Fantom (FTM) has been one of the best-performing tokens of 2023, pulling off a series of impressive gains in the last few weeks. Following the market crash in late 2022, FTM began the new year trading as low as $0.2007, representing a 94.19% decline from its all-time high value of $3.46.

However, with the entire crypto market attempting to pull off a recovery, FTM has been one particular token with lots of investor attention, as its price has surged by over 136% since the start of 2023. 

Fantom Records 39% Profit In Seven Days

According to data from CoinMarketCap, Fantom (FTM) gained by 38.77% in the last seven days alone, outperforming major cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum (ETH), Cardano (ADA), Ripple (XRP), and Bitcoin (BTC) itself.

While FTM has been on an upward trend since the first week of the year, its price rally in the last week can be attributed to Fantom’s recent integration with the Axelar Network. On Jan. 24, the Fantom Foundation announced a partnership with Axelar, which will introduce interchain communication to the Fantom Network.

As of the time of writing, FTM is trading at $0.4724, having gone up by 1.98% in the last 24 hours. Based on more data from CoinMarketCap, the daily trading volume of FTM is currently $240.7 million, while its total market cap is $1.312 billion.

FTM trading at $0.4790 | Source: FTMUSD chart of Tradingview.com

What Does Axelar’s Integration Mean For Fantom Users?

According to a blog post by Fantom, “Axelar network is a blockchain that connects blockchains, enabling universal Web 3 interoperability.” Basically, Axelar functions as a medium for communication and transfer of value between several blockchains.

Following the integration with the Axelar network, Fantom automatically becomes part of an ecosystem that consists of over 30 different blockchains capable of seamlessly interacting with one another. 

Using the General Message Passing (GMP) protocol, developers on the Fantom network will be able to easily access smart-contact codes on any chain connected to Axelar. The GMP protocol will also allow dApps and users to send and receive data and function calls across the multiple chains in Axelar’s ecosystem.

Another benefit of Axelar’s integration with Fantom is the introduction of one-click cross-chain swaps on the platform’s biggest decentralized exchange, SpookySwap. Using Squid, an Axelar-based protocol that reroutes liquidity between chains, SpookySwap users will seamlessly swap native tokens of different chains in one click.

In every transaction, the Axelar network will process the cross-chain gas conversions from the source-chain token to the destination-chain token, ensuring that users need not own crypto wallets on multiple chains or hold native tokens of other chains for gas fees,

That said, other chains on the Axelar Network aside from Fantom include Arbitrum, Moonbeam, Polygon, Osmosis, etc.