Fantom developers introduce foundation for Sonic, close $10 million strategic round

The Fantom FTM -6.30% Foundation announced its plans to establish the Sonic Foundation and Sonic Labs ahead of the rollout of its Sonic blockchain.

Associated with this new chain, the Sonic Foundation will manage governance and treasury, while Sonic Labs will focus on the development of decentralized applications across the network.

Still under development, Sonic is designed to be a high-performance blockchain with sub-second finality. It represents the next evolution of the existing Opera network by Fantom.

After its launch, the tokens on the Sonic network will use the ticker $S and will be compatible on a 1:1 basis with Fantom’s existing FTM tokens.

This follows a governance vote that approved the interoperability between the two tokens.

Additionally, the Fantom Foundation closed a strategic funding round of $10 million — led by Hashed — to support the Sonic Foundation. This round included participation from UOB Ventures, Signum Capital, Softbank, Aave Foundation, and several angel investors including Stani Kulechov, Robert Leshner, Michael Egorov, Fernando Martinelli, Tarun Chitra, and Sam Kazemian.

The capital raised will be allocated to support strategic growth and ecosystem development, with a specific focus on enhancing liquidity for blue-chip pools on automated market makers and money markets. This is aimed to attract users from Ethereum and other Layer 2 networks.

“We’re positioned to execute our expansion plans and continue delivering exceptional value to the Sonic community,” stated Michael Kong, CEO of Fantom Foundation.

Sonic will have a native Layer 2 bridge connected to Ethereum, capable of processing a large volume of transactions. The Fantom Foundation had previously stated that in addition to a Layer 1 blockchain, it plans to use Sonic as a shared sequencer, allowing it to simultaneously produce and secure blocks for multiple rollups.

The Fantom Foundation will continue building the new Sonic chain throughout 2024. Opera will continue to operate under the Fantom Foundation for the foreseeable future.