Written by: NingNing
As the L1 red ocean competition continues to the present, the cartoon picture of the crypto planet released by Paradigm in 2023 has become somewhat outdated. Currently, ETH's monopoly in the block space supply market is strongly challenged by Bitcoin and Solana. A large number of Dapps and Rollups have begun to migrate, or are directly built natively based on Bitcoin and Solana. Generally speaking, due to the different characteristics of the two chains, Rollup will choose Bitcoin as the data availability layer, while Dapp will choose Solana as the infrastructure.
We know that Solana's expansion route has always been to reduce costs and increase efficiency of block space through black technologies such as consensus algorithm innovation and parallel transaction processing, but it does not pay much attention to the expansion plan of Rollup L2. The Solana Foundation even made a short video and posted it on Twitter, mocking Ethereum for suffering from severe "layer addiction syndrome."
However, Solana’s community is a loose community that believes in American-style liberalism, and there is no crypto czar who is keen on inventing new narratives and likes mind control. The Solana community allows everything to happen on Solana. This of course includes Solana L2.
According to incomplete statistics, the existing Solana L2s include: micropayment application GetCode, AI data DePin project Grass, Dex Dappchain Zeta, oracle Pyth, and the protagonist of this article, the atomic SVM chain Sonic.
Frankly speaking, the current industry situation is that Solana does not need L2 to enhance scalability, but L2 requires Solana's SVM parallel processing capabilities, local market and other technical features to improve performance, and needs to rely on Solana's powerful ecological network effects to complete the cold start and subsequent user growth.
However, for current Web3 developers, building a Solana L2 is not like building an Ethereum L2, where there are various SDK tools to choose from, such as OPStack, Polygon CDK, Arbitrum Orbit, ZK Stack, etc. On the contrary, building a Solana L2 requires Web3 developers to learn, understand, and become familiar with Solana's infrastructure and SVM's operating logic from scratch, and then spend a lot of time deploying, running, and testing the code. These make building Solana L2 very uneconomical.
Sonic was created to help web3 developers solve this pain point.
Sonic is the first atomic SVM chain that achieves atomic interoperability with L1 Solana, without requiring users to add new chains to their wallets, set up new RPCs, and manually transfer assets between L1<>L2.
Similar to the relationship between OP L2 and OP Stack, Sonic Chain is the first instance developed based on Sonic's one-click Rollup SDK HyberGrid.
HyberGrid is the core of Sonic. Its architectural design is half a step ahead of Ethereum Rollup SDK and natively supports shared sequencer networks. HyberGrid adopts a multi-Grid (synonymous with Rollup) architecture, each Grid runs semi-autonomously while maintaining an anchor with the Solana mainnet for consensus consistency and final confirmation.
This architectural design has two major advantages:
Horizontal expansion: Assuming that HyperGrid's TX can consume 100% of the throughput on Solana L1 under ideal circumstances, HyperGrid is able to achieve an aggregate TX settlement of 12,000,000 TPS. In theory, HyperGrid can achieve unlimited TX throughput through horizontal expansion of multiple Grids.
Gaming-specific TX framework: Sonic's TX model is designed specifically for gaming needs, enabling high-frequency, low-latency interactions critical to in-game events, player actions, and state updates. HyperGrid will also feature an integrated Verifiable Random Function (VRF) for on-chain randomness and Metaplex’s NFT support, significantly reducing the cost of minting game-generated NFTs. Sonic provides native composable game primitives and extensible data types based on the ECS framework directly on-chain.
The reason why Sonic positions itself as the OP Stack in the Web3 gaming field is that the industry innovation in this cycle did not produce new application layer species with explosive growth like DeFi and NFT in the previous round, but mainly focused on the reconstruction of the protocol construction paradigm and the innovation of the crypto business model.
The reconstruction of the protocol construction paradigm refers to the shift from building protocols with smart contracts to building protocols with Rollups, with examples including Uniswap, AAVE, FRAX, Aevo, Rarible, Immutable, Beam, etc. SDK tools for building Rollups with one click are a market necessity under this trend.
Friend.Tech and Pump.Fun are typical examples of innovation in crypto business models. They are committed to lowering the threshold for tokenization assets and empowering individuals and start-ups with Web3 capabilities.
Such innovation is also happening in the Web3 gaming field. The core of the last round of Web3 game business model was the tokenization of game content (props/characters/coins), while this round of changes is to empower Web3 game developers, providing them with SDK tools for building Web3 game infrastructure layer Rollup with one click, Web3 game distribution channels, and built-in NFT liquidity networks for games.
Sonic does just that. It supports Web3 game developers to build Rollups that are atomically interoperable with Solana L1, leveraging the parallel execution features of its own SVM virtual machine to deliver a lightning-fast gamer experience, and HyperGrid's compiler can seamlessly deploy dApps from the EVM chain to Solana. Sonic also provides native composable game primitives and extensible data types based on the on-chain ECS framework, as well as sandbox utilities for Web3 game developers to build business logic. Not only that, Sonic also provides Web3 game developers with native monetization infrastructure for game growth, traffic, payment, and settlement.
Of course, for the Solana ecosystem, Sonic is not simply playing the annoying role of a vampire. We know that since the well-known large-scale 3A Web3 game Atlas failed, and Stepn moved its focus to the BNB chain, Solana's ecological recovery is missing the puzzle of Web3 games. Sonic may reignite the fire of Web3 games in the Solana ecosystem by empowering Web3 game developers and enhancing their tokenization capabilities. In addition, HyberGrid's shared sequencer network will introduce SOL's staking mechanism to maintain the security and sustainability of the network.
