When Cryptokitties, a decentralized app on Ethereum, became hugely successful, it rendered the blockchain unusable. Its developers, Dapper Labs, grew frustrated with the scalability issues in Ethereum that it launched its own blockchain in 2020—the Flow playground.
Source: cryptokitties
The Flow playground is a fast, decentralized, and developer-friendly blockchain that is designed to be a foundation for a new generation of games, apps, and other digital assets.
How FLOW Works?
Unlike traditional blockchains, Flow has a multi-node, multi-role architecture. Instead of each node storing the entire state and performing all the work associated with processing every transaction in the chain, Flow pipelines and separates the jobs of the validator node into four different roles: collection, consensus, execution, and verification. This separation of labor lets validator nodes become specialized in their own roles, upping the scalability of the blockchain without sharding.
Source: See credits
Flow also has a native programming language called Cadence. Cadence is an ergonomic, resource-oriented smart contract programming language. The design is specifically for crypto-enabled applications, with a comfortable, ergonomic syntax that is easy to read. Cadence also uses a strong, static type system to minimize runtime errors and allows all methods, interfaces, and transactions to include pre-and post- conditions to enforce expected behavior. The Flow team created a website that teaches developers how to use Cadence and provides open-source tools.
Source: Crypto.com
Developers can also release their decentralized apps in beta. This beta feature enables developers to update the code as problems arise and lets the users test and interact with the apps. However, once developers submit the final version of the code, the app becomes immutable.
The FLOW token also exists. Its the native token of the same blockchain. Its used in apps, games and other network activities. It can be staked just like many other crypto tokens out right now.
Credits: thumbnail & image #1 are courtesy of: https://www.onflow.org/