Dapper Labs aims to leverage the blockchain that powers NBA Top Shot and CryptoKitties as the platform of choice for more NFT experiences in the future.
When CryptoKitties, one of the first non-fungible token (NFT) projects, brought the Ethereum blockchain to a standstill at the end of 2017 due to massive bottlenecks, developer Dapper Labs learned that the current generation of blockchains were not built for such a need.
Rather than simply finding another home for a decentralized application (dapp) or waiting for Ethereum scaling solutions to mature, Dapper decided to build a blockchain that she and other developers could rely on.
As a result, Flow was born. Flow is a blockchain specially designed to support things like NFT collectibles and large-scale crypto games.
CryptoKitties will soon be migrating to Flow, and with the overwhelming success of Dappers NBA Top Shot and many other developers who have partnered with Flow amid the NFT boom, it’s clearly one of the leading blockchains for such creativity.
This article will walk you through what flow is, how it works, and how to get FLOW tokens.
What is flow
Flow is a blockchain that is scalable without the use of sharding techniques and enables fast and inexpensive transactions suitable for dapps such as NFT marketplaces and cryptocurrency video games. .
As mentioned earlier, Flow comes from Dapper Labs, which decided to solve its blockchain bottleneck by developing apps specifically for games and other interactive experiences. Dapper currently uses Flow for all of its own projects, including NBA Top Shot, but it’s open to other developers as well.
How does flow work?
Flow uses a PoS model in which validators have to use a certain number of FLOW tokens in order to participate in the network.
Validation tasks are very different from blockchains, however, as Flow divides validation tasks into four different types of nodes: consensus, verification, execution, and collection. All four types of nodes are involved in the validation of any transaction.
Dapper says the division of tasks makes transaction processing more efficient than competing blockchains. It’s an alternative to sharding, or distributing the storage and computing requirements of a blockchain across multiple nodes. Flow doesn’t use sharding, and this is how the blockchain keeps transactions atomic, consistent, isolated, and persistent (ACIDs), according to Dapper, and allows developers to build on each other’s work.
Flow also offers updateable smart contracts that allow the smart contract to be deployed in beta and then improved or repaired before it becomes final and immutable.
You know?
CryptoKitties will move from Ethereum to Flow, where Dapper promises to develop new features for digital cats that can breed and use in future Flow-based games.
What is special about Flow?
Flow was designed for the kind of collectable and interactive cryptocurrency experience that is rapidly growing in popularity and could find a much larger audience in the years to come. NBA Top Shot has shown the potential for a blockchain-powered collecting experience to generate massive amounts of money and grab mainstream attention. It’s just a flow build experience, and more to come.
Flow + NBA + UFC
NBA Top Shot was a complete success, but Dapper Labs has other well-known partners in stabilizing it. The company has agreements with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and Dr. Suess signed to develop the cryptocurrency collecting experience in the same direction. In addition to these brands, Dapper also has partners such as the giant Samsung, the game publisher Ubisoft and the Warner Music Group.
What can you do with Flow?
Right now, as a user, you can interact with Flow via NBA Top Shot or by purchasing artwork from the VIV3-NFT marketplace, as well as other active apps based on blockchain. Developers can use several built-in tools to experiment with Flow and create their own dapps.
You know?
Dapper Labs raised a $ 12 million investment round in August 2020 with the participation of a number of current NBA players including Andre Iguodala and Spencer Dinwiddie.
future
In late 2020 and early 2021, the NFT collections exploded significantly. Flow was one of the platforms that benefited the most from this growth. Not only is NBA Top Shot by Dapper Labs one of the most successful crypto dapps, Flow also reported a significant increase in developer inquiries in the first few weeks of 2021. In short, NBA Top Shot is a successful proof of concept for Dapper’s custom built blockchain, and now other developers want to take advantage of that infrastructure.