FLOW is the native coin of the Flow blockchain, a network primed for non-fungible tokens (NFTs). It’s the creation of Dapper Labs, a company staffed by several of the developers of the popular Ethereum NFT standard, ERC-721.

FLOW started life in January 2021 at $6.90, then soared to highs of $46.16 on April 5, 2021, just as the crypto market hit its peak for that year. FLOW crashed over the course of the following year, falling to $2.40 by June 2022.

Flow raised $8.5 million in a private token sale in November 2020, plus $24.6 million from selling convertible notes to private investors in August 2019 and August 2020, according to data from Messari. These sales amounted to 33% of the token’s initial supply of 1.25 billion FLOW coins. The founders kept another 38% and will distribute the remaining 29% through rewards and airdrops by 2026.

FLOW is inflationary but capped at 1.349 billion; it increased its supply by 5% its first year until June 2022, when annual issuance fell to 3%. The blockchain issues new FLOW coins when transaction fees aren’t raising enough to pay the validators that confirm transactions on its proof-of-stake blockchain.

Flow is a high-speed, low-cost blockchain that uses multirole architecture. This splits the role of maintaining and securing the chain across four nodes to speed up the blockchain.

FLOW is the platform’s native cryptocurrency. Holders can stake it to earn additional FLOW, use it to pay for transaction fees or pay for storage on the network. Fees on Flow start at 0.001 FLOW.

Flow’s largest project is NBA Top Shot, a licensed digital collectibles platform from the NBA and Dapper Labs. As of June 2022, the project has generated $1 billion in sales since its launch in October 2020, making it the sixth-most popular NFT series of all time, according to data from CryptoSlam.

Flow was created by Dapper Labs, a software company founded in March 2018 by Dieter Shirley, Mack Flavelle and Roham Gharegozlou.

The team originally helped to create the standard for NFTs, ERC-721. Their first project, launched before Dapper Lab’s conception, was a series of collectible cartoon cats called CryptoKitties.

Each of the randomly generated cats contains unique metadata that dictates what they look like. Holders can “breed” them to create new cats that share the metadata of their parents. The project went viral in late 2017. In May 2018, one CryptoKitty sold for $140,000.

However, CryptoKitties were so popular that their smart contracts caused a bottleneck on the Ethereum blockchain. This prompted Dapper Labs to create a new blockchain – one primed for NFTs and microtransactions. They called it Flow.

To build it, Dapper Labs in 2021 raised $305 million in a Series C round led by Coatue and $250 million in a Series D, also led by Coatue. As of June 2022, the company has a total of $607.5 million in funding, according to data from Crunchbase.

Flow started with informal off-chain governance, meaning that the team would build the blockchain by themselves and add decentralization later. Anyone can submit governance proposals to the project’s Github page, although the core developers control the code. On-chain voting is on its roadmap but has not been implemented as of June 2022.

Dapper Labs operates 40 of Flow’s 123 consensus nodes, and the account that controls key governance parameters is controlled by a multisignature wallet split across nine signatories and of which no majority holds the keys.