# Fantom surges 52% following network upgrade

The token of smart contract platform Fantom, FTM, was subject to a 52% price increase leading into Thursday morning following the successful implementation of a new network upgrade.

Dubbed “Go-Opera,” the latest upgrade to Fantom introduces a range of technical changes that, according to a recent explainer by the Fantom Foundation, makes the network faster, more efficient and more reliable.

The upgrade was announced as completed at 5:42 a.m. (UTC+1) on Thursday. It was two hours later before the FTM coin price peaked amid a surge that left it 52% more valuable than the day before.

The coin price climbed from $0.461821 up to $0.705069 in the lead up to and aftermath of Thursday’s upgrade.

Fantom doesn’t use a blockchain in the traditional sense but is instead based upon Directed Acyclic Graph technology. This allows for asynchronous confirmation of transactions, meaning users don’t have to form a single queue for block space like on a typical blockchain.

According to the Fantom Foundation, the Go-Opera upgrade makes Fantom more efficient in processing transactions, cutting confirmation time to 1 second. It also reduces the time it takes for nodes to synchronize to the network to a quarter of what it was previously.

Fantom’s valuation has grown over 4,000% since the start of 2021, as the coin price continued to push to new all-time highs. On Wednesday, the Fantom Foundation received an additional $15-million investment from Hyperchain Capital, marking a 100% increase on the firm’s initial investment.