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Why Flow is the best for consumer apps and Web3 development

Flow is the blockchain designed to be the best platform for consumer apps and Web3 as a whole. Built by consumer-facing, onchain app developers to solve the problem of building consumer-facing, onchain apps, Flow supports two powerful programming languages: Cadence and Solidity.

Dieter Shirley, Chief Architect of Flow and co-author of the ERC-721 NFT standard, calls Flow:

A computer that anyone can use, everyone can trust, and no one can shut down

Much of the protocol design is based on lessons learned from building Web3 applications while working at Dapper Labs, particularly CryptoKitties — the first onchain game to reach widespread popularity. The game went viral, then struggled under its own success when it caused so much traffic that the Ethereum network itself was overwhelmed by the load.

The design of Flow was guided by the need to alleviate this burden while creating the best experience possible for both developers and users. The blockchain network of the future must be able to handle millions of users while upholding the key pillars of decentralization:

  1. Verifiability
  2. Predictability/Reliability
  3. Equitable Access for All
  4. Permissionless Composability
  5. Interoperability
  6. Security

Flow solves the blockchain trilemma and represents the next generation of blockchain technology. It's built to enable seamless consumer-scale apps without compromising decentralization or user experience, and is the chosen blockchain network for NBA Top Shot, NFL All Day, Mattel Creations, and Disney Pinnacle.

Flow's dual language architecture​

Flow is unique in supporting two powerful programming languages for smart contract development:

  • Cadence: Flow's native smart contract language, designed specifically for the Flow blockchain.
  • Solidity: The industry-standard language for EVM development, fully supported on Flow.

Understanding Flow's Virtual Machine architecture​

Flow operates with two virtual machines working in harmony:

  • Flow Virtual Machine (FVM): Runs Cadence smart contracts with native Flow features.
  • Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM): Runs Solidity compiled smart contracts with full EVM equivalence.

The beauty of Flow's architecture is the native bridge that allows seamless and cheap communication between these VMs. This means developers can choose the language that best fits their needs while maintaining full interoperability between both environments.

What makes Flow unique​

Flow is a fast, decentralized, and developer-friendly blockchain designed to be the foundation for a new generation of games, apps, and the digital assets that power them. It is based on a unique multi-role architecture and designed to scale without sharding, allowing for massive improvements in speed and throughput while preserving a developer-friendly, ACID-compliant environment.

Flow blockchain core features​

  • Multi-role architecture: The multi-role architecture of Flow allows the network to scale without sharding to serve billions of users without reducing the decentralization of consensus and verification.
  • True, fast finality: For most other networks, it takes minutes, a day, or even a week to reach hard finality — the point at which a transaction cannot be reversed. On Flow, the median time for finality is under 10 seconds, without compromising security.
  • Native VRF: Flow provides onchain randomness at the protocol level. Instead of implementing a complex setup and paying $10+ USD per number, simply call the built-in function.
  • MEV resistance: Flow is designed to ensure equitable access by resisting MEV. Maximum Extractable Value, also know as Miner-Extractable Value (MEV), is a practice common in other blockchains in which the builder of a block can profit at your expense by manipulating where and how your transaction is included.
  • Consumer onboarding: Flow was designed for mainstream consumers, with payment onramps catalyzing a safe and low-friction path from fiat to crypto.
  • Efficient gas costs: The Flow blockchain is extremely efficient, allowing apps to do more computation at lower costs.

Cadence development on Flow​

Cadence is Flow's native smart contract language, offering unique advantages for developers:

  • Native account abstraction: Flow has protocol-native account abstraction. All accounts are smart accounts, supporting scripting, multiple keys, multi-signature transactions, and walletless onboarding with social logins.
  • Gasless transactions: Flow has multiple signing roles for each transaction. Most notably, the payer can be set independently of the authorizer. In other words, having one account sign a transaction and another pay for that transaction is a built-in feature.
  • Security: Smart contracts on Flow are natively written in Cadence, an easier, safer, and more secure programming language for crypto assets and apps. It's the first high-level, resource-oriented programming language.
  • Developer ergonomics: The Flow network is designed to maximize developer productivity. Examples range from upgradeable smart contracts to built-in logging support to the Flow Emulator.

Solidity development on Flow EVM​

Flow EVM provides the best EVM experience available anywhere:

  • Speed, cost, and compatibility: Flow EVM can already run all of your audited Solidity contracts at an average of less than 1 cent per transaction (usually way less!). Unlike L2 solutions, Flow EVM reaches true finality in seconds — not in a week.
  • Bridge from Other EVM networks: You can bridge hundreds of assets from dozens of chains to Flow.
  • VM token bridge: Assets can be bridged between Flow Cadence and Flow EVM easily and atomically with the VM token bridge. Assets can even be bridged and used in a single transaction, allowing full composability between the EVM and Cadence environments.
  • Access to Cadence features: Access Cadence features and contracts from Flow EVM to take advantage of native VRF, higher computation for lower cost, and any asset on Cadence Flow. You can also build cross-vm apps on top of the wagmi/viem/RainbowKit stack, enabling batched transactions and more.
  • EVM equivalence: Flow EVM is truly EVM Equivalent, not just EVM Compatible. It runs exactly the same as EVM mainnet, which means builders won't run into minor variances or endless 'quirks' when they try to integrate. If it works on Ethereum Mainnet, it will work with Flow EVM.

Seamless integration for Ethereum developers​

Flow EVM is designed to work out-of-the-box with the Ethereum toolchain or other clients. Native EVM transactions continue to be supported when using Metamask and other EVM-compatible clients.

EVM-equivalency on Flow works behind-the-scenes by implementing a minimal transaction script in Cadence to integrate Flow features with EVM. This is made possible because EVM transactions are composed and executed within Cadence transactions, enabling novel use-cases and patterns for integration.

Best-in-class user experience​

Flow allows for the creation of app on-boarding experiences that meet every type of user exactly where they are at, from Web3 beginners to ecosystem veterans. This is possible through account linking, which utilizes the account abstraction model on Flow and enables users to immediately use an app without wallet authentication.

With Flow, builders can choose to expand EVM capabilities and transcend limitations using Cadence, which offers a powerful new account model, programmable resources, and hybrid ownership.

Instant cross-VM token transfers​

EVM and Cadence environments both use FLOW as gas for transactions, sharing a singular token supply across both environments. Fungible and non-fungible tokens can also be seamlessly transferred between environments using the native VM token bridge, taking place instantly in a single atomic transaction.

Scalability, performance, and low gas fees​

For sustainable user adoption, apps require the network they build on to be secure, efficient, affordable, and fast. Gas fees are ultra-low cost on the network, but Flow goes a step further allowing for gasless experiences through sponsored transactions.

Flow's state space is extensible to the petabyte scale making it easy to store application data on-chain. This means contracts can maintain a full working dataset — including metadata — together with contract logic.

Flow's transaction throughput peaked to 2M daily transactions during 2023, sustaining a similar average transaction volume as Ethereum. Unlike Ethereum, Flow has always operated well under its maximum throughput ceiling, which is presently scalable to 5X more transactions with further performance optimizations to come when parallel execution is released.

MEV resilience​

The MEV Resilient design on Flow offers DeFi builders improved market efficiency, fairness, trust, and long-term viability for their apps. Since Flow EVM transactions are composed and executed within a Cadence transaction, block production is handled by Flow's multi-role architecture.

This robust MEV resilience is a significant difference from other EVM-compatible networks and results in reasonably priced and predictable gas fees. The impracticality of frontrunning or other attacks improves the user experience by eliminating failed transactions and invisible fees.

Learning paths for developers​

To get a complete picture of how to build on Flow, follow the 👈 sidebar top to bottom. This path will give you the most thorough onboarding experience.

Learn Cadence​

Cadence is a modern smart contract programming language designed to work with Flow. Learning a new language is an investment, but you'll find that Cadence is safer, more explicit, and less dangerous than other blockchain languages. Plus, it unlocks the full power of the Flow protocol!

tip

If you're already comfortable with Solidity, be sure to check out how Cadence works in our Guide for Solidity Developers!

Build with Solidity on Flow EVM​

Not ready to take the plunge and learn Cadence? Try out EVM++ by deploying existing EVM contracts to see that Flow EVM is faster and cheaper than nearly every other EVM solution without compromising on security.

Deploying on Flow EVM also gives your Solidity contracts access to many Flow Cadence features, such as native VRF.

Getting started with app development​

The Getting Started tutorial covers everything you need to know to build a Flow Cadence application:

  • Setting up your local development environment (it's fast and easy!).
  • Deploying and interacting with Flow Cadence contracts.
  • Building a frontend that can interact with smart contracts written by you or other developers.

Core contracts​

The Flow blockchain implements core functionality using its own smart contract language, Cadence. The core functionality is split into a set of contracts, called the core contracts:

  • Fungible Token: The FungibleToken contract implements the Fungible Token Standard. It is the second contract ever deployed on Flow.
  • Flow Token: The FlowToken contract defines the FLOW network token.
  • Flow Fees: The FlowFees contract is where all the collected Flow fees are gathered.
  • Service Account: The FlowServiceAccount contract tracks transaction fees and deployment permissions, and provides convenient methods for Flow Token operations.
  • Staking Table: The FlowIDTableStaking contract is the central table that manages staked nodes, delegation, and rewards.
  • Epoch Contract: The FlowEpoch contract is the state machine that manages Epoch phases and emits service events.

FLOW token​

The FLOW (or $FLOW) token is the native currency for the Flow network. Developers and users can use FLOW to transact on the network. Developers can integrate FLOW directly into their apps for peer-to-peer payments, service charges, or consumer rewards. FLOW can be held, transferred, or transacted peer-to-peer.

  • To understand more about Flow Token Economics and the FLOW token, read the Flow Token Economics guide.
  • FLOW tokens are the native Fungible Token on Flow. To learn more about how to work with them in your applications, review the FLOW article.

Technical background​

Join the community​

Are you interested in launching a project on Flow or partnering with us? Visit our weekly Flow office hours for discussions on project development and other opportunities for collaboration. You can also connect with us in our developers-chat in the Flow Discord.

Further reading and discussions​

Flow Improvement Proposals (FLIPs)​

Those wishing to understand the technical specifics of how Flow EVM works, we recommend reviewing the following improvement proposals:

Build with Flow​

Whether you're building with Cadence or Solidity, porting an existing Solidity dApp or building from scratch, Flow offers a fast, scalable blockchain with low fees and the tooling you already know. As a scalable platform for apps, Flow combines familiar development workflows with performance and UX enhancements you can't get elsewhere.

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