No.233
Conflux CFX
the delta beast that runs a thousand currents at once
🎭 high-throughput Layer-1 from China, equal parts research lab and licensed operator
💬 “Most chains make transactions queue up single-file. I split the river instead, so a thousand of you can cross at the same time. And yes, I carry a license, the only one of my kind allowed to flow openly through China.”
- What: a public Layer-1 smart-contract chain whose Tree-Graph design confirms many blocks in parallel for high speed.
- Who & when: founded 2018 by Fan Long, Ming Wu and Yuanjie Zhang; mainnet live October 2020. Consensus co-designed with Turing Award winner Andrew Chi-Chih Yao.
- Claim to fame: the only regulatory-compliant public blockchain in mainland China, nicknamed the 'Chinese Ethereum'.
- Supply: no hard cap. CFX is minted forever, with about 2.8% net new supply a year.
📖 The Story
2018. A team of academics set out to fix the oldest headache in blockchains: the moment you ask a chain to go faster, it tends to lean on fewer, bigger players and quietly gives up some of its decentralization. Fan Long led the work, with Ming Wu and Yuanjie Zhang, and they brought in Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, a Turing Award winner, to help shape the core idea. The tech had been brewing since 2017.
Their answer was the Tree-Graph. A normal chain makes blocks line up one after another, like cars in a single toll lane. Conflux lets blocks branch out and get confirmed in parallel, more like a river splitting across a delta, then it stitches the order back together afterward. The point was speed without handing the keys to a small club.
October 2020. The mainnet went live. To keep things sturdy it runs a hybrid engine: Proof-of-Work for raw security plus Proof-of-Stake for finality and voting.
2023. This was Conflux's loud year. In January it announced an NFT tie-up with Xiaohongshu, the huge Chinese 'Little Red Book' social app. On February 15 it partnered with China Telecom to build blockchain-powered BSIM SIM cards. As Hong Kong opened its doors to everyday crypto traders, attention poured in and CFX rallied hard. Its real distinction underneath the hype: it is marketed as the only public blockchain cleared to operate openly under mainland China's rules, which earned it the 'Chinese Ethereum' nickname.
📊 Stats
These are our editorial ratings, a quick read of the coin's character, not market data.
🧩 How it works
On most chains, blocks form a single line: one block, then the next, then the next. When traffic spikes, that line backs up. Conflux's Tree-Graph lets several blocks form at once and be confirmed together, then a clever rule sorts them into a final order. More lanes means more smart-contract transactions can move side by side.
CFX is the chain's gas token. You spend it on fees, lock it for staking and storage, and use it to vote on changes.
🌗 Light & Shadow
- Genuinely original tech. The Tree-Graph was co-designed with a Turing Award winner, and it aims at real throughput without leaning on a tiny set of validators
- A rare regulatory position: the only public chain cleared to operate openly in mainland China, which opens doors no rival can easily reach there
- Real-world deals to point to, like the 2023 China Telecom BSIM SIM-card partnership and the Xiaohongshu NFT tie-up
- No supply cap. CFX is minted forever at roughly 2.8% net per year, so scarcity works against long-term value (Bitcoin freezes at 21 million; Conflux never stops)
- Its biggest strength is also a leash: being tied to one country's rules means its fortunes ride on China's shifting crypto policy
- The headline speed figures are marketing ballpark, and outside its home region its app ecosystem and global mindshare stay thin next to bigger L1s
🧬 Evolution lineage
Conflux is not a fork or a sibling of any coin. It is an independent Layer-1 built on its own novel Tree-Graph consensus. The 'Chinese Ethereum' label is only a narrative analogy, not a code-level copy of Ethereum.
🧭 Meet other friends
❓ FAQ
- What is Conflux?
- A public Layer-1 blockchain that launched its mainnet in October 2020. Its 'Tree-Graph' consensus lets many blocks be confirmed side by side instead of one long single-file chain, so it can handle a lot of transactions while staying decentralized. CFX is its native coin.
- Why is Conflux called 'Chinese Ethereum'?
- It runs smart contracts and is compatible with Ethereum's tools, so Ethereum apps can move over with little change. It is also the only public blockchain allowed to operate openly under mainland China's rules, which is why the press nicknamed it the 'Chinese Ethereum'. It is its own chain, not a copy of Ethereum's code.
- Does Conflux have a supply limit like Bitcoin?
- No. Bitcoin stops at 21 million coins, but Conflux has no hard cap. New CFX is minted as block rewards and staking rewards, and some is burned through fees, leaving roughly 2.8% net new supply a year. About 5.2 billion CFX were circulating in mid-2026.
- What is CFX used for?
- CFX is the chain's gas token. You spend it to pay transaction fees, lock it up for staking and storage, and use it to vote on governance. It moves a lot in price, so only ever try a small amount. (Information only, not an exchange or investment recommendation.)
⚠️ Not investment advice. All figures are for information only