Forward the Original Title‘解读 Sonic：首个 Solana 上为游戏而生的 L2，引领“一键发链”的游戏盛宴’

The market is presently experiencing stagnation, with a lack of transformative projects to alter the prevailing narrative.

Nevertheless, the Solana ecosystem warrants attention due to its evident user demand, with trading frequency and activity maintaining a stable and consistent level.

As liquidity and attention accumulate, a catalyst is needed to disrupt the stagnant market structure.

Solana’s gaming sector has so far been overshadowed by meme trends, but the potential is immense.

No games on Solana have yet achieved the scale seen in the Ethereum ecosystem. Moreover, with ongoing shifts towards mobile and evolving narratives, the Solana gaming space is ripe for activation to leverage existing liquidity and attention.

As we transition from a “stagnant summer” to a “gaming feast,” the key question is which projects will drive this transformation through technological, ecological, and financial advancements. Sonic, the first Layer2 built for games on Solana and the first modular SVM chain on the platform, is a notable contender.

Sonic introduces the HyperGrid Rollup framework, which combines Solana’s speed with the customizability of game-specific rollups, creating conditions for an explosion in Solana’s gaming ecosystem.

In June, Sonic secured $12 million in funding from Bitkraft, Galaxy, and Big Brain Holding, with its token set to launch in October. The project is also actively pursuing game and partner collaborations to attract more games into the Solana ecosystem.

Additionally, for the more adventurous users, Sonic’s recent node pre-sale adds further intrigue. This article will delve into Sonic, exploring its rationale and examining its product, technology, and ecosystem resources.

Times Make Sonic: Its Contextual Fit

Before diving in, let’s hold off on rushing to conclusions. Whether a project is worth attention hinges on its alignment with current needs and narratives.

Before examining Sonic itself, you might wonder: if Solana is already fast enough, why does it need an L2 solution? And what capabilities does Sonic have to address these needs?

At first glance, this might seem problematic, but a closer look reveals new market opportunities.

For instance, Solana’s second-generation phones received 60,000 orders within three weeks, indicating a significant demand for mobile devices. However, despite having these devices, the ecosystem still lacks games (setting aside whether Web3 games are enjoyable or not—the initial issue is the absence of games).

At present, the leading Web3 games are mainly found on Polygon, BNB, and Ethereum. While Solana is frequently labeled as a retail-focused chain, it’s precisely in the gaming sector—where it could have the most impact on retail users—that development is still lagging.

According to DappRadar, none of the top 25 games by unique active wallets (UAW) are on Solana, nor are any of the top 10 games by market capitalization.

This situation presents a dual perspective: while it highlights the current absence of games, it also signifies a substantial opportunity to fill this gap.

Regarding the need for L2 on Solana, technical, public opinion, and application factors all indicate a demand. Technically, Solana’s main chain (L1) faces foreseeable performance pressures and needs ways to share the load. L2 Rollups are one such option.

With the rapid growth of dAPP and DeFi activities on Solana, daily on-chain transactions exceeded 200 million in January 2024, and analysts conservatively estimate that transaction volume will surpass 4 billion by 2026.

Given this expected pressure, Solana’s TPS ranges from 2,500 to 4,000, and the average ping time of Solana clusters fluctuates between 6 and 80 seconds. When TPS approaches or exceeds 4,000, the success rate of Solana transactions drops to between 70% and 85%.

Moreover, frequent Meme transactions on the chain can impact other applications, and high-frequency interactions in games may also be affected by L1 performance limitations.

In terms of application development, some projects are already exploring Rollup-like designs.

Solana lacks advanced data structures tailored for games, requiring developers to manually implement them within smart contracts, increasing the difficulty of game development on Solana. The absence of caching mechanisms also makes it challenging to handle cross-transaction calls and data account access, further complicating game development.

Non-gaming projects, such as Pyth, which builds application chains on Solana, and Grass, which uses zk-rollups to aggregate high-frequency DePIN data onto L1, are exhibiting L2-like behaviors.

Similarly, for gaming applications, having their own L2 Rollup is advantageous for capturing value, privacy, and achieving real-time settlement.

In public discourse, founders of Solana-related ecosystem projects continuously discuss the need for L2 solutions.

From performance, ecosystem, application, and outreach perspectives, Solana needs a dedicated gaming chain to expand its ecosystem.

From an investment research standpoint, the information suggests that the first to address the needs within the Solana ecosystem will have a higher chance of becoming the next Alpha. This is the essence of Sonic’s alignment with current trends and timing.

HyperGrid: The Secret Weapon for Seamless “One-Click Chain Deployment”

Understanding the necessity, let’s examine how Sonic plans to implement L2.

Sonic’s uniqueness lies in HyperGrid, a horizontal scaling Rollup architecture specifically designed for Solana SVM.

You can think of Sonic’s L2 as built on top of HyperGrid, making it the first concurrent expansion framework for Solana. Furthermore, the name “HyperGrid” implies that it supports multiple independent grids running simultaneously. Each grid can process transactions independently but ultimately relies on Solana’s mainnet for consensus and confirmation.

Benefits of this Design: HyperGrid significantly boosts system scalability and performance.

• Autonomous Operation: Each grid operates independently, handling its transactions, validations, and state changes. This ensures that the operations within one grid do not impact others.
• Mainnet Integration: Although grids operate autonomously, final consensus and confirmation depend on the Solana mainnet. This guarantees data consistency and security across all grids.
• Flexible Expansion: Developers can choose to use public grids or create independent grids for greater performance isolation and control.

Understanding the concept through a metaphor:

Think of HyperGrid as a large shopping mall, with each grid representing an independent store within the mall. Each store (grid) manages its own transactions and customers (application transactions) independently.

The mall’s management (Solana mainnet) oversees the entire facility, ensuring that each store’s transactions and status changes are ultimately confirmed. If a particular store becomes exceptionally busy, it can open new branches (create new independent grids) to maintain smooth operations without affecting other stores.

On the architecture of HyperGrid, HyperGrid consists of several key components:

• Solana Base Layer: Responsible for final consensus and data recording; Receives batch zero-knowledge proofs (Batch ZK proofs) from HyperGrid for settlement and shares state information.
• HyperGrid: A shared ordering network that coordinates and manages multiple grids. Includes multiple validators, each responsible for processing and validating transactions.
• Individual Grids: Each grid operates as an independent application or service (e.g., a game), handling its transactions and state changes.
• Users: Interact with HyperGrid, which processes and handles their transactions. Transactions are processed by HyperGrid’s validators and are ultimately settled and recorded through the Solana base layer.

The Hypergrid architecture alone hasn’t fully realized its potential yet; it needs additional tools to enhance its usability.

First, there’s the EVM interpreter, which allows existing Ethereum-based games to be deployed on Hypergrid with minimal modifications. Hypergrid has also developed a native game engine that includes features like game runtime loops, specific game types, and container and sandbox environments, reducing the barriers to game integration, development, and debugging.

Furthermore, for asset interactions, Hypergrid provides a comprehensive set of payment and settlement infrastructure, including embedded NFT marketplaces, token swaps, bridging, liquidity pools, authentication, and wallet tools.

With Hypergrid and these tools, developers can quickly build a custom Rollup for their games without reinventing the wheel from scratch. They can use existing architectures and toolkits to handle all aspects of Web3 gaming end-to-end.

The benefits for developers will also extend to all stakeholders in the Solana ecosystem. Crypto players will experience improved trading and gaming experiences, perceiving faster transaction speeds without any technical changes. For the Solana ecosystem, custom Rollups will ease the performance pressure on the mainnet, encouraging more Solana games. Each game will bring users and liquidity to in-game assets, which will, in turn, benefit Solana’s base layer.

It’s worth noting that as an L2 solution, Hypergrid incorporates a staking model. Validators in the network must stake SOL to become nodes, which indirectly enhances the value capture of SOL.

In summary, Sonic’s Hypergrid design significantly boosts system scalability and performance while ensuring data consistency and security. It represents a reasonable choice that allows all parties in the Solana ecosystem to benefit and be motivated to participate.

Focus Beyond Technology

While technology is crucial for an L2 infrastructure project that benefits multiple parties, the more critical factor is the ability to build a broad network of partners and expand its business reach.

Therefore, resources, collaboration capabilities, community building, and market entry strategies behind Sonic are of greater importance.

In June of this year, Sonic announced that it raised $12 million in a Series A funding round led by Bitkraft, with participation from Galaxy Interactive, Big Brain Holdings, and others.

The developers behind Sonic, Mirror World, possess significant strength. As early as 2022, Mirror World secured $4 million in seed funding, with participation from major CEXs such as OKX and Bybit. Building on this foundation, the anticipation for Sonic’s token Generation Event (TGE) has further increased.

On the other hand, Sonic and Mirror World maintain close ties with Solana.

Public information indicates that advisors and angel investors for the Sonic project include members from Solana’s APAC growth team, gaming team, and ecosystem technology leadership. This connection undoubtedly adds legitimacy to the project.

The involvement of these official entities also translates into a broader network and resources, facilitating potential collaborations within the Solana ecosystem and paving the way for project development.

Regarding collaboration, Mirror World’s application development platform SDK has been deployed to 50 game clients as initial distribution nodes. This established a strong partnership with existing games, making it easier to migrate these games to Sonic and achieve a successful ecosystem cold start for Sonic.

Currently, over ten on-chain games have been successfully deployed on Sonic’s testnet. This includes the first on-chain casino, Zeebit, in the Solana ecosystem, and Lowlife Forms, a top shooting game officially invested in by Solana.

The Sonic testnet has now reached a significant scale.

According to the official data panel, active wallets on Sonic have surpassed 2 million. With the mainnet launch of Sonic scheduled for September, we can anticipate the introduction of even more games. If a breakout game emerges, these numbers are likely to continue growing.

However, it’s well known that Web3 games will inevitably attract early adopters from within the existing community rather than outsiders. Therefore, revitalizing existing users and injecting initial traffic and attention is even more crucial.

I’ve consistently emphasized that for an infrastructure project, the ability to organize and mobilize resources directly determines its potential. In this regard, Sonic’s advantage is quite evident. Its key strength lies in establishing strong partnerships with non-gaming projects, which provides liquidity, traffic, and security support for the chain.

For example, Backpack, OKX Wallet, Metaplex, Solayer (with over $25 million in SOL staked), Jito, and other exchanges, DeFi, and LST projects are already collaborating with Sonic, collectively supporting this L2 solution.

Beyond partnerships, Sonic is also working to enhance its influence within the community to strengthen brand recognition.

As a global L2, Sonic has recruited ambassadors in various countries and organized community meet-ups in Web3 growth markets like Turkey and Nigeria to boost its presence among users and developers.

Additionally, Sonic is increasing its exposure by participating in key events within the Solana ecosystem, such as hacker houses and breakpoints, and actively sharing insights in both the Solana Chinese and global communities.

In these incremental actions, we ultimately see Sonic as a project backed by multiple VCs, supported by Solana, with global user reach and strong engagement. Its robust resource connectivity and developing ecosystem are also noteworthy.

More importantly, Sonic’s pioneering position as the first L2 solution on Solana focused on gaming adds to its appeal. These factors together create compelling reasons to pay attention to Sonic.

Current Opportunity: HyperFuse Guardian Node NFT Sale

Sonic’s $SONIC token is scheduled for its TGE in October. While direct participation in the token sale is not yet possible, you can familiarize yourself with its economic model and utility and participate in the upcoming node pre-sale.

The $SONIC token is intended for three types of roles: token holders, contributors to the infrastructure, and users and community members.

First, the SONIC token caters to three types of participants: token holders, contributors to development, and users and the community.

• Token Holders: They can exchange $SONIC for $veSonic at a 1:1 ratio. The $veSonic tokens can be used to participate in ecosystem governance voting or be delegated to various validators to earn additional rewards.
• Builders and Contributors: Builders and contributors can engage with the Sonic Partner Innovation Network (SPIN) and the Sonic Accelerator Program to receive ecosystem support. This involvement helps in creating high-quality games, infrastructure tools, or other parts of the ecosystem.
• Users and Community Members: They can interact with ecosystem projects and earn points through Sonic’s activities. These points can be redeemed for tokens or other ecosystem rewards.

So, what opportunities are currently available for users to earn token rewards?

On September 16th, Sonic is launching an event called the HyperFuse Guardian Node Sale (visit here). The sale will offer 50,000 NFTs, which represent the rights to operate nodes within Sonic’s HyperGrid network.

Each NFT represents the operation rights of a Guardian Node, with different levels of NFTs corresponding to varying node weights and reward proportions.

What is the purpose of operating a HyperFuse Guardian Node?

In HyperGrid, Guardian Nodes play a crucial role in maintaining the network’s normal operation. Their main responsibilities include monitoring network transactions and state transitions, detecting anomalies, validating the accuracy of the state submitted to Solana by the HyperGrid Shared State Network (HSSN), and ensuring that all operations within the Grids rollup adhere to security standards.

In simpler terms, these nodes function as “validator nodes.”

It’s worth noting that even if you lack the technical expertise to operate a node, you can still purchase an NFT and delegate it to other operators to participate in the network and earn rewards.

Additionally, the threshold for running a node is quite low, with a minimum requirement of just a web browser to operate a lightweight node.

Therefore, participating in HyperFuse Guardian Node operations not only helps maintain network security but also offers potential economic benefits.

Token Rewards: The project has allocated 10% of its tokens for rewards. Of this, 9% is designated for node operation rewards, and 1% is reserved for network expansion rewards, such as referrals and invitations (specific unlocking rules for different rewards are detailed below).

Sonic has divided the pre-sale of its node NFTs into three phases with specific rules:

• Lottery Phase: September 16, 2024, at 13:00 UTC (lasting for 24 hours)
• Whitelist Sale: September 18, 2024, at 13:00 UTC (lasting for 24 hours)
• Public Sale: Starting September 19, 2024, at 13:00 UTC

The nodes will use a dynamic pricing mechanism, with prices ranging from $155 to $554. Purchases can be made using SOL, USDT, or USDC on the Solana network. Different tiers of NFTs will have varying purchase limits to ensure broad community participation.

It’s worth noting that the initial price for the node NFTs in this sale is relatively low, starting at $155, which is not considered expensive. Moreover, 70% of the nodes are priced below $300.

In terms of tiers, Level 1 nodes (the cheapest) will be sold through a Fair Launch model, making it relatively equitable for most participants. This low price point is likely to attract significant interest, so potential buyers should prepare in advance to participate on September 16.

Level 2 through Level 8 nodes will be available exclusively to whitelist holders, with prices ranging from $166 to $248. Whitelist spots can be obtained through the testnet’s Odyssey events and partner communities.

Known partner communities include prominent Solana ecosystem communities such as MadLads, Solayer, Send, and MonkeDAO, as well as broader crypto communities. For those interested in specific rules, more details can be found here.

From a valuation perspective, the node pre-sale is positive news for both the community and retail investors, as some nodes offer lower costs compared to VC funding rounds.

In the initial 30% of the node sales, the fully diluted valuation (FDV) remains below $100 million, which is lower than the valuation from the previous VC round. This means early participants have the opportunity to enter the project at a relatively favorable price, with potential for appreciation.

The node sale also employs a tiered pricing strategy. Early participants can acquire nodes at lower prices, while prices increase as the sale progresses. This not only rewards early supporters but also provides opportunities for investors with different budgets, helping to expand the community base.

Conclusion

Solana’s Game Summer has not yet arrived, but the path-pavers driving it forward are certainly worth paying attention to.

Sonic’s robust resource connections, targeted product offerings, and ongoing activities provide new avenues for existing liquidity and attention. Whether you’re a seasoned enthusiast, an average player, or a game developer, new, functional projects with strong prospects are likely to become market favorites.

However, how long Sonic can maintain this favor depends on its effective operation and future development. Success isn’t just about being first; it’s also about maintaining continuous momentum. In a constantly evolving market with shifting expectations and demands, iterating and adapting continuously is essential for the long-term survival and success of any Web3 project.

Disclaimer：

1. This article is reprinted from [TechFlow]. Forward the Original Title‘解读 Sonic：首个 Solana 上为游戏而生的 L2，引领“一键发链”的游戏盛宴’. All copyrights belong to the original author [TechFlow]. If there are objections to this reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team, and they will handle it promptly.
2. Liability Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not constitute any investment advice.
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