Ethereum users guide to Flow Blockchain

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Ethereum users guide to Flow Blockchain
Written by James and Nish (co-founders, Flowverse)
Original Publish Date: 24th Feb 2022

What is this guide?

This guide has been written and edited by James and Nish - founders of Flowverse. Flowverse is an independent central hub for Flow Blockchain covering all aspects of the ecosystem and enabling people to easily discover NFTs, applications, companies and projects building on Flow.

In this report, we aim to introduce Ethereum and other layer-1 blockchain users to what's happening on Flow Blockchain. This includes how to get involved, covering some key misconceptions as well as discussing leading applications and infrastructure.

Disclaimers

  • There is so much happening on Flow Blockchain that we cannot cover every amazing project in this report
  • We draw comparisons between the category-leading (most well-known) dApps on Ethereum to similar dApps on Flow throughout this report. The rationale is that this could be useful for people looking to get into the Flow ecosystem with experience on other chains. It is however important to note that (1) most Flow projects are unique and innovative in their own right ie they are not copy-pastas of Ethereum projects and (2) these can be pretty rough comparisons
  • This guide is not an endorsement of any project mentioned
  • All content provided herein on our website, hyperlinked sites, associated applications, forums, blogs, social media accounts and other platforms is for your general information only, procured primarily from third-party sources. Flowverse does not warrant the accuracy, security and up-datedness of this information. The information should not be construed as professional or financial advice of any kind. Any use or reliance on our content and services is solely at your own risk and discretion

1 - Introduction to Flow Blockchain

What is Flow Blockchain?

Flow is a fast, decentralized, and developer-friendly layer-1 blockchain. It is a smart contract platform for developers to build powerful, secure, and scalable Web3 apps including NFTs, fungible tokens, DAOs, DeFi and more.

Flow was created by Dapper Labs, the team behind CryptoKitties, to solve problems they had scaling CryptoKitties on the Ethereum network.

  • The CTO of Flow, Dieter Shirley, created the ERC-721 NFT standard on Ethereum and coined the term ‘NFT’

Flow aims to be the foundation behind mainstream consumer applications that will scale crypto from its current user base to the billions.

  • Despite widespread news coverage, the total number of NFT users across all chains globally remains tiny (according to Cryptoslam, there's roughly around 3.8m buyers and 3.2m sellers in the secondary market). It is possible this user-base expands beyond crypto diehards to the >1 billion mainstream users in the coming years, and Flow aims to be at the centre of this.

Flow differs from other blockchains because it was explicitly designed to support games and consumer applications on day one, with the throughput necessary to scale to millions of active users.

  • It has high profile partnerships across sport and entertainment with the NBA, UFC, La Liga and NFL all building on Flow, as well as Warner and Universal music group, Billboard, Instagram, Ticketmaster and Mattel.

What is the $FLOW cryptocurrency?

The Flow cryptocurrency ($FLOW) is the native currency for the Flow network. This is the exclusive token for staking, governance, payment of transaction fees and the principal reserve asset on the network.

  • i.e. $FLOW is Flow Blockchain’s equivalent to $ETH for Ethereum or $SOL for Solana

$wFLOW (wrapped $FLOW) is available on Ethereum enabling people to bridge $FLOW from Flow to Ethereum with just a few clicks and deploy the value held in their $FLOW tokens on the Ethereum ecosystem and visa versa.

2 - Misconceptions

Two common misconceptions regarding Flow is that (1) it is the blockchain just for NBA Top Shot and (2) it is centralized by Dapper. Another more general misconception is that all NFTs are bad for the environment.

To briefly address these:

  • NBA Top Shot does make up majority (~90%) of total sales on Flow with $1.04b sales at time of update (25 Nov 2022). However, large projects such as UFC Strike ($19m), La Liga Golazos, FanCraze and NFL All Day ($118m) are expected to reduce this proportion over time. On top of this, there are 1000+ active projects, 8000+ developers and 400+ public projects building on Flow listed on the Flowverse website.
  • Flow Blockchain is progressively decentralizing. As of October 2021, Dapper Labs announced that Flow community validators are now running ~68% of the blockchain network’s consensus nodes.
  • Flow uses an environmentally friendly design via Proof-of-Stake which consumes thousands of times less energy than Proof-of-Work blockchains like Bitcoin and the current Ethereum network. Findings from Deloitte Canada recently revealed minting a Flow NFT uses less energy than a Google search or Instagram post. Here is also a fun game to show how little energy Flow NFTs use, compared to the current Ethereum network.

Looking at the Flow Blockchain sales rankings leaderboard below reveals more information about the vibrant ecosystem of projects building on Flow (see flowverse.co/rankings).

Flowverse Rankings leaderboard showing Primary, Secondary sales of Flow projects at 15/2/2022

2 - Crypto wallets (i.e. what's similar to MetaMask on Flow?)

Most Ethereum users would be familiar with a crypto wallet such as MetaMask to navigate the ecosystem and connect to applications such as Uniswap and Opensea, as well as DeFi protocols.

Likewise, Flow also has crypto wallets which can be used to connect to NFT projects and applications built on Flow. Anecdotally, the two most widely used and integrated wallets across Flow applications and products are Blocto and Dapper.

  • Blocto wallet: Next generation wallet allowing users to explore the crypto world hassle-free with a user-friendly interface. This wallet is used to connect to the vast majority of Flow ecosystem applications. It’s also cross-chain enabling you to store not just Flow NFTs and fungible tokens but also Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, Solana, Polygon and Tron. The Blocto wallet is built by the portto team.
Blocto Wallet (Source: portto)

  • Dapper wallet: This is a crypto wallet built by the Dapper team. It’s very intuitive to use however is limited to relatively few Flow Blockchain applications (though more will be integrated soon). Applications integrated with Dapper wallet include NBA Top Shot, Genies, The Player’s Lounge, NFL All Day, Ballerz/Gaia and UFC Strike.

3 - Block Explorers (i.e. i.e. what's similar to Etherscan on Flow?)

All blockchains require a block explorer that enable users to search for real-time and historical information about a blockchain, including data related to blocks, transactions, addresses, and more.

The most used block explorer on Flow Blockchain is Flowscan. Another block explorer is Big Dipper.

  • These are the Flow ecosystem’s equivalent of Etherscan or BscScan and are both built by third-party companies building within the Flow ecosystem.
Flowscan Block Explorer (Source: Flowscan.org)

Looking beyond block explorers

There are also a set of analytical tools that analyse on-chain data to provide insights into usage and growth of NFTs and applications on Flow Blockchain.

These include simple sales bots which monitor sales of Flow NFT collections on Twitter such as:

Beyond simple sales bots, there are full-feature platforms to monitor user activity and/ or transactions of different Flow NFT collections. Many will be familiar to Ethereum users as they also track NFTs on other blockchains

3 - NFTs

NFT marketplaces (i.e. what's similar to Opensea on Flow?)

On Ethereum the most used marketplace to buy NFTs is Opensea, so naturally a common question asked for those new to the Flow Blockchain community is what is the Opensea equivalent?

Flow NFT marketplaces are currently quite fragmented however general purpose ones do exist and include:

  • Flowverse NFT - A new general marketplace on Flow launched by Flowverse. The first NFT marketplace to support bulk buying of multiple NFTs at once. It also enables buying and selling NFTs with all three major wallets on Flow: Dapper, Blocto and Lilico.
  • Gaia Marketplace - Enables users to seamlessly buy NFTs using a credit card or cryptocurrency via Dapper Wallet.
  • Flowty - On top of offering NFT loans and rentals (NFTfi), Flowty recently built a Flow NFT marketplace. It has support for all Flow wallets and currencies.
  • .find - A place to find people and things on the Flow Blockchain. They are a Flow naming service and gallery with a marketplace for trading Flow NFTs.
  • VIV3 - The first general marketplace on Flow.
  • BloctoBay - Decentralised marketplace built by the Blocto/portto team.
As at 22/2/22, BloctoBay was the fourth highest volume NFT marketplace (Source: DappRadar)

Given the fragmented nature of Flow marketplaces, many applications/ companies that launch Flow NFTs currently opt to operate their own independent marketplaces which exclusively list NFTs they produced or helped launch. Some examples:

  • NBA Topshot - Trade and collect officially licensed NBA highlights called 'Moments'
  • Flovatar - Enables users to create their own fully on-chain PFP
  • Starly - A marketplace and launchpad for your gamified NFT collections
  • nWayPlay - A marketplace for officially licensed IPs such as the Olympics
  • RCRDSHP - Trade, collect music and related digital collectibles
  • Many more

Minting NFTs on Flow

I’m a creator/artist and I want to mint NFTs on Flow. What options are there?

PFPs / avatars

A profile picture, or PFP for short, is a form of NFT that has grown in popularity heavily throughout 2021 culminating in Twitter enabling users to set their Twitter profile picture to an Ethereum NFT. Successful Ethereum PFP collections include Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), CryptoPunks, Doodles, Cool Cats and more.

What PFP can you use on Flow?

On Flow there are a few notable PFPs:

  • Hoodlums: First PFP on Flow, created by Somehoodlum
  • Ballerz: This was the first PFP to gain significant traction on Flow, potentially due to Flow’s association with basketball through NBA Top Shot and sports more broadly.
  • Flovatar: Innovative IP project on Flow that enables people to create their own fully on-chain PFP (Flovatar) and attach accessories known as Flobits.
  • Others include: Party Goobz, Crypto Pharaohs, Flunks, DGD Mafia, CryptoPiggos

Going beyond PFP projects, Genies is a leading avatar technology company building on Flow that raised $65m in their Series B in early 2021. They are building a culture-driven marketplace for digital wearables and aspire to become the 'Decentralised Disney', with digital clones and the infrastructure for anyone to create their own avatar ecosystems.

Gaming (play-to-earn and beyond)

Gaming has taken the crypto world by storm, with games such as Axie Infinity and Sorare catching the eyes of many. There are numerous innovative gaming applications being built on Flow such as:

  • Basic Beasts: Collect, evolve, breed and trade beasts
  • Dark Country: A NFT collectible trading card game that’s based in the American Gothic setting inspired by Hearthstone and Magic: The Gathering
  • MotoGP Ignition: Officially licensed MotoGP game
  • The Football Club: A blockchain based football fantasy manager
  • Enemy Metal: Build colonies across vibrant worlds and prepare for the battle against the mysterious Enemy that threatens the peaceful planets of the Sunstar System
  • Zeedz: A play-for-purpose game where players reduce global carbon emissions by collecting plant inspired creatures: Zeedles
  • Olympic Games Jam: Beijing 2022: The official game for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, where users compete in a number of sporting events, including snowboarding and skiing
  • more (see projects)

Music

Music NFTs represent an opportunity to empower creators and disrupt the traditional music industry, which is full of middlemen and streaming services taking an exorbitant proportion of sales revenues. Here are some music applications and NFTs being built on Flow:

  • RCRDSHP: A platform to securely trade music and related digital collectibles
  • TuneGO: An NFT marketplace connecting the music industry to artists e.g. Method Man
  • Unblocked: Enabling music & entertainment brands to build meaningful value for their communities
  • more (see projects)

Sports (Flow is THE blockchain for sports)

Flow is the home for sports NFTs and the success of NBA Top Shot has paved the way for an entire ecosystem including:

  • NFL ALL DAY: Digital video collectibles of officially licensed NFL Moments
  • UFC Strike: Buy, sell, trade, collect officially licensed UFC NFTs
  • LaLiga On Flow: Official digital collectibles of iconic LaLiga Moments
  • FanCraze: Digital video collectibles of officially licensed ICC cricket Moments
  • Canes Vault: The official NFT marketplace for the Miami Hurricanes
  • Fantastec Swap: Discover, collect and swap officially licensed Arsenal FC, Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid CF NFTs
  • Pacific League Exciting Moments β: Collect moments and scenes in the history of Pacific League baseball (Japanese professional baseball league)
  • Raceday NFT: A motorsports NFT marketplace for race fans
  • Sportium: A multi-sports NFT platform with the goal of bringing traditional sports to the Metaverse
  • The Football Club: Blockchain based football fantasy manager
  • The Player's Lounge: An NFT community envisioned by former UGA football players, built for both fans and players alike
  • nWayPlay: Collectors can buy, sell and earn officially licensed Olympic NFTs, etc
  • SportsIcon: Partners with elite athletes e.g. Floyd Mayweather, Romelu Lukaku to release NFT videos, art and moments to their fans
  • San Francisco 49ers, Chicago Bulls, Sacramento Kings, Real Madrid CF have/or are planning to launch NFTs on Flow e.g. NFT tickets, collectibles etc.
  • more (see Flowverse)

Digital Fashion

Following Adidas' hugely successful "Into the Metaverse" campaign... it seems NFTs are coming for fashion. Here's the landscape on Flow:

Metaverse land

The primary player offering digital land on Flow Blockchain is Matrix World. This is a 3D programmable multichain metaverse.

Unlike other 3D world projects, Matrix World released land across two different layer-1s: Ethereum and Flow; selling out 10,000 lands to-date with 50% on Flow and 50% on Ethereum. The drop on Flow has also had solid secondary market traction placing in #3 overall on Flow Blockchain total sales.

A demo space is releasing shortly with a preview of the alpha build available here.

  • Flow/ Dapper own a decent amount of land (108 lands)
Matrix World land map

4 - Beyond NFTs

Though Flow is dominated by NFTs so far, we are starting to see innovative applications extending beyond this. Indeed, Fungible tokens (the equivalent of ERC-20s) can also be built on top of Flow.

Fungible tokens

What's similar to Uniswap on Flow?

Uniswap is a decentralized exchange enabling people to swap fungible tokens on the Ethereum network.

  • The equivalent to Uniswap/ SushiSwap for exchanging fungible tokens built on top of the Flow network is Bloctoswap - which is another application built by the Blocto team
  • IncrementFi and Metapier are other decentralised exchanges on Flow

Is there a launchpad like BSCPad, Polkastarter etc. for Flow?

  • Blocto recently launched an IDO launchpad, with their first sale being the $STARLY token

What fungible tokens exist on Flow?

What’s the USDT/USDC (Stablecoin) of Flow?

  • $FUSD is a USD-backed stablecoin issued as a fungible token on the Flow network
  • $USDC recently came to Flow

DAOs

Dapper acquired Brud in late 2021 for an undisclosed amount with the view to make DAOs more user-friendly and accessible to a new generation of crypto web users on Flow Blockchain.

  • Brud became 'Dapper Collective'
  • Brud’s founder Trevor McFedries is also the co-founder of one of the more popular DAOs on Ethereum called “Friends With Benefits.”

There are other players who are also building tools for DAOs including Emerald City (first DAO on Flow), Wonder and Collab Land

  • Emerald City also built a proof of attendance protocol on Flow, called 'FLOAT' which enables people to seamlessly be rewarded NFTs as proof they attended particular events

Other DAOs on Flow (or coming at somepoint in the future) include Blocto, Flovatar, Geniace, Mantle Finance, Starly and THiNG.FUND

DeFi

DeFi is still very early on Flow, and so far is centred on NFTfi (DeFi applied to NFTs). However, eventually once there are more fungible tokens on Flow it could expand beyond this.

  • Flowty -  Flow Blockchain based P2P collateralized NFT lending, launched on mainnet on 7th Feb 2022
  • Incrementfi - Decentralized Money Market & more on Flow blockchain, aiming to build the liquidity engine for the Flow ecosystem
  • NFTfi - Currently on Ethereum but have stated people will soon be able to get a loan on your NBA Topshot and any other Flow based NFT through NFTfi

Name services i.e. what's similar to ENS/ Unstoppable domains on Flow?

  • .find - domain service that also has a gallery and NFT marketplace
  • Flowns - the first decentralized domain name service on Flow

5 - Buying and selling the Flow token

Crypto Exchanges

Flow can be purchased on crypto exchanges such as the ones listed here.

Through Moonpay

You can use Moonpay natively within the Blocto wallet mobile app to buy $FLOW with a credit card or other payment systems (such as ApplePay, Google Pay).

Some users report issues purchasing $FLOW through Moonpay - in this situation buying $FUSD through Moonpay and then swapping it to $FLOW on Bloctoswap can help. Link to Bloctoswap can be found here.

Using Bloctoswap

  • Go to Uniswap and trade for $USDT
  • Transfer your $USDT to your Blocto wallet $ETH/$USDT address
  • Then, use Bloctoswap (link above) and click 'Teleport'. Connect your Blocto wallet + MetaMask
  • Teleport your ERC-20 $USDT for some $tUSDT on Flow
  • Then swap/trade the $tUSDT to $FLOW

Here is a tutorial on the above method.

Additionally, here is a useful video tutorial by EarlyAdopterNFT on how to swap $ETH for $FLOW and $FUSD.

Also, here are some helpful instructions to acquire or sell the $FLOW/$FUSD token, written by Flow Blockchain DeFi project Flowty.

6 - Developers

If you're a developer and you want to start checking out Flow, we recommend these resources: 

Start building on Flow here

Flow Developer resources

Apply for a job in the Flow ecosystem

Jacob Tucker (Founder of Emerald City DAO) Youtube Tutorials

7 - What's Flowverse?

To learn more about Flow, check out the Flowverse community :)

What is Flowverse?

Flowverse is an independent central hub and discoverability platform for everything in the Flow Blockchain ecosystem. It was built by the Flow community for the Flow community. We provide information on Flow projects, upcoming NFT drops, project rankings, jobs and investors, as well as detailed research in the form of AMAs and research reports. To do this we make frequent Twitter posts, have an email newsletter, a website and of course, discussion in our community discord. Official links to these can be found below.

What is the Flowverse Discord? What can I do there?

The Flowverse Discord is a place for people to discover Flow Blockchain projects and chat/ ask questions to the broader Flow/ Flowverse community. Here you can share your unbiased opinion on upcoming Flow NFTs, projects and more!

Useful Flowverse Resources

  • Website - upcoming drops, project list, investors directory, rankings and more
  • Flowverse Research Hub - AMAs and articles covering Flow projects in more detail
  • Twitter - announcements and infographics of all things Flow
  • Newsletter - weekly news on the Flow ecosystem
  • Jobs board - job listings by companies/startups building on Flow
  • Discord - this is where the Flowverse community hangs out and chat all things Flow!

Are you owned by Flow Blockchain?

Nope - we are Flow enthusiasts who love the mission and vision of Flow Blockchain and want to enhance the discoverability of all Flow projects.

7 - Official Flow Resources

Please find below a list of official Flow Blockchain resources:


8 - Additional reading