Fantom price sell-off continues as Sonic testnet goes live

Fantom token continued its downward trend on Friday, Sept. 6, after the Sonic testnet went live and its transactions rose.

Fantom (FTM) price was trading at $0.387, its lowest swing since Aug. 20 and 27% below its highest point in August. In a statement on X, Sonic Labs noted that the testnet was live, a process expected to last for a few months.

Data on the testnet website shows that the network had processed over 106 million transactions. It is handling about 11 transactions per second, with the average gas per second being around 335,000.

The time to finality — the time between when a transaction is submitted to a node and when it is confirmed — was just 0.70 seconds. These statistics make Sonic one of the fastest Ethereum Virtual Machines in the industry.

The developers hope this upgrade will attract more creators to build on the ecosystem. In line with this, they have launched a $27 million bounty program to support developers in areas like payments, lending, stablecoins, and gaming.

After the testnet phase ends, Fantom’s FTM token will transition to S. This upgrade comes at a time when Fantom has lost momentum and market share in the crypto industry. Its market cap has fallen from over $7 billion to $1 billion.

Data from DeFi Llama shows that the total value locked in the ecosystem has dropped to $70 million from a record high of over $7.8 billion. Some of the biggest players in its ecosystem are Beethoven X, WigoSwap, SpookySwap, and Beefy. 

Fantom also has a small market share in the decentralized exchange industry. Its DEX platforms handled over $57.9 million in the last seven days, making it the 26th-largest chain in the industry.

Sonic’s biggest challenge will be the competition in the industry. In addition to other top chains like Tron (TRX) and Solana (SOL), it will compete with layer-2 networks like Arbitrum and Base.

Fantom price under pressure

The FTM token price has crashed in the past few months. It peaked at $1.2267 in March and has dropped by over 68% to $0.40. It has remained below the 50-day moving average and the upper side of the descending channel. 

Therefore, the path of least resistance for Fantom is downward, with the next point to watch being $0.30, 21% below Friday’s level.