What Is Fuse
Introduction
Fuse is an enterprise-grade, use-case agnostic, reliable, and secure decentralized EVM-compatible public blockchain. Gas fees average around $0.001, while transaction speeds are below 5 seconds. Transaction finality is at 4 Blocks and an estimated ~20 seconds.
Fuse is designed for entrepreneurs and organizations that want to experiment, launch and scale Web3 apps and integrate crypto payments. Anyone can build on the Fuse Blockchain and leverage enterprise-ready, decentralized tech - be it existing crypto projects, start-ups, or blue-chip companies.
Whether building gaming, social, or Web3 payment focussed products, Fuse is designed from the bottom up as a decentralized blockchain infrastructure and built to power the future of Web3.
The Fuse SDK lets companies plug Web3 services and crypto payments into their existing mobile products with business-ready smart contract wallets, eliminating the complexities of Web3.
Over 100 decentralized service providers power the Fuse ecosystem, from Token Bridges and DEXs to NFT marketplaces, fiat on-ramps, and DID identifiers. This gives project teams and startups all the tooling required to build and scale dApps on an EVM-compatible blockchain.
History of Fuse
Fuse started with the launch of the Fuse Network blockchain in 2019 when few people believed Layer-1 chains other than Ethereum could be seriously viable.
Over the three and a half years that followed, the platform went a long way. It saw the switch from a Proof-of-Authority (POA) to a Delegated Proof-of-Stake (POS) Consensus with open validation, the launch of the native FUSE token and delegated staking, and the emergence of a diverse community of users and token holders.
Meanwhile, the platform processed more than 120 million transactions, with users creating more than 1.3 million accounts (unique public addresses).
A vibrant ecosystem has also grown on Fuse, including decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, NFT marketplaces, oracles, wallets, on-ramps, digital UBI, and many others.
From very early on, the Fuse team also started developing and experimenting with an open-source infrastructure aimed at helping businesses, organizations, and communities plug Web3 components into their products and activities.
Initially, the Fuse Studio environment was geared toward the no-code issuance of tokens and creating environments (payment communities) around them. The Fuse core wallet served as a gateway for onboarding users.
The experience of working with teams behind those initiatives has taught us that to be attractive and relevant for real-world businesses, the web3 payment infrastructure should be refocused from simple, no-code launch and on-boarding to the development of mainstream developer-friendly APIs and SDKs and a customizable, forkable front-end.
This approach enabled the launch of promising real-world-focused projects, including Bitazza's Freedom Wallet platform and the Peepl project that gave rise to YourGaff, The Guide, and Vegi.
Recently, Fuse infrastructure has been consolidated under the developer-focused Charge service, an API-first platform that lets developers easily integrate Web3 solutions into their products/services.
The main rationale is to make the interaction with the infrastructure more straightforward and frictionless for non-crypto-native developers used to working with APIs under the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.
However, although the consolidation of the B2B infrastructure under the Charge umbrella has made it even easier for businesses to start implementing Web3 payments on Fuse Network, we also realized that on its own, the centralized Charge platform could not provide the whole scalable and robust infrastructure required for seamless mass business and consumer adoption.
Whitepaper
That is why we have published a new whitepaper announcing the upcoming transition of the platform to Fuse V2.
Fuse Token
The network’s utility token is the Fuse Token (FUSE) - an ERC-20 token. It can be used as a medium of exchange, as payment to the Fuse Network to approve transactions, or to participate in the network’s staking mechanism.
- Transaction fees: Being the native currency on the Fuse Network blockchain, users must pay fees in FUSE to approve transactions.
- Validation: Token holders can stake FUSE to become a validator. The minimal staking requirement is 100K FUSE. While the network is continuously growing, currently, there are 60+ validators.
- Voting: Validators vote on protocol changes with their staked FUSE and with the tokens delegated to them by stakers. This means validators with higher amounts of Fuse staked can have a more significant vote on network upgrades and governance changes.
- Staking (for delegators): Any FUSE holder can choose one or more validators to delegate any amount they wish. They receive a share of the Fuse block rewards proportionate to the share of their stake in the total stake, minus the minimum 15% fee paid to the validator(s).
- Payments: As FUSE is the native currency on Fuse Network, sending it does not require interactions with smart contracts. Thus, FUSE transfers are potentially faster and less costly regarding transaction fees.
IMPORTANT: Merely possessing any amount of FUSE tokens does not grant holders any rights to participate in the governance of the Fuse Network platform or any revenue streams related to its real-world performance.
Tokenomics
With each new block created every 5 seconds on Fuse Network, the validator who creates it and the delegators who staked with them receive the block rewards in newly issued FUSE tokens. This is designed to secure the network's consensus mechanism.
The reward amount per block is set so that the FUSE total supply increases by 5% yearly.
The main reason for choosing an inflationary model at the early development stage was to ensure certain predictability of the flow of revenue for network validators and delegators.
If they had to rely exclusively on transaction fees as the reward for staking FUSE and validating, it would be harder to predict their future returns, as transaction activity on the network can fluctuate.
The relative predictability of validator revenue is an essential assumption behind the blockchain consensus theory on which the Fuse consensus mechanism is based.
Having substantial block rewards also makes it possible to keep transaction fees on the network low, facilitating the adoption of Fuse. New tokenomics for the FUSE token described in the Fuse V2 section.
FUSE on Other Chains
One way to ensure the growth of Fuse and its prospects is by enabling additional versions (wrappers) of FUSE on other chains.
Unlike FUSE on Fuse Network, those wrappers are ERC20 tokens created whenever someone locks a certain number of tokens on the Fuse and gets issued the same amount of wrapper tokens on the target blockchain. If a user withdraws the wrapper from the target blockchain, the tokens are burned, and the FUSE tokens on Fuse are unlocked.
Currently, wrapped versions of the FUSE token exist on Ethereum (mainnet), Binance Smart Chain, and the Arbitrum One layer-2 optimistic rollup chain for Ethereum. The latter is a wrapper of a wrapper powered by the Ethereum-Arbitrum bridge, and its withdrawals from Arbitrum are subject to the optimistic rollup rules.
| Network | Fuse Contract |
|---|---|
| Ethereum | Etherscan |
| Polygon | Polygonscan |
| BNB Chain | BSCscan |
| Arbitrum One | Arbiscan |
Where to buy Fuse Token?
FUSE is available on several centralized (CEX) and decentralized DEX exchanges.
| CEX | DEX |
|---|---|
| Gate.io | Uniswap V3 FUSE/ETH Ethereum |
| Huobi Global | PancakeSwap V3 (BSC) |
| MEXC Global | VoltageDEX |
| AscendEX | Sushiswap (Ethereum) |
More information about FUSE trading volumes and prices on various exchanges can be found on the FUSE token CoinMarketCap page.
Yield Farming Fuse Token
Currently, the project team occasionally uses the FUSE token to power liquidity rewards (yield farming) programs to boost liquidity on DEXes and participation in the Fuse Lending Network.
The ongoing liquidity rewards programs on DEXes can be discovered here.
Other ways of getting FUSE
From time to time, the Fuse team uses FUSE to reward community members for various forms of participation and community engagement. Following Fuse's social channels is the best way to stay up-to-date about these opportunities.