Sophon (SOPH): The first project on the Elastic Chain ecosystem

Sophon was announced to be invested by Binance Labs in October 2024, this is a project in the ecosystem. So what is Sophon? What is outstanding about this project in the Elastic Chain ecosystem?

INSIGHTS

10/29/20245 min read

Learn about Sophon

Sophon is a Layer2 blockchain platform focused on providing users with an application ecosystem imbued with cultural and national identity.

Built on the Ethereum network, Sophon stands out as one of the first platforms to utilize the zkSync team’s Elastic Chain solution. Sophon’s network architecture seamlessly handles high-throughput applications like socialfi and gaming. By invisibly weaving cryptocurrency rails into the platform fabric.

Accordingly, Sophon brings advantages such as fast transaction speed, good security and high scalability to networks using Elastic Chain.

Why Sophon?

At its core, Sophon is built on the belief that the future of on-chain interactions lies not in endless infrastructure development but in providing a seamless, culturally rich ecosystem that is relevant to real users.

Sophon is both a consumer product and a developer tool, bridging the gap between usability and technology.

By streamlining interactions and minimizing barriers, Sophon focuses on ease and simplicity. Allowing users to bypass experience barriers and deliver familiar experiences, like other traditional apps.

What is Sophon network?

Sophon is a ZK validium chain that uses the ZK Stack platform as its core technology.

Validiums serve as a scaling solution that leverages off-chain data availability and computation to increase throughput and reduce transaction costs. Their security is maintained by issuing proofs of validity on Ethereum, ensuring correct state transitions, thus ensuring the overall integrity of the Validium chain.

Unlike zk-rollups that rely on onchain data availability, Validiums opts for an offchain data availability strategy. By striking a unique balance between performance and transparency, Validiums enables new use cases, including the ability to withhold data (allowing for enhanced or complete privacy), while maintaining a completely trustless environment.

Sophon is built on the ZK Stack, a modular framework for building sovereign Ethereum L2s powered by ZK. The goal of the ZK Stack is to power the decentralized internet of things.

Built on the ZKsync codebase, it is a modular open-source framework that gives developers complete control over their chain architecture, including sequencing, data availability, and tokenomics.

ZK Stack Unlocked:

  • Enhanced UX. Native Account Abstraction enables seamless user experiences with just one click, streamlining interactions and improving usability.

  • High Throughput. The efficiency of the ZK Stack built into our architecture allows for processing large transaction volumes, outperforming the performance of similar platforms.

Availability. ZK Stack offers ultra-low cost account options for use cases where cost efficiency is paramount.

Interoperability - Elastic Chain

All ZK Chains, including Sophon, are part of a network called Elastic Chain. This architecture enables atomic interoperability between chains, which is a game-changer for the blockchain ecosystem. Here's why this is important:

  • Unified Liquidity : Assets are shared on the Ethereum Mainnet contract, so transferring funds between chains is very cheap.

  • Atomic Interoperability: Within the same TX, you can send Token A to another chain, swap it with Token B using the liquidity available there, and receive Token B back. All of this is instantaneous.

  • Dapps as Chains: Applications can start as normal DApps and then evolve into independent ZK Chains, choosing their optimal configuration

Sophon Highlights:

  • zkSync Team Backing: As mentioned above, Sophon was one of the first projects to adopt the zkSync Era toolkit. Notably, Sophon’s leadership used to work at Matter Labs — the company behind zkSync Era. This connection has led some to believe that Sophon has strong zkSync backing.

  • EVM Compatible: Although Sophon has not launched its mainnet yet and the testnet ecosystem does not have many projects, with EVM compatibility, developers can easily build dApps on this platform.

  • Inheriting features from zkSync Era: Sophon has almost all the features from zkSync Era, including low transaction fees and high network speed. In addition, Sophon can also apply Account Abstraction technology, unlocking the Paymaster feature that allows users to pay gas fees with many different tokens instead of just ETH.

  • Airdrop Program: According to information from the project team, in addition to purchasing nodes to earn rewards and receive interest, users are encouraged to participate in the airdrop program.

Tokenomics

  • Token Name: Sophon

  • Ticker: SOPH

  • Blockchain: Sophon

  • Token type: Utility, Governance

  • Total supply: Updating…

SOPH Token Allocation Ratio

  • Ecosystem Reserve: 30%

  • Sophon Foundation: 25%

  • Investors: 20%

  • Node Reward: 20%

  • Advisor: 5%

Project Team

It is known that one of the Co-Founders of Sophon is the X account @0xsebastiena. He is also a famous figure in the crypto market when he co-founded the zkSync project. However, except for @0xsebastiena, the other members of Sophon have not been clearly announced.

Investors and partners

Sophon has gone through three rounds of funding with over $70 million in funding. Details are as follows:

  • March 29, 2024: Sophon successfully raised 10 million USD from large investment funds such as The Spartan Group, HTX Ventures, OKX Ventures...

  • 8/5/2024: Sophon launched a Node sale from the crypto community and raised over $60 million. Node sale is a form of selling nodes in the network. This form was previously applied by Xai.

  • 10/3/2024: Binance Labs announces investment in Sophon. However, the amount raised has not been disclosed.

Sophon's strategic partners are all big projects such as Impossible Finance, zkSync, Merit Circle...

HCCVenture Review

Sophon project focuses on preserving traditional core values ​​applied to blockchain technology, which will create a new trend to reach more mainstream users to participate in blockchain.

At the same time, the Sophon project is one of the first projects to use the validiums mechanism and use the Elastic Chain solution of the zkSync team. For projects on zkSync is relatively new and this network has recently become hot with other leading projects, in addition, this is a new and relatively fertile land, worth our attention in the near future.