The MirrorWorld team, which has been building the Solana Web3 game infrastructure, announced this week the launch of Solana Layer2 – Sonic testnet. What is Sonic? Why is Solana, which emphasizes a monolithic architecture, starting to launch Rollups? What impact will it have on the ecosystem?
Table of Contents:
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Solana to Launch Layer2 Network
Sonic Becomes the First SVM Layer2
Sonic Built on the HyperGrid Stack
Sonic Marketing Activities
Why Does Solana Need Rollups?
Official Perspective: Capturing the Value of Gaming Applications
Community Perspective: Compromising the Interests of Projects and Public Chains
Is the Solana Monolithic Architecture Narrative Outdated?
MirrorWorld, the team behind the development of the Solana game infrastructure, announced in the first quarter of this year that it will launch Sonic, a Layer2 network based on Solana. This week, the team announced the official release of the Sonic testnet and related marketing activities.
With the launch of Sonic in the Solana ecosystem, the community has begun to consider the possibilities and necessity of Solana Layer2. Previous network congestion and downtime events have sparked discussions in this regard, leading to the Sonic project.
(Why do recent transactions on Solana often fail and become congested?)
Executing transactions on the Sonic network, similar to Ethereum Layer2, does not require the project team and users to redeploy and configure programs and accounts on Solana. Ecological participants can directly operate based on Solana Layer1 accounts and liquidity.
Unlike the Layer2 in the Ethereum ecosystem, Sonic is the first modular SVM (Solana virtual machine) network, enabling efficient game applications on Solana while enjoying the security of the Solana network. This enhances the gaming experience for players and provides customizable network settings for specific games or applications.
In addition, Sonic also provides native integration tools for payments and settlements, as well as development kits for building Web3 games.
Sonic is the first Grid built using the HyperGrid framework. HyperGrid is an extension mechanism developed by the MirrorWorld team for the Solana blockchain, based on the CosmosSDK framework.
HyperGrid allows developers in the Solana ecosystem to quickly build network frameworks. Similar to the Superchain design in the OP Stack ecosystem, it shares the design of the orderer, enabling efficient interaction between different sub-networks (Grids) while maintaining the autonomy of each network. It is anchored on the Solana mainnet to achieve consensus and finality, ensuring atomic interoperability of transactions.
HyperGrid introduces customizability, scalability, and advanced data types, while being compatible with Solana native components, allowing networks built on it to customize network settings. For example, Sonic chooses to use SVM, while other networks can choose EVM. This provides flexibility for development teams and maximizes the potential market range.
Sonic’s team believes that this HyperGrid design may integrate the fragmented liquidity of EVM game chains together.
Sonic’s credit system and activities have already been launched on the 19th – Sonic Odyssey. Interested readers can participate appropriately.
Activity URL:
https://odyssey.sonic.game/
Solana’s ecosystem has always been known for its high-performance monolithic architecture. Under the official positioning, the community has hardly seen any projects that contradict this concept. However, why are Solana Rollups now emerging?
Why now? And why is it needed?
The Sonic team believes that with the increasing market attention to Solana’s related applications, the number of network users is gradually increasing, often causing network performance issues or congestion. For example, recent mining activities like Ore and the meme coin issuance platform Pump.fun have had a significant impact on the network.
(Recommended reading: What is Ore, the fair mining project on Solana? Why did the founder suddenly call it quits?)
Therefore, in order to improve network performance to meet the operational needs of future games and allow projects that receive market attention to capture more value and customizable space, the motivation to build Sonic arises.
Crypto researcher Jason believes that the main reason is primarily the consideration of self-interest by the projects. Although the founder of Solana has previously stated that Layer2 is not needed, the Solana network still experiences major issues with congestion. Currently, Layer2 is considered the most effective way to scale Solana and have an impact, so Solana has no choice but to develop towards Layer2.
On the other hand, for head projects, the revenue from fuel fees brought by a large number of users and traffic is a big benefit. Why contribute it to the Solana network or other public chains for free? However, they are also concerned that completely detaching themselves from the growing ecosystem will have a negative impact on the project. Therefore, creating a Layer2 is a win-win solution for both parties to meet their needs.
The launch of the Sonic network opens up new development opportunities for Solana.
Some users in the Solana community have always believed that the future development of the Solana ecosystem will focus on a monolithic chain. However, the emergence of Rollups networks like Sonic, or projects like Cambrian or Picasso that provide staking services, shows that Solana is gradually moving towards a multi-layer architecture.
(Recommended reading: EigenLayer for SOL? Staking frenzy reaches Solana ecosystem)
Pyth and MakerDAO, among others, have plans to build their own application chains in the Solana ecosystem. However, their initial concepts were based on the idea of Solana forked sidechains. Now, there is another option with Solana Layer2, and it is expected that the Solana ecosystem will rapidly develop in a diverse manner.
HyperGrid
Layer2
Rollups
Solana
Sonic
SVM