What is Flow?

Flow is a layer-1 blockchain developed by Dapper Labs — the team behind CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot — and designed specifically for consumer-scale NFT applications and games. Rather than sharding the state or relying on layer-2 rollups, Flow introduces a multi-role architecture that splits validation work into four specialized node types (Collection, Consensus, Execution, Verification), allowing each node to specialize without holding the full transaction load. The Cadence smart contract language, developed by Dapper Labs exclusively for Flow, uses a resource-oriented programming model intended to make NFT ownership semantics safer and more explicit than Solidity's approach.

Flow's architecture was a direct response to the lessons learned from CryptoKitties congesting Ethereum in late 2017. By separating transaction ordering (Consensus nodes), execution (Execution nodes), result verification (Verification nodes), and data availability (Collection nodes) into distinct roles, Flow avoids the bottleneck of every validator processing every transaction — achieving higher throughput without the security fragmentation of sharding or the trust assumptions of rollups. NBA Top Shot, which processed billions of dollars in officially licensed NBA highlight NFT sales, demonstrated that Flow can handle consumer-scale demand with account abstraction features that hide wallet complexity from mainstream users.

Flow's persistent challenge is ecosystemconcentration and developer adoption outside Dapper Labs' own properties. NBA Top Shot remains by far the most significant application on Flow, and Dapper Labs' own financial difficulties — the company underwent significant layoffs in 2022 and 2023 and restructured after losses on Dapper's own balance sheet — cast uncertainty over the foundation's continued development investment. Cadence, while technically innovative, requires learning a non-EVM language with a small existing developer base compared to Solidity. A migration path to EVM compatibility (Flow EVM) was introduced to lower the barrier for Ethereum developers, though this somewhat dilutes Cadence's distinctiveness as a differentiator.

Reviewed by the 2Bitcoins Editorial Team · Updated June 2026. Not financial advice.