXs), games, and markets are a few examples.

“Chainmonsters” is an MMO/cross-platform RPG that lets you collect, fight and exchange digital monsters across a variety of devices.

Flow Blockchain’s first decentralized exchange, BloctoSwap

One of the world’s leading NFT exchanges, Blockparty now fully enables the minting and trading of NFTs on Flow.

There are many advantages to developing dApps with viral potential using Cadence and Flow. Two examples of NFT projects that involve well-known celebrities and swiftly spread throughout the community include applications that allow music artists and athletes to interact with their supporters

Flow Blockchain: A Possibility for the Future?

As the expression goes, the future begins today. However, the rest of the world is still working and playing from the comfort of their own homes. The blockchain industry in particular has a lot of room to expand and innovate to meet the demands of this new way of living The reason isn’t outlandish. From an idea to an enterprise worth billions of dollars in less than a year (nearly CAD 6.1 billion as of this writing). Flow will undoubtedly be a part of our new normal, given the wide adoption it has received from developers and the variety of applications it can serve.

Sources Mentioned
https://www.onflow.org/
https://www.cryptokitties.co/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/funding-crypto-gaming-companies-nears-094722046.html
https://pixelplex.io/blog/flow-vs-ethereum-comparison-best-platforms-for-nft/