Fantom (FTM) eyes two-year high ahead of Sonic upgrade

Fantom (FTM) is one of the altcoins looking to break higher in coming weeks.

This outlook continues to strengthen as the layer-1 platform moves closer to its mainnet launch of the Sonic upgrade. It also materializes as the accumulation currently happening across the crypto market signals a potential bull breakout.

Fantom edging closer to Sonic

Fantom’s Sonic upgrade is set for spring. With testnets launched in October last year, anticipation for what it could mean for the platform is high.

At its core, Sonic aims to enhance the Fantom Virtual Machine with new smart contracts language while cutting on costs and increasing throughput. Targets include 2,000 transactions per second (TPS) on the mainnet and a 90% decrease for storage costs.

Overall, Fantom is looking to make inroads in the broader DeFi and web3 gaming sectors via its EVM-compatible FVM.

In a recent post, layer-1 blockchain’s said a closed testnet for the highly anticipated Sonic upgrade had achieved 10,000 TPS with ERC-20 transfers only.

Other key milestones are 2,000 transactions per second with realistic traffic and 4,000 TPS with token swaps. The time to finality for the ERC-20 token transfers was 1.6 seconds; token swaps 1.3 seconds and realistic traffic 1 second.

Fantom co-founder Andre Cronje commented on the developments via a post on X:

FTM price surges ahead of Sonic upgrade

Fantom price has a 24-hour range of $0.8141 – $0.9452 at the time of writing, the intraday peak coming as FTM spiked more than 5% earlier on Monday.

A look at CoinGecko data shows FTM/USD has increased by over 40% in the past two weeks. Meanwhile, the current price near $0.9 is more than 126% up over the last 30 days. Last week, FTM price rose to above $0.97 – just shy of the psychological $1 level and a new two-year high.

In the past 24 hours, Fantom has recorded a double-digit spike in trading volume. Data shows more than $636 million FTM have been traded in this period, with the coin’s market cap rising to $2.5 billion.

Despite this, the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi protocols on Fantom has remained plateaued since the bear market dip in 2022.

The Sonic upgrade could spark a new wave of network growth, likely adding to the broader market outlook. FTM price reached an all-time high of $3.46 on October 28, 2021.