About

Flow is a layer-1 blockchain built for consumer applications and digital assets, using a Proof of Stake consensus and multi-role architecture. It supports Cadence smart contracts, EVM equivalence, account abstraction, and cross-chain interoperability for scalable, developer-friendly application deployment.

History

In 2020, Flow was launched by Dapper Labs (creators of CryptoKitties), building a new Layer 1 blockchain tailored for consumer-scale applications, with focus on high-throughput and usability. In the same year, the project already secured partnerships with top brands and projects (NBA, NFL, Disney and others) for on-chain collectibles, gaming, sports moments, and digital art. By the end of the year, staking on mainnet was rolled out, and the smooth first epoch reward payout to all participants.

In early 2021, the team focused on community-building events encouraging smart contract experimentation and knowledge sharing around early-stage Cadence, Flow’s smart contract language, features. Their token was quickly listed on notable exchanges such as Kraken, Huobi and OKEx. By June, the team announced the launch of FUSD (Flow USD), the first USD-pegged stablecoin based on the Flow blockchains. By October 2021, the team hosted its first large-scale community event, spotlighting vision and technical progress via keynotes, gaming/entertainment panels, and NFT ecosystem showcases.

In 2022, Flow saw major growth in 2022 with 17.5M accounts (4.9x YoY), 300M transactions (3.5x YoY), and 25M all-time NFT transactions - highest of any chain. In July, the team introduced permissionless smart contract deployments, allowing developers to deploy any contract to the blockchain without a formal code review. Furthermore, Cadence saw multiple releases up to v0.30 which was released by December 2022.

By March 2023, Flow performed a height-coordinated Flow Mainnet upgraded. In June 2023, SEC listed 13 assets as securities, among which was also FLOW. By October 2023, the Flow team introduced a proposal to achieve Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) equivalence on the Flow blockchain.

On Jun. 3, 2024, a Stipulation of Settlement was entered into among Lead Plaintiff Gary Leuis, Named Plaintiff John Austin, and Defendants Dapper Labs, Inc. and Roham Gharegozlou, aiming to resolve claims asserted in a federal securities class action. By August 2024, Circle discontinued support for USDC on the Flow (Cadence) blockchain. In September, Ankr announced the launch of ankrFLOW, a liquid staking token for the Flow network. With ankrFLOW, holders can stake their FLOW tokens to earn staking rewards while maintaining liquidity. On Sep. 26, 2024, Cadence v1.0.0 was released which included several new features and changes, such as attachments, entitlements and safe downcasting, and view functions.

In January 2025, Axelar announced an integration with Flow via the Interchain Amplifier on mainnet. In the same month, Flow-Go v0.37.26 was released, introducing updates to the Flow Virtual Machine (FVM).

February 2025 saw the release of Flow v0.39.0, which introduced a new Protocol State mechanism enabling view-coordinated upgrades across all node roles, supporting backward-incompatible changes beyond the Execution stack. Following a few additional upgrades throughout the year, Flow-Go v0.42.3 was released.

In September, the LayerZero team announced that PYUSD is now available through Stargate Hydra as a permissionless token with the PYUSD0 ticker, which led to USDF to be upgraded to PYSD0.