Sonic: The first L2 built for gaming on Solana

Repost the original title "Interpretation of Sonic: The first L2 born for games on Solana, leading the gaming feast of "One-click Chain Release""

The market is sluggish and lacks phenomenon-level new projects to drive narrative change.

But looking back, Solana is still an ecosystem worth paying attention to. There is a clear demand from users, and the trading frequency and activity have also been maintained at a certain level.

When both liquidity and attention are accumulating, there is a need for an opportunity to break the dull market structure.

Currently, games on Solana seem to have been overshadowed by MEME heat, but the potential is enormous:

First of all, there are still no games that have run out of the ecological volume related to ETH; secondly, in the context of mobile and narrative rotation, the Solana game track as a whole is to be activated to accept existing liquidity and attention.

From 'Dull Summer' to 'Game Feast', which projects will become key drivers in terms of technology, ecosystem, and funding?

Sonic, the first Layer2 built for gaming on Solana, is also the first modular SVM chain on Solana, which may be worth paying attention to.

The project proposes a Rollup extension framework called HyperGrid, which combines Solana's speed and the customizability of game-specific rollups to create conditions for the explosion of the gaming ecosystem on Solana.

In June of this year, Sonic also received a $12 million financing led by Bitkraft, with participation from Galaxy and Big Brain Holding. The token is expected to have its TGE in October. Public information shows that Sonic is also carrying out game and partner cooperation plans, trying to bring more games into the Solana ecosystem through incentives.

For even more Degen users, Sonic has recently started node pre-sales, which gives even more reason to pay attention to this project.

In this issue, we will enter Sonic to discuss its existence and conduct research from the perspectives of products, technology, and ecological resources.

Times make heroes, Sonic's self-consistency and timing

Don't rush yet.

Whether a project is worth paying attention to, the 'self-consistency' in its requirements and narrative is important.

Before you understand Sonic itself, you must be more puzzled: Solana, which is already fast enough, still needs L2? What abilities does Sonic itself have to meet these needs?

At first glance, stereotypes are all about problems. But on closer inspection, you will discover new market opportunities.

For example, Solana's second-generation mobile phone sales received 60,000 orders within 3 weeks, indicating a significant demand for mobile devices in the market. However, while mobile devices are available, there is a lack of games in the ecosystem (leaving aside the question of whether Web3 games are fun, the presence of games is the primary concern):

The main Web3 games at the moment are mainly on Polygon/BNB/ETH. Although Solana is referred to as the so-called retail chain, the game category that is closest to retail investors is actually still underdeveloped.

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.

This is like the two sides of a coin, where you can see both the shortcomings of the current game and the opportunities it offers for improvement.

For another question, whether Solana needs L2, the technology, public opinion, and applications have actually shown demand.

Technically, the Solana main chain L1 faces foreseeable performance pressure and needs a way to share it, while L2 Rollup is optional.

With the faster growth of dApps and Decentralized Finance activities on Solana, the daily on-chain transactions have exceeded 200 million in January 2024, and conservative estimates suggest that the volume will exceed 4 billion transactions in 2026.

Under such 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 increasingly saturated or exceeds 4000, the success rate of Solana transactions only reaches 70% to 85%.

At the same time, when there is frequent Meme trading on the chain, other applications are affected; when the game has high-frequency interactions, it will also be to some extent dragged down by the performance of L1.

In terms of application, there are already projects considering the design of Rollup-like solutions.

Due to the lack of advanced data structures tailored for games in Solana, project developers need to manually implement them in smart contracts, making it more challenging to develop games on Sol; at the same time, the absence of a 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 application chains on Solana, and Grass packaging high-frequency DePIN data using zk rollups and transmitting them to L1, are exhibiting L2-like behavior.

The same goes for applications (games). Obviously, they prefer to have their own L2 Rollup, which is more conducive to capturing the value of their own costs, privacy, and achieving real-time settlement.

And in the public opinion, the founders of Solana-related ecological projects are also constantly discussing the need to do L2.

From the perspectives of performance, ecology, applications, and communication, Solana needs a gaming chain to expand its ecosystem.

Changing the perspective from the perspective of investment research, putting the above information together means: whoever first solves the needs in the Solana ecosystem has a greater chance of becoming the next Alpha.

This is the coherence and opportunity faced by Sonic.

Hypergrid, the secret weapon for easily 'one-click chain launch'

After understanding the necessity, let's take a look at how Sonic plans to do L2.

Sonic's uniqueness lies in Hypergrid, a horizontally scalable Rollup architecture designed specifically for Solana SVM.

You can think of Sonic as a trap L2 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, each grid can handle transactions independently, but ultimately achieves consensus and confirmation through the Solana mainnet.

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 "autonomous system" that can be both autonomous and centralized:

• Independent Operation: Each grid can independently handle its internal transactions, including validation, recording, and state changes. This means that the operation of an application within one grid will not affect the operation of other grids.
• Connecting to the Mainnet: Although the Grid can operate independently, the final consensus and confirmation still rely on the Solana Mainnet. This ensures data consistency and security for all Grids.
• Flexible expansion: Developers can choose to use the public grid as needed 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 independently operated shops.

Think of 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 marketplace, ensuring that transaction records and status changes of each store are ultimately confirmed. If a store is particularly busy, it can open a new branch (create a new independent grid) to ensure smooth operation without affecting other stores.

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 sorting network that is responsible for coordinating and managing multiple grids, and also contains multiple validators. Each validator is responsible for processing and validating transactions.
• Different Grids: Each grid can be viewed as an independent application or service (such as a game), handling its specific transactions and state changes.
• User: Trade with Hypergrid, which is responsible for receiving and processing these transactions. The transactions are processed by Hypergrid's validator and settled and recorded through the Solana underlying layer.

The architecture of Hypergrid alone has not fully exerted its effect, and it needs to be accompanied by some auxiliary tools to make it more user-friendly.

First is the EVM interpreter, which allows existing Ethereum-based games to be deployed on Hypergrid with minimal modifications; at the same time, Hypergrid has also developed a native game engine called trap, which covers game runtime loops, game-specific types and containers, sandbox environments, etc., dropping various barriers to game integration, development, and debugging.

And in the final stage of interacting with assets, Hypergrid also provides a complete set of payment and settlement infrastructure, such as embedded Non-fungible Token market, token swap, bridging and liquidity pools, identity verification, and wallets.

Therefore, with the addition of the above tools, Hypergrid can enable developers to quickly build a customized Rollup specific to their game, without having to reinvent the wheel from scratch. They can utilize existing architecture and toolkits to handle all aspects of Web3 game development end-to-end.

At the same time, the benefits to developers will ultimately spill over to all stakeholders around Solana.

Players can get a better trading and gaming experience with encryption, but they may not perceive any changes technically, just subjectively feel that the transaction speed has become faster. For the entire Solana ecosystem, applications' customized Rollups can also alleviate the pressure on the main network's performance, thus making project parties 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 a staking design. Validators in the network need to stake SOL to become nodes, which indirectly increases the value capture effect of SOL.

In the end, Sonic's Hypergrid design greatly improves the scalability and performance of the system, while ensuring the consistency and security of data; making it a reasonable choice for all parties in the Solana ecosystem to participate in and have motivation to participate in. I believe it is a longer-term and reasonable choice.

Focus Beyond Technology

As an L2 infrastructure project that can benefit longer, technology is certainly important, but more crucial is how many partners can play together and to what extent they can expand their business circles.

Therefore, resources, collaboration capabilities, community building, and market entry strategies behind Sonic are more important.

In June of this year, Sonic announced the Bitkraft Led the Series A financing round, raising $12 million, with participation from Galaxy Interactive, Big Brain Holdings, and others.

The developer behind Sonic---Mirror World has even stronger capabilities. As early as 22 years ago, it received a $4 million seed round of financing, with CEXs such as OKX and Bybit participating in the investment. With the token TGE of Sonic, the expectation of listing has been further increased on the basis of the previous.

On the other hand, Sonic and Mirror World also have close ties to Solana.

Public information shows that the growth team, game team, and ecological technology leader in the Asia-Pacific region of Solana are all consultants and angel investors of the Sonic project, which undoubtedly adds legitimacy to the project.

More official organizational contacts also mean a wider network and resources, making it easier to collaborate within Solana's ecosystem and pave the way for project development.

In terms of the specific presentation of cooperation, the application development platform SDK of Mirror World has been deployed to 50 game clients as initial distribution nodes, and has established good cooperative relationships with existing games, making it easier to migrate existing games to Sonic and complete the ecological cold start of Sonic;

Currently, 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 the top shooting game Lowlife Forms, invested by Solana official, Lowlife Forms.

At the same time, the Sonic testnet has begun to take shape.

According to the official data panel, the number of active wallets on Sonic has exceeded 2 million. With the official launch of Sonic's mainnet in September, we may expect more games to be introduced. If a phenomenal game is released, this data is likely to only increase.

But everyone knows that the Web3 games are actually not attracting outsiders, but how to activate internal users, inject initial traffic and attention is more critical.

I have always emphasized that for an infrastructure project, the ability to organize and mobilize resources directly determines the project's lower limit. In this respect, Sonic's advantage is very obvious, and its key cooperative advantage is the ability to establish good cooperation with other non-gaming projects, providing liquidity, traffic, and security support for this chain.

For example, Backpack, OKX wallet, Metaplex, Solayer (over 25 million SOL staked in it), Jito and other exchanges, Decentralized Finance, and LST projects have become partners of Sonic, working together to inject vitality into this L2.

In addition to partnering connections, Sonic has been continuously enhancing its influence in the community recently to strengthen brand awareness.

As a global L2, Sonic has now recruited ambassadors in various countries and held community meetups in Web3 emerging markets such as Turkey and Nigeria to strengthen the project's position in the minds of users and developers.

At the same time, from the recent actions, Sonic has also accelerated the frequency of exposure. Sonic has a common presence in important events such as Solana's hacker house and breakpoint in its ecosystem; and whether it is the Chinese community or the global community of Solana, Sonic is also actively conducting guest sharing.

In these small actions, we finally see Sonic as a project with multi-VC investment, official support from Solana, global user reach and good activity, and strong resource connection ability, as well as a preliminary scale of ecological development.

What's more important is Sonic's narrative priority (the first L2 for games on Solana), which is why you should pay attention to Sonic.

Current opportunities to participate: HyperFuse Guardian Node Non-fungible Token Sale

Currently, Sonic's token $SONIC plans to conduct 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 activities.

First, the SONIC token is aimed at three types of roles, namely token holder, construction contributor, and user and community.

• Token holder: $Sonic can be exchanged for $veSonic at a 1:1 ratio, which can be used to participate in ecosystem governance voting or delegated to different validators to earn 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 the development of high-quality games, infrastructure tools, or other parts supporting the ecosystem.
• Users and Community: Participate in interactive experiences in the ecosystem projects. Through Sonic's activities, users can earn points rewards, which can be redeemed for tokens or other ecosystem rewards.

So, what spaces are currently available for users to participate in to have the chance to receive token rewards?

On September 16th, Sonic will launch a sale event called HyerFuse Guardian Node (visit here). The target of this sale is 50,000 Non-fungible Tokens representing the right to operate nodes in Sonic's HyperGrid network.

Each Non-fungible Token represents the operating right of a Guardian Node, and Non-fungible Tokens of different levels correspond to different node weights and reward ratios.

First of all, it needs to be clarified, what does running this HyperFuse Guardian node do?

In HyperGrid, Guardian nodes are an important part of maintaining the normal operation of the network. The main responsibilities of these nodes include monitoring network transactions and state transitions, detecting abnormal situations; at the same time, verifying whether the state submitted by the HyperGrid Shared State Network (HSSN) to Solana is correct, and ensuring that all operations in Grids rollup comply with security standards.

You can understand it in layman's terms as the role of a 'verification node'.

It is worth noting that even if users do not have the technical capability to run nodes, they 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 nodes is also very low, with a minimum of only one browser required to run nodes in a lightweight manner.

Therefore, participating in the operation of HyperFuse Guardian Node not only helps maintain network security, but also brings potential economic returns.

Token Rewards: The project has allocated 10% of the tokens for rewards, with 9% allocated for node operation rewards and 1% for network expansion rewards, such as referrals and invitations (unlocking rules for different rewards are as follows).

In specific rules, Sonic has divided the presale of this node's Non-fungible Token into three phases:

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

Different nodes adopt a dynamic pricing mechanism, with prices ranging from $155 to $554. It 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.

It is worth mentioning that the initial price of the NFT sale for this node is relatively low, starting at $155, which is not considered expensive, and 70% of the nodes are priced below $300.

In terms of classification, the sale of 1st level nodes (the cheapest) adopts the Fair Launch mode, which is relatively fair for most players. It is bound to have the highest attractiveness in the case of low price. Interested players can prepare in advance and participate on the 16th.

In addition, levels 2 to 8 nodes are only sold 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 the cooperative community.

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.

Players who are interested in specific rules can check here for more details.

From the perspective of valuation, the node presale is good news for the community and retail investors, as some of these nodes offer lower costs than VC financing.

In the first 30% node sale, the fully diluted valuation (FDV) is maintained below $100 million, lower than the valuation of the previous VC round. 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 the nodes also adopt a layered pricing strategy. Early participants were able to obtain nodes at a lower price, while 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 base.

Conclusion

Solana's Game Summer has not arrived yet, but the pioneers who are driving its arrival are definitely worth paying attention to.

Sonic's strong resource connectivity, professionally targeted products, and event development have provided new destinations for existing liquidity and attention; whether it's professional gamers, ordinary players, or game projects, new, user-friendly, and promising projects will become the market's favorites.

But how long can be spoiled, also depends on Sonic's own good operation and subsequent development --- the stream not only competes, but also competes incessantly, iterating in the ever-changing market expectations and demands, which is the survival philosophy for Web3 projects to go further.

Statement:

1. This article is reproduced from DeepTechFlow, with the original title 'Interpreting Sonic: The First L2 on Solana Built for Gaming, Leading the 'One-Click to Chain' Gaming Feast', the copyright belongs to the original author [Deep TechFlow]. If you have any objections to the reprint, please contact the Gate Learn Team, and the team will handle it as soon as possible according to the relevant process.
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