Sonic: The first L2 built for gaming on Solana

Forwarding the original title "Interpreting Sonic: The First L2 Built for Games on Solana, Leading the Game Feast of "One-Click Chain Launch""

The market is sluggish, lacking the phenomenon-level new project to drive narrative turnover.

However, looking back, Solana is still an ecosystem worth paying attention to. User demand is obvious, and transaction frequency and activity have been maintained at a certain level.

When liquidity and attention are both accumulating, there needs to be an opportunity to break the stagnant market structure.

Currently, games on Solana seem to have been overshadowed by Meme's popularity, but the potential is enormous:

First of all, there are still no games that have reached the same scale as the ETH ecosystem. Secondly, in the context of mobile and narrative rotation, the Solana gaming track as a whole is still waiting to be activated to accommodate 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 gaming on Solana, and also the first modular SVM chain on Solana, may be worth paying attention to.

The project proposes a Rollup extension framework called HyperGrid, which combines the speed of Solana and the customizability of game-specific rollups, creating conditions for the explosive growth of the gaming ecosystem on Solana.

In June of this year, Sonic also received a $12 million financing led by Bitkraft, with Galaxy and Big Brain Holding participating. The token is expected to be fully distributed in October. Public information shows that Sonic is also launching game and partner cooperation plans, attempting to incentivize more games to enter the Solana ecosystem;

For users who are more Degen, Sonic has been conducting node pre-sales in recent days, which also adds more reasons worth paying attention to this project.

In this issue, we will delve into Sonic to explore its rationale and conduct research from various aspects such as products, technology, and ecosystem resources.

The 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 requirements and narrative is important.

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

At first glance, stereotypes seem to be all problems. But upon closer inspection, you will discover 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 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 prerequisite is whether there are games).

Currently, the main Web3 games are mostly on Polygon/BNB/ETH. Although Solana is known as the so-called retail chain, the game category 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 either.

It's like the two sides of a coin, you can see the lack of position in the current game, but it also means providing a seat for the game, there is a great opportunity.

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

Technically, Solana's main chain L1 is facing foreseeable performance pressure and needs a way to share it; while L2 Rollup is optional.

As dAPP and Decentralized Finance activities on Solana continue to grow at a faster pace, 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 foreseeable pressure, Solana's TPS fluctuates around 2500-4000, and the average ping time of the Solana cluster fluctuates between 6 seconds and 80 seconds; when the TPS becomes increasingly saturated or even exceeds 4000, the success rate of Solana transactions reaches only 70% to 85%.

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

In terms of application, there are already projects that have started to consider 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 game development on Solana more challenging; at the same time, the lack of caching mechanisms 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 based on Solana, and Grass aggregating high-frequency DePIN data through zk into L1 in a class L2-like manner, are emerging.

For applications (games) as well, obviously they prefer to have their own L2 Rollup, which is more advantageous for capturing the value of their own expenses, privacy, and achieving real-time settlement.

In the public opinion, the founders of Solana-related ecosystem projects are also constantly discussing the need to do L2.

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

From the perspective of investment research, a change in thinking means that: whoever solves the needs in the Solana ecosystem first will have a greater chance of becoming the next Alpha.

This is the coherence and opportunity faced by Sonic.

Hypergrid, the Secret Weapon for Easy '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 its Hypergrid, a horizontally scalable Rollup architecture designed specifically for Solana SVM.

You can think of Sonic as building this trap L2 on top of HyperGrid, which is Solana's first concurrent expansion framework; furthermore, the name HyperGrid implies that it allows multiple independent grids to run simultaneously, with each grid capable of handling transactions independently, but ultimately achieving consensus and confirmation through the Solana mainnet.

The benefit of this design is that it can greatly improve 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 applications within one grid will not affect the operation of other grids.
• Connecting to the Mainnet: Although the grid can run independently, the final consensus and confirmation still depend on the Solana Mainnet. This ensures the consistency and security of all grid data.
• Flexible Expansion: Developers can choose to use the public grid or create a separate grid for higher performance isolation and control based on their needs.

If you still can't understand, a better analogy is the large shopping mall and the independently operated shops.

Imagine HyperGrid as a large shopping mall, where each grid is an independent shop within the mall. Each shop (grid) can operate independently, handling its own transactions and customers (application transactions).

The real estate (Solana mainnet) is responsible for the security and management of the entire marketplace, ensuring that the transaction records and status changes of each store can be finally confirmed. If a store is particularly busy, a new branch can be opened (creating a new independent grid) to ensure the smooth operation of the business 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 from Hypergrid for settlement and shares state information.
• Hypergrid: A shared sorting network responsible for coordinating and managing multiple grids, which also includes multiple validators. Each validator is responsible for processing and validating transactions.
• Different Grids: Each grid can be seen as an independent application or service (e.g. game), dealing with its specific transactions and state changes.
• User: Trading with Hypergrid, Hypergrid is responsible for receiving and processing these transactions. The transactions are processed by Hypergrid's validators and ultimately settled and recorded on the Solana base layer.

Just having the architecture of Hypergrid is not fully effective, it needs to be complemented with some auxiliary tools to make it more user-friendly.

Firstly, the EVM interpreter enables existing Ethereum-based games to be deployed on Hypergrid with minimal modifications; at the same time, Hypergrid has also developed a native game engine trap, which covers game runtime loops, game-specific types and containers, sandbox environments, etc., dropping various thresholds for game integration, 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 markets, token swaps, bridging and liquidity pools, identity verification, and wallet tools.

Therefore, with the above tools, Hypergrid can enable developers to quickly build a customized Rollup for their own game without reinventing the wheel from scratch. By leveraging existing architecture and toolkits, it can handle end-to-end all aspects required for Web3 games.

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 there is no technical change in perception, only a subjective feeling of faster transaction speed. For the entire Solana ecosystem, customized Rollups by applications can also drop the performance pressure on the main network, allowing project parties to introduce more Solana games, each of which will bring users and liquidity to in-game assets, which will also penetrate the underlying layer of Solana.

It is worth mentioning that Hypergrid, as an L2, 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.

Finally, 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 longer to participate with motivation and benefit all parties in the Solana ecosystem.

Focus Beyond Technology

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

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

In June of this year, Sonic announced the [Bitkraft]The lead investment in the A round of financing raised $12 million, with participation from Galaxy Interactive, Big Brain Holdings, etc., (https://www.bitkraft.vc/).

The developer behind Sonic - Mirror World has even stronger strength. As early as 22 years ago, it received a $4 million seed round of financing, 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 listing.

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

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

More official organization contacts also mean a wider network and resources, making it easier to cooperate and pave the way for project development in the Solana ecosystem.

In terms of specific cooperation, the application development platform SDK of Mirror World has been deployed to 50 game clients as initial distribution nodes, and has established a good cooperative relationship 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. This includes the first on-chain casino Zeebit in the Solana ecosystem and the top shooting game Lowlife Forms invested by Solana official.

Meanwhile, the Sonic testnet has begun to take shape.

From the official data panel, it can be seen that the current active wallets on Sonic have exceeded 2 million. With the official launch of Sonic's mainnet in September, we may expect more game introductions. If a phenomenal game is launched, this data is likely to only increase without decreasing.

But everyone knows that the inevitable attraction of Web3 games is not outsiders. It is more important to activate the internal users, inject initial traffic and attention.

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 regard, Sonic's advantage is very obvious, and its key cooperation 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 (with over 25 million US dollars of SOL staked), Jito and other exchanges, Decentralized Finance and LST projects have become partners of Sonic, jointly contributing to the L2 ecosystem.

In addition to the connection with partners, Sonic has been continuously increasing its influence in the community recently to strengthen brand awareness.

As a global L2, Sonic has now recruited ambassadors from 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 been involved in important activities in Solana's hacker house and breakpoint, and whether it is Solana's Chinese community or the global community, Sonic is also actively conducting guest sharing.

In these subtle actions, Sonic is ultimately seen as a project with multiple VC investments, official support from Solana, global user reach and good activity, and strong resource connection capabilities, with a growing ecosystem.

What's more important is Sonic's narrative advantage (the first L2 game on Solana), which should be the reason why you should pay attention to Sonic.

Current available opportunities: HyperFuse Guardian Node Non-fungible Token sale

Currently, Sonic's token $SONIC is scheduled for 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 of all, the SONIC token is aimed at three types of roles, namely token holder, construction contributor, and users and community.

• Token holder: You can exchange $Sonic for $veSonic at a ratio of 1:1, which can be used to participate in ecosystem governance voting or delegate to different validators to receive additional rewards.
• Builders and contributors: Builders and contributors can participate in the Sonic Partner Innovation Network (SPIN) and the Sonic Acceleration Program to obtain ecosystem support, jointly build high-quality games, infrastructure tools, or support the development of other parts of the ecosystem.
• Users and communities: Participate in the interactive experience of ecosystem projects. Through Sonic's activities, users can earn reward points, which can be exchanged for tokens or other ecosystem rewards.

So, what are the spaces that current users can participate in to have the opportunity to receive token rewards?

On September 16th, Sonic is about to launch a sale event called HyerFuse Guardian Node (visit here). And the target of this sale is the 50000 Non-fungible Tokens representing the right to run nodes in Sonic's HyperGrid network.

Each Non-fungible Token represents the operational rights 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 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 that the state submitted by HyperGrid Shared State Network (HSSN) to Solana is correct, and ensuring that all operations in Grids rollup comply with security standards.

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

It is worth noting that even if users do not have the technical ability to operate nodes, they can still buy Non-fungible Tokens and delegate them to other operators to participate in the network and receive rewards.

Moreover, the threshold for running nodes is also very low, with a minimum requirement of just a browser to run a lightweight node.

Therefore, participating in the operation of the 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% for node operation rewards and 1% for network expansion rewards, such as referrals and invitations (unlock rules for different rewards are as follows).

In terms of specific rules, Sonic has divided the pre-sale of this node Non-fungible Token into three phases:

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

And different nodes adopt a dynamic pricing mechanism, with prices ranging from $155 to $554. It supports the purchase using SOL, USDT, or USDC on the Solana network. Different levels of Non-fungible Token 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 very expensive. At the same time, 70% of the nodes are priced below $300.

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

In addition, the 2nd to 8th level nodes 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 activities on the testnet and cooperative communities.

The known cooperative communities currently include MadLads, Solayer, Send, MonkeDAO, and other well-known communities within the Solana ecosystem, as well as the broader crypto community.

For players interested in specific rules, you can check here for more details.

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

In the first 30% of node sales, the fully diluted valuation (FDV) is maintained at less than $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.

Nodes are also priced using a tiered pricing strategy. Early participants can obtain nodes at a lower price, and as the sales process progresses, the node price gradually increases. This not only rewards early supporters, but also provides opportunities for investors with different budgets, which helps to expand the community base.

Conclusion

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

Sonic's strong resource connection, professionally matched products, and active development have provided new outlets for existing liquidity and attention; whether it's professional players, ordinary gamers, or game developers, new, user-friendly, and promising projects will become the darlings of the market.

However, how long can be spoiled depends on Sonic's own good operation and subsequent development --- competing not only in efficiency but also in continuous innovation and iteration according to changing market expectations and demands, which is the survival philosophy for Web3 projects to go further.

Statement:

1. This article is reproduced from DeepTech Flow. The original article is titled 'Decoding Sonic: The first L2 built for gaming on Solana, leading the gaming feast of 'one-click chain launch''. 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.
2. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not constitute any investment advice.
3. The other language versions of the article are translated by the Gate Learn team, and the translated articles may not be copied, disseminated, or plagiarized without mentioning [Gate.io].