What is Flow?

Flow is a quick, decentralised, and developer-friendly blockchain. It intends to spearhead a new generation of applications, games, and the digital assets that fuel them. Flow is a Layer-1 blockchain created by the team that created blockchain experiences including CryptoKitties, Dapper Wallet, and NBA Top Shot. FLOW is the native currency for the Flow protocol.

A brief history of Flow

Dapper Labs, based in Vancouver, Canada, was founded in 2018. The Dapper Labs team has been working on the production version of the Flow network since the fall of 2019. This includes complete protocol logic implementations for each node type, integration of the Hot Stuff consensus algorithm, and implementation of the crypto libraries required by the protocol. In May, the team released the Flow beta mainnet, enabling production user experiences.

The native token (FLOW) existed on beta mainnet to instantiate user accounts and provide a minimum balance for users to conduct their first transactions. At this point, all fees were minimal. Future developments include the incorporation of epochs (the ability for new nodes to join and leave the protocol), complete challenge arbitration by consensus nodes, protocol performance improvements, and programming language upgrades (Cadence).

Flow intends to give scalability solutions and applications for apps, games, and other digital assets. It is essentially a decentralised, fast, and developer-focused blockchain. Flow blockchain has a novel, multi-role design that focuses on the inherent advantage of scaling without sharding.

Flow’s initial supply was 1.25 billion tokens. This excludes the additional allocation of 250 million FLOW tokens, half of which went into the foundation reserve for staking and delegation purposes alone, and the other half was used for collateral subsidies to secondary protocols. These tokens are not in the circulating supply due to the anticipated lockout.

Notable investors in the Flow ecosystem include Andreessen Horowitz, Block Venture, Coatue, Google Ventures (GV), Coinbase Ventures, and Betaworks, among others.

How Flow works

Flow introduces pipelining to blockchains by categorising validator node operations into four categories: collection, consensus, execution, and verification. This means there is a vertical rather than horizontal division of work between nodes.

Essentially, every validator node still participates in transaction validation, but only at one of the levels of validation. As a result, they may specialise for a certain level and improve the efficiency of a specific stage.

This gives Flow the opportunity to grow to a much higher throughput at a lower cost and at the same time Flow is able to retain a shared execution space for all of its network operations. In terms of smart contracts, databases and user accounts on Flow they can always be in communication with each other in a single atomic, consistent, isolated, and durable (ACID) transaction. Which guarantees a better user experience and complete composability, letting developers easily build on the work of others.

As of today, you can engage with Flow via NBA Top Shot or by purchasing digital collectables from the VIV3 NFT marketplace and other functioning blockchain apps. Developers may start experimenting with Flow and constructing their DApps by utilising the many built-in tools.

The protocol enables developers to design novel user experiences that use the network's characteristics. Notably, Flow's design focuses on modularity. Developers that build on top of common resources such as an existing user base, data, security, and running code are referred to as composing.

This developer-friendly method enables users to build on one another's work and construct sophisticated multi-layered DApps. In addition, the platform provides ACID (atomic, consistent, isolated, and durable) technology and upgradeable smart contracts. As a result, developers may test smart contracts and enhance the protocol.

What is Flow used for?

The FLOW token is the native currency for the Flow network and the apps, games, and smart contracts built on top of the Flow blockchain, and thus the currency is guaranteed to be available for developers and users to transact with on the network. Developers can integrate FLOW directly into their apps for peer-to-peer payments, charging for services, or consumer rewards. FLOW can also be held, transferred, or transacted peer-to-peer.

Token holders can earn rewards by staking their FLOW as a security deposit and securing the network through running validator nodes – or delegating their stake to other validator nodes.

Small amounts of FLOW tokens are also required as gas for every activity on the network – from new user accounts to storage for assets and smart contracts.

Finally, FLOW is required for the creation and usage of all other tokens on the network – to pay for storage and/or serve as collateral. More details on this can be found in the Flow whitepapers linked below.