FTM, the native cryptocurrency of the Fantom project, is up 44% over the last 24 hours. It was trading at $0.5882 at press time.

What Happened: The token previously reached $0.7652 on Feb. 25, gaining 259% in one week.

The current spike seems to follow the news of Fantom’s wallet integration to the Binance exchange. The crypto exchange has also enabled deposits and withdrawals for the cryptocurrency.

Why It Matters:  The FTM momentum's primary reason is its new cross-chain functionality with the Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) blockchain.

While Ethereum is the most used network in the crypto space, transaction costs have reached record highs due to congestion on the network.

This has led to users seeking alternative blockchains with lower fees to facilitate their transactions. Users on the Ethereum network will now be able to transfer their tokens to Fantom and benefit from faster and cheaper transactions.

According to Fantom, these transactions will be confirmed within 1-2 seconds and will cost a fraction of a cent.

The cross-chain bridge between Ethereum and Fantom was enabled by Andre Cronje of Yearn.Finance. This "DeFi architect" has built several features across decentralized platforms in the crypto space.

According to Cronje, the idea behind this functionality was not intended to be positioned as an Ethereum competitor.

Cronje stated on Twitter, “The goal with Fantom from the beginning was simple, it was never meant to be an ETH killer. ETH is winning, ETH just needs some load balancers to help out a bit.”

What Else: Aside from the cross-chain bridge, users on the Fantom network now also have the ability to stake tokens on the network while still accessing their value for use in the crypto ecosystem.

Alameda Research, led by the founder of major cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, has also invested $35 million into the Fantom Foundation.

“This investment will align the incentives between Alameda and Fantom, allowing us to push towards a non-tribalistic cross-chain ecosystem with other platforms such as Solana, while also reducing friction for developers who want to build on multiple ecosystems.”, said Fantom in a blog.

Image: Maxim Hopman via Unsplash