The market is dull, lacking the driving force of phenomenal new projects to enhance the narrative.
But looking back, Solana is actually still a worthy ecosystem to follow. User demand is evident, and trading frequency and activity have also been maintained at a certain level.
When both liquidity and attention are accumulating, a catalyst is needed to break the stagnant market structure.
Currently, games on Solana seem to have been overshadowed by MEME heat, but the potential is huge:
First of all, there are currently no games that have achieved the same ecological volume as ETH; secondly, in the context of mobile and narrative rotation, the Solana gaming track as a whole is still waiting to be activated, in order to take over existing Liquidity and attention.
From ‘Dull Summer’ to ‘Gaming Feast’, which projects will be the key drivers in terms of technology, ecosystem, and funding?
Sonic, the first Layer2 built for games on Solana, is also the first modular SVM chain on Solana, which might be worth following.
The project proposes a Rollup extension framework called HyperGrid, which combines Solana’s speed and the customizability of game-specific rollups, creating conditions for the explosion of the gaming ecosystem on Solana.
In June this year, Sonic also received a $12 million financing led by Bitkraft, with participation from Galaxy and Big Brain Holding. The Token will be TGE in October, which can be said to have high expectations. Public information shows that Sonic is also carrying out a game and partner cooperation plan, trying to introduce more games into the Solana ecosystem through incentives.
For more Degen users, Sonic has been conducting Node presales in the past few days, adding more reasons to follow this project.
In this issue, we will enter Sonic to explore its rationality and conduct research from the aspects of products, technology, and ecological resources.
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The times create heroes, Sonic’s self-consistency and timing
Don’t rush yet.
Whether a project is worth following, the ‘coherence’ in demand and narrative is very important.
Before understanding Sonic itself, you must be more curious: does Solana, which is already fast enough, need L2? What skills does Sonic itself have to meet these needs?
For stereotypes, it seems to be all problems at first glance. But if you think carefully, you will find new market opportunities.
For example, Solana’s second-generation mobile phone sales received 60,000 orders within three weeks, indicating a significant demand for mobile devices. However, there is a lack of games within the ecosystem for mobile devices (regardless of whether Web3 games are fun or not, having games is a prerequisite issue):
Currently, the main Web3 games are mostly on Polygon/BNB/ETH. Although Solana is referred to as the so-called retail investor chain, the game categories that are closest to retail investors have not yet been developed.
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According to data from DappRadar, none of the TOP25 UAW (Unique Active Wallet) games are on Solana; Similarly, none of the Market Cap TOP10 games are on Solana either.
This is like the two sides of a coin, you can see both the shortcomings of the current game and the opportunities it provides for the game.
For another question, whether Solana needs L2, in fact, in terms of technology, public opinion, and applications, all show the demand.
Technically, Solana mainchainL1 faces foreseeable performance pressure and needs a way to share the load, while L2 Rollup is optional.
As the dAPP and Decentralized Finance activities on Solana grow faster, the daily on-chain transactions in January 2024 have already exceeded 200 million. Some analysts conservatively estimate that the volume will exceed 4 billion transactions in 2026.
Under this predictable pressure, Solana’s TPS is around 2500-4000, and the average ping time of Solana cluster fluctuates between 6 seconds and 80 seconds; when TPS becomes saturated and exceeds 4000, the success rate of Solana transactions is only 70% to 85%.
At the same time, when on-chain MEME transactions are frequent, other applications are affected; and when there is high-frequency interaction in the game, it will also be to some extent dragged down by the performance of L1.
In terms of applications, some projects have already started thinking about Rollup-like designs.
Due to the lack of advanced data structures tailored to games in Solana, project developers need to manually implement their own Smart Contracts, making it more difficult to develop games on Sol; at the same time, the lack of caching mechanism also means that common operations in games such as cross-transaction calls and data account access are difficult to handle, further increasing the difficulty of game development.
Non-gaming projects, such as Pyth building AppChain on Solana, and Grass aggregating high-frequency DePIN data through zk into L1 in a manner similar to L2, are emerging.
The same is true for applications (games). Obviously, they prefer to have their own L2 Rollup, which is more conducive to capturing the value of their own expenses, privacy, and achieving real-time settlement.
And in public opinion, the founders of the Solana ecosystem projects are also constantly discussing the need to do L2.
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From the perspective of performance, ecology, application, and dissemination, Solana needs a gaming chain to expand its ecosystem.
Change the mindset and start from the perspective of investment research. Putting the above information together implies: whoever first solves the needs in the Solana ecosystem will have a better chance of becoming the next Alpha.
This is the coherence and opportunity facing Sonic.
Hypergrid, the secret weapon for easy ‘One-Click Chaining’
After understanding the necessity, let’s take a look at how Sonic plans to do L2.
Sonic’s uniqueness lies in the Hypergrid, a horizontally scalable Rollup architecture designed specifically for Solana SVM.
You can think of Sonic as a trapL2 built on top of HyperGrid, which is Solana’s first concurrent scaling framework; furthermore, the name HyperGrid implies that it allows multiple independent grids to run simultaneously, with each grid being able to process transactions independently, but ultimately achieving consensus and confirmation through the Solana Mainnet.
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The benefit of this design is that it can greatly enhance the scalability and performance of the system.
You can think of it as a “self-governing system” that is both autonomous and centralized:
Independent Operation: Each grid can independently handle its internal transactions, including validation, recording, and state changes. This means that applications within one grid will not affect the operation of other grids.
Connecting to the Mainnet: While the network can operate independently, the final Consensus and validation still depend on the Solana Mainnet. This ensures the consistency and security of all network data.
Flexible Expansion: Developers can choose to use the public grid according to their needs, or create an independent grid for higher performance isolation and control.
If you still can’t understand, a better analogy is a large shopping mall and the independent shops within it.
Imagine HyperGrid as a large shopping mall, with each grid being an independent store in the mall. Each store (grid) can operate independently, handling its own transactions and customers (application transactions).
Real estate (Solana Mainnet) is responsible for the security and management of the entire mall, ensuring that transaction records and status changes for each shop can be finally confirmed. If a shop’s business is particularly busy, a new branch (creating a new independent grid) can be opened to ensure smooth operations without affecting other shops.
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In terms of architecture, Hypergrid is actually composed of the following parts:
Solana Base Layer: Responsible for final Consensus and data recording, this layer receives batch Zero-Knowledge Proofs (Batch ZK proofs) from Hypergrid for Settlement and shares state information.
Hypergrid: A shared sorter network that is responsible for coordinating and managing multiple grids, and also contains multiple validators. Each validator is responsible for processing and verifying transactions.
Different Grids: Each grid can be seen as an independent application or service (such as a game), handling its specific transactions and state changes.
User: Trading with Hypergrid, Hypergrid is responsible for receiving and processing these trades. The transactions are processed by Hypergrid’s validators and ultimately settled and recorded through the Solana base layer.
Just having the architecture of Hypergrid is not enough to fully leverage its potential, it needs to be accompanied by some auxiliary tools to make it more user-friendly.
First, there is the EVM interpreter, which allows existing Ethereum-based games to be deployed on Hypergrid with minimal changes; at the same time, Hypergrid has also developed a native game engine, covering game runtime loop functions, game-specific types and containers, sandbox environments, etc., lowering various barriers to game access, development, and debugging.
In the final stage of interacting with assets, Hypergrid also provides a complete set of payment settlement infrastructure, such as embedded Non-fungible Token market, token swap, bridge, liquidity pool, identity verification and Wallet and other supporting tools.
Therefore, with the above tools, Hypergrid can enable developers to quickly build a customized Rollup for their own game, without having to start from scratch, using existing architecture and toolkits to handle all aspects of Web3 games from end to end.
At the same time, the benefits brought to developers will ultimately spill over to all stakeholders around Solana.
Players can get a better trading and gaming experience with encryption, but technically cannot perceive any changes, just subjectively feel that the transaction speed has become faster. For the entire Solana ecosystem, applications’ customized Rollups can also drop Mainnet performance pressure, thereby enabling the project party to be willing to introduce more Solana games. Each game will bring users and Liquidity to in-game assets, which will also penetrate the underlying layer of Solana.
It is worth mentioning that, as an L2, Hypergrid also adopts the stake design in its system. Validators in the network need to stake SOL to become Nodes, which indirectly increases the value capture effect of SOL.
Ultimately, Sonic’s Hypergrid design greatly enhances the scalability and performance of the system, while ensuring the consistency and security of the data; enabling all parties in the Solana ecosystem to benefit, which I believe is a reasonable choice for longer participation and motivated participation.
Focus beyond technology
As an L2 infrastructure project that can benefit longer, technology is important, but what is more critical is how many partners can play together and to what extent they can expand their business circles.
Therefore, the resources, cooperative ability, community construction, and market entry strategy behind Sonic are more important.
In June of this year, Sonic announced that it had raised $12 million in Series A financing led by Bitkraft, with participation from Galaxy Interactive, Big Brain Holdings, and others.
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And the developer behind Sonic - Mirror World has even stronger capabilities. As early as 22 years ago, it received a seed round financing of 4 million US dollars, with CEX such as OKX and Bybit also participating in the investment. Based on the previous foundation, if Sonic’s Token TGE, it will further increase the expectations of going public.
On the other hand, Sonic and Mirror World have close ties with Solana.
According to public information, the rise team, game team, and ecosystem technology leader of Solana in the Asia-Pacific region are all advisors and angel investors of the Sonic project, which undoubtedly adds legitimacy to the project.
More official organization contacts also mean a broader network and resources, making it easier to collaborate within the Solana ecosystem and pave the way for project development.
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At present, more than 10 on-chain games have been successfully deployed on Sonic’s testnet. These include the first on-chain Casino Zeebit in the Solana ecosystem and Lowlife Forms, a top shooting game invested by Solana official.
Meanwhile, Sonic Testnet has begun to take shape.
From the official data panel, it can be seen that the current active Wallet on Sonic has exceeded 2 million. With the official launch of Sonic’s Mainnet in September, perhaps we can look forward to the introduction of more games, and if a phenomenal game emerges, then this data is likely to only increase without decrease.
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But everyone knows that the inevitable attraction of Web3 games is not outsiders. It is more important to activate the in-circle users, inject initial traffic and attention.
I have always emphasized that for an infrastructure project, the ability to form a consortium and mobilize resources directly determines the lower limit of the project. In this regard, Sonic’s advantage is very obvious. Its key cooperation advantage is to establish good cooperation with other non-gaming projects, providing support for Liquidity, traffic, and security for this chain.
For example, Backpack, OKX wallet, Metaplex, Solayer (with over 25 million USD of SOL stake in it), Jito, and other exchanges, Decentralized Finance, and LST projects have become partners of Sonic, collectively contributing to the L2 ecosystem.
In addition to partnering connections, Sonic has also been continuously increasing its influence within the community to strengthen brand awareness.
As a global L2, Sonic has now recruited ambassadors in various countries and held community meetups in Web3 growth markets such as Turkey and Nigeria, strengthening the project’s position in the minds of users and developers.
From recent actions, it can be seen that Sonic has also accelerated the frequency of exposure. Sonic has co-hosted important events in Solana’s hacker house and breakpoint ecological environment. Sonic is actively conducting guest sharing in Solana’s Chinese and global communities.
In these little actions, what we finally see is that Sonic is a project with multiple VC investments, official support from Solana, global user reach, and good activity, with strong resource connection capabilities and a growing ecosystem.
More importantly, Sonic’s narrative priority (the first L2 game on Solana) adds up to the reasons why you should follow Sonic.
Current Opportunities: HyperFuse Guardian Node Non-fungible Token Sale
Currently, Sonic’s Token $SONIC is scheduled to have its TGE in October. Although it is currently not possible to directly participate in the Token, we can learn about its economic model and utility in advance and participate in the upcoming Node presale event.
First, SONIC Token exists for three types of roles, namely Tokenholder, contributors to construction, and users and communities.
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Tokenholder: You can exchange $Sonic for $veSonic at a 1:1 ratio, which can be used to participate in ecosystem governance voting or delegate to different validators for additional rewards.
Builders and contributors: Builders and contributors can participate in the Sonic Partner Innovation Network (SPIN) and the Sonic Acceleration Program to receive ecosystem support and jointly build high-quality games, infrastructure tools, or support the development of other parts of the ecosystem.
Users and Communities: Participate in interactive experiences in ecosystem projects. Through Sonic’s activities, users can earn points rewards, which can be exchanged for Tokens or other ecosystem rewards.
So, what are the spaces that users can currently participate in to have a chance to win Token rewards?
On September 16th, Sonic will launch an event called HyerFuse Guardian Node Sale (visit here). The target of this sale is 50,000 Non-fungible Tokens representing the right to run Node in Sonic’s HyperGrid network.
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Each Non-fungible Token represents the operational right of a Guardian Node, and different levels of Non-fungible Tokens correspond to different Node weights and reward ratios.
First of all, it is necessary to understand what the HyperFuse Guardian Node is running for?
In HyperGrid, Guardian Node is an important component for maintaining the normal operation of the network. The main responsibilities of these Nodes include monitoring network transactions and state transitions, detecting abnormal situations; verifying whether the states submitted by the HyperGrid Shared State Network (HSSN) to Solana are correct, and ensuring that all operations in Grids rollup comply with security standards.
You can think of it as the role of “verification Node” in layman’s terms.
It is worth noting that even if you do not have the technical ability to operate a Node, users can still purchase Non-fungible Tokens and delegate them to other operators to participate in the network and receive rewards.
At the same time, the threshold for running Node is also very low, with the minimum requirement being just a browser to run Node in a lightweight manner.
Therefore, participating in the HyperFuse Guardian Node operation not only helps maintain network security, but also brings potential economic returns.
Token Reward: The project has allocated 10% of the Token for rewards, with 9% for Node operation rewards and 1% for network expansion rewards, such as referrals and invitations (the unlocking rules for different rewards are as follows).
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In terms of specific rules, Sonic has divided this Node Non-fungible Token presale into three phases:
Lottery phase: September 16, 2024, 13:00 UTC (lasts for 24 hours)
Allowlist Sale: September 18, 2024, 13:00 UTC (lasts for 24 hours)
Public Sale: Starting at 13:00 UTC on September 19, 2024
And different Nodes adopt a dynamic pricing mechanism, with unit prices ranging from $155 to $554. Supports purchasing on the Solana network using SOL, USDT, or USDC. Different levels of Non-fungible Tokens have different purchase limits to ensure broader community participation.
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It is worth mentioning that the initial price of the NodeNFT sale is relatively low, starting at $155, which is not considered very expensive. At the same time, 70% of the Nodes are priced below $300.
In terms of classification, the sale of level 1 Nodes (the cheapest) adopts the Fair Launch mode, which is relatively fair for most players to participate in. It will inevitably be the most attractive at a low price. Interested players can prepare in advance to participate on the 16th.
In addition, Nodes from level 2 to level 8 are only available for sale to white list holders, with prices ranging from $166 to $248. White list holders can obtain them through the Odyssey activity on the test network and through cooperative communities.
The currently known cooperative communities include MadLads, Solayer, Send, MonkeDAO, and other well-known communities in the Solana ecosystem, as well as the broader crypto community.
For players interested in specific rules, you can check here for more details.
From a valuation perspective, the Node presale is good news for the community and retail investor, as some Nodes offer lower costs than VC rounds.
In the first 30% of Node sales, the Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV) remained below $100 million, lower than the valuation of the previous round of VC. This means that early participants have the opportunity to enter the project at a relatively favorable price and gain potential appreciation.
It can be seen that Node has also adopted a layered pricing strategy. Early participants were able to obtain Node at a lower price, and as the sales process progressed, the Node price gradually increased. This not only rewards early supporters, but also provides investment opportunities for investors with different budgets, which is conducive to expanding the community foundation.
Conclusion
The Game Summer of Solana has not yet arrived, but the pioneers who are driving its arrival are definitely worth following.
Sonic’s strong resource connectivity, professionally targeted products, and active development have provided new outlets for existing Liquidity and attention; whether it’s professional players, casual gamers, or game project parties, new, user-friendly, and promising projects will become darlings of the market.
But how long can it be pampered depends on Sonic’s own good operation and subsequent development— The water not only competes first, but also competes endlessly. Iterating itself in the ever-changing market expectations and demands is the survival philosophy for Web3 projects to go further.
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