Evaluating Flare Fundamentals

[Seoulite]

I came across this video recently. It’s from a very small YouTube channel so I’m not saying his analysis is great or not, I simply want to reference the numbers he has as a starting point for discussion.

He scores Flare like this:

A couple of thoughts I had:

tokenomics: massive amount being given out? Is 15% massive?

Dev interest: you guys who are technical, how does the dev interest for flare compare to other networks at the same stage?

usage: promising but too early to tell? Seems a bit weird to give this any score at all seeing as the network is not even live.

team: he talks about the team as if they are in control of the network, I think he doesn’t really understand it.

Hype: not a relevant thing in my opinion, this can appear and disappear in a flash. Look at doge.

Edited April 25, 2021 by Seoulite

[Seoulite]

One more thought regarding usage: it seems to me that one of Flare’s strengths is that it doesn’t just rely on normal incentives for usage.

In the past the incentive to hold cryptos was nothing but “this might be used a lot and therefore value in the future”. More recently, people are promised staking rewards.

But Flare says you can benefit from holding this from the very beginning. At the very least this is on par with proof of stake, but it’s better because you can sell at any time, you are not locked into a certain staking period.

[brianwalden]

It looks like he uses a standard template for reviewing ledgers that might not be the best fit now when Flare hasn't launched yet.

I watched the video. He comes from like an investor's perspective. I don't mean someone who buys the coin, but someone who would actually be like a venture capitalist or private investor in a project. Personally, this is a way of looking at things that I'm not very good at so I appreciate his take. Here are my thoughts...

On the protocol. So it's Ethereum's EVM with Avalanche's consensus mechanism and Ripple's philosophy of wanting to connect everything to everything else. That's a promising start, on top of that they put the FTSO right at the center of their network. I think that may not just be a nice feature, but possibly a new innovation. It's not just a price feed, it can be used for any type of data. We'll have to see how it ends up being used, but it could allow for creative things we haven't even thought of before.

On tokenomics. From what I can tell, Flare is designed to reward people for using the network and the more people that use the network the more the price of FLR increases. If Flare becomes popular, the price of FLR is going to blow up BNB-style. He is right that there's a ton of FLR and a huge distribution. After one year they will have 60% of XRP's distribution - that's a ton for a fledgling network.

On dev interest, they seem to be off to a good start. They run the EVM, so any successful dapp should be easy to port over. I think Flare's philosophy of trying to work with other ledgers rather than kill them off is helpful here. I think the way to pitch Flare to other successful projects is that they can operate both on Ethereum (or wherever they are now) and Flare to open themselves up to a new market - they don't have to be a ledger-specific service. But no one really knows if the developers will come until they do.

On hype. I think Flare is big within the Ripple community. I don't think so much outside of it. This isn't like when Ethereum was being developed and everyone in crypto knew about it and talked about it and debated about it. Then again, just yesterday my brother in law who only dabbles in crypto asked me if I had heard of Flare.

[Seoulite]

@brianwalden Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It is an interesting point especially about the distribution, but as with all the other aspects of tokenomics I have confidence in this team that they have carefully considered the implications of having a large distribution early in the life of  network.

The problem with Flare is the same problem they all have: it’s a “build it and they will come” attitude with a hope that they will come. However we are seeing more networks these days that directly incentivize people to come, aside from the simple promise of value appreciation. Flare is doing this in multiple ways and this gives me confidence. Lesser projects get money poured into them, I don’t see why this one wouldn’t, considering the setup and the incentives.