As a fully custom layer-1 blockchain built from scratch in 2018, Phantasma has been steadily working on its first major chain upgrade for improved scalability and security. This planned upgrade has been over 1.5 years in the making and includes multiple full code audits performed by highly reputable cyber security firms including Hacken (security partner of Crypto.com, FTX, KuCoin) and Vaultes (trusted by Fortune 500 and government clients). 

With this new chain upgrade, Phantasma is taking a big step on our mission to become the blockchain most loved by gamers and where the most audacious projects leveraging virtual economies and NFTs get built. Phantasma is not a clone of another blockchain; Phantasma has its own virtual machine (PVM) along with a dual token economy (SOUL as governance, KCAL as gas for free transactions). An advanced smart-contract platform, Phantasma has features like 5k transactions per second with infinite side chains for mass scalability and native programmable NFTs (Smart NFTs) that give developers the creative power to design dynamic in-game assets that evolve and enable best-in-class gameplay. 

What’s coming as part of this major upgrade:

  • Code Refactoring – Full refactoring of the codebase, removing technical debt and ensuring the smoothness of future feature additions and upgrades.
  • Security – Along with the code refactoring, the backend cryptography is being fully reworked to provide even higher security while also minimizing maintenance needs. All code is being fully audited by internal and external parties.
  • Decentralization – One of the main points of this upgrade is to accelerate decentralization of Phantasma by making it easier to onboard new block producers. The release will include a new consensus mechanism and improved on-chain governance to enable scalability.
  • New smart-contract debugger and testing framework
  • A new, faster explorer that has been in development for over five months with vastly more data and metrics available. This comes with an improved user-interface.
  • New Wallets – Brand new, user-friendly wallets that have been in development for the past six months. Built for optimal desktop and mobile experiences while maintaining a shared business logic between the two, making for easy backend optimization capabilities.

To ensure maximum development velocity for the coming upgrade, and until the certified audits are completed, Phantasma nodes will be kept in read-only mode and cross-chain swaps will remain disabled. We expect this period of read-only mode with disabled cross-chain swaps to last approximately 8-12 weeks from today. This allows the entire developer team to squarely focus on completing the upgrade of Phantasma as efficiently as possible.

During this period of read-only mode on the Phantasma mainnet, users will be unable to move their tokens to and from the mainnet. However, new dApps and game integrations will not be affected and will continue development on our testnet and locally installed nodes. 

Be assured that on-chain staking rewards continue to accumulate throughout this period. This means that token holders staking their SOUL continue to unlock KCAL rewards every day, Soul Masters continue to unlock their monthly loyalty SOUL rewards – the unique CROWN NFT rewards will land in the wallets of all eligible Soul Masters.

Phantasma continues to hold its token holders and the future growth of the ecosystem as top priorities. That said, Phantasma has zero tolerance for hacking and we will do everything in our power to reduce the risk of security incidents. The reality is that hacking has become all too common in crypto to the point that top-tier audit firms have a backlog. We fully understand that some of our token holders will find it challenging to not be able to transfer assets between blockchains during the upgrade period. We are committed to performing the coming upgrade as soon as the necessary security audits and testing is completed. The process will be handled responsibly and efficiently, and every single person contributing alongside our active community to the growth and development of Phantasma stands together in this situation.

In addition to the multitude of deliverables detailed above, which are contained within the upcoming release, the team has the following priorities and objectives:

  • Phantasma is restructuring and expanding to drive the next phase of growth – In addition to adding multiple new developers to the Phantom Force and core developer team over the last six months, we are excited to say that we are in the middle of a restructuring which includes new executive management with decades of commercial experience in high growth tech companies to drive investments in ecosystem growth and relations. This restructuring and wave of new hires is aimed at aggressively ramping up business development, partnerships, and marketing. A full announcement on this topic is expected to go out in early Q3. 
  • New dApps and Games – Since January of this year, several exciting projects have chosen to build on Phantasma including MYX Metaverse, We Are Girl Squad (WAGS), Wildcard, 1-Up Fun, Stellar Gate, and One World Project – and we are working on several new announcements in the coming weeks and months. Check out this new developer testimonial video to see why developers love Phantasma.
  • New partnerships – To support ecosystem growth, Phantasma is pursuing strategic partnerships with game incubators, investment funds, technical services such as writing smart contracts, and PR/marketing agencies. Public announcements on this are coming soon. 
  • Increased security measures – In addition to the technical work and code audits tied to the upgrade, there are several other measures we are taking to solidify security including (1) Launching a bug bounty program in June (2) Appointment of cyber security experts to the Phantasma advisory board (3) Implementation of mature development processes and best practices concerning security.
  • Decentralized Exchange (DEX) – We continue to do further development and testing of the first DEX on Phantasma. In simple terms, the DEX will help provide liquidity – pools of paired assets – that traders can use to swap one token for another. The DEX will provide tremendous opportunities for token holders to earn rewards for supplying liquidity as well as for new projects on Phantasma to easily create a new token on the network and fund growth.
  • Interoperability – Cross-chain NFT Swaps – Advanced cross-chain features including NFT swapping to Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum, and Polygon. This will enable projects to mint NFTs on Phantasma and sell on other chains or transfer NFTs minted on other chains to Phantasma. For an example of how this capability may be leveraged, let’s say a game integrating with Phantasma wants to do an initial NFT sale of in-game assets to raise funding for the project and build community. The project could mint and sell these NFTs on an Ethereum-based marketplace with high volume like OpenSea and then the NFTs can be transferred to Phantasma to be used in gameplay seamlessly. This enables projects to take advantage of Phantasma’s advanced blockchain with Smart NFTs while benefiting from the high network effects and adoption of multiple chains. 
  • New smart-contract compilers for widely adopted programming languages (C# and Solidity) 
  • Increased developer self-service – In line with our focus on developer enablement, we have been working with community developers to turbocharge our documentation update. This work is progressing rapidly, and will be completed and released before the chain upgrade. This will lower the threshold for getting started developing dApps and games on Phantasma to a point where any moderately experienced developer can jump right in and start coding away.
  • New exchanges – The full audit of the upgraded code is a requirement for multiple top tier exchanges and will expedite ongoing conversations.
  • New website – We are fully rebuilding our already content-rich website to make it faster, more intuitive, fresh, and more attractive. We are aiming to mature the Phantasma brand to match our cutting-edge Smart NFT features and smart-contract platform. Expect sleek, modern and eye-popping design.  
  • New Roadmap – We are finalizing our 2H 2022 into 2023 roadmap which will detail upcoming developments and timing. To be released early Q3. 
  • Ledger Wallet Application Integration – The integration is already live and surrounding documentation is being written, after which it will be submitted to Ledger for review and approval. 

In closing, Phantasma has lived through one bear market already and we have no intention of slowing down. We maintain a healthy treasury to execute our mission and efforts to drive chain development and ecosystem growth while weathering the storm of market volatility. We know that it is still early days in crypto and thus we are looking at growth on a 5-year time-horizon. We fully believe that a bear market is when the best projects are built to thrive, and thrive is what we will do.