Flow (FLOW)

Overview & History

Flow is a blockchain created by Dapper Labs that aims to make it easy for developers to build decentralized applications and businesses. Flow uses a multi-role architecture design to scale the network instead of sharding. One of the fundamental reasons Dapper Labs opted to shift away from Ethereum and build its own general-purpose blockchain was to avoid the complexity of sharding. Flow asserts that its scaling-without-sharding strategy will improve network speed and throughput while preserving composability standards and a developer-friendly, ACID-compliant environment.

History

Dapper Labs was founded in 2018 and is based in Vancouver, BC.

As of Fall 2019, the team at Dapper Labs has been building the production version of the Flow network. This includes complete implementations of protocol logic for each of the various node types, integration of the Hot Stuff consensus algorithm, and implementation of the various crypto libraries and signatures the protocol requires. The team released the Flow Beta Mainnet in May which supports production user experiences for us and its partners.

For Beta Mainnet the native token (FLOW) existed on the network to instantiate user accounts and provide a minimal balance for user to conduct their first transactions. All fees were a small nominal amount at this stage. Future development will include integration of epochs (the ability for new nodes to join and leave the protocol), full challenge arbitration by the consensus nodes, performance improvements to the protocol, and upgrades to the programming language (Cadence).

Roadmap

Flow Developer Preview

Date: December 2019. Type: Smart Contract Emulator

Emulator software released to allow the development of smart contracts without access to a full network instance. Used by Dapper Labs to start development of NBA Top Shot.

 

Flow MVP

Date: January 2020

Complete transaction cycle processed by a single instance of each node

 

Dev Portal

Date: March 2020

Onboarding developers to Cadence via hosted hackathon

 

Multi-Node

Date: March 2020

Multiple nodes of each role allowing simple transactions to go on a complete round trip through the network

 

Full Happy Path

Date: April 2020

Complete consensus and execution environment (without slashing)

 

Beta Mainnet v0.1

Date: June 2020. Type: Beta

Beta Mainnet hosting smart contracts/dapps in production with real user data, starting with the NBA collectible experience and associated NFTs.

 

Open Source Licensing

Date: September 2020

The full node implementation is publicly published under an open-source license.

 

Token Generation Event

Date: September 2020. Type: Token Launch

The FLOW token is minted and held by Dapper Labs pending distribution to pre-launch investors and a Community Sale on CoinList.

 

Validator Rewards

Date: November 2020

Node operators are required to stake a number of tokens in order to participate in the network and earn rewards. Token holders can delegate to specific operators to earn a share of rewards. The Slashing Rate is set to 0% until the Slashing mechanisms have been tested for false positives.