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.
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.
Flow aims to be the foundation behind mainstream consumer applications that will scale crypto from its current user base to the billions.
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.
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.
$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.
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:
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).
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.
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.
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
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:
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:
I’m a creator/artist and I want to mint NFTs on Flow. What options are there?
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:
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 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:
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:
Flow is the home for sports NFTs and the success of NBA Top Shot has paved the way for an entire ecosystem including:
Following Adidas' hugely successful "Into the Metaverse" campaign... it seems NFTs are coming for fashion. Here's the landscape on Flow:
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.
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.
What's similar to Uniswap on Flow?
Uniswap is a decentralized exchange enabling people to swap fungible tokens on the Ethereum network.
Is there a launchpad like BSCPad, Polkastarter etc. for Flow?
What fungible tokens exist on Flow?
What’s the USDT/USDC (Stablecoin) of Flow?
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.
There are other players who are also building tools for DAOs including Emerald City (first DAO on Flow), Wonder and Collab Land
Other DAOs on Flow (or coming at somepoint in the future) include Blocto, Flovatar, Geniace, Mantle Finance, Starly and THiNG.FUND
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.
Flow can be purchased on crypto exchanges such as the ones listed here.
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.
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.
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
To learn more about Flow, check out the Flowverse community :)
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.
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!
Nope - we are Flow enthusiasts who love the mission and vision of Flow Blockchain and want to enhance the discoverability of all Flow projects.
Please find below a list of official Flow Blockchain resources: