What impact will the launch of Solanas Layer2 Sonic Testnet have on the ecosystem
The MirrorWorld team, which has been building Solana Web3 game infrastructure, announced this week the launch of Solana Layer2 – Sonic Testnet. What is the Sonic project? Why is Solana, which focuses on a monolithic chain architecture, also 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 HyperGrid Stack
Sonic Marketing Activities
Why Does Solana Need Rollups?
Official Viewpoint: Capturing Gaming Application Value
Community Viewpoint: Compromising the Interests of Projects and Public Chains
Is Solana’s Monolithic Architecture Narrative Outdated?
The MirrorWorld team, which is responsible for building Solana’s 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 officially released 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. In the past, there have been many discussions on this topic due to network congestion and downtime events. This has led to the birth of the Sonic project.
(Why have transactions on Solana recently been failing frequently and 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, which enables efficient game applications on Solana while enjoying the security of the Solana network. This enhances player gaming experience and provides customizable network settings for specific games or applications.
In addition, Sonic provides native integration tools for payment and settlement, 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 and, similar to the Superchain design in the OP Stack ecosystem, share sorter designs, enabling efficient interaction between different subnetworks (Grids) while maintaining the autonomy of each network. It is anchored to 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 natively, based on the design concepts of CosmosSDK. This means that networks built on HyperGrid can have custom network settings, such as Sonic choosing to use SVM, while other networks can choose EVM. This provides flexibility for development teams and maximizes the potential market scope.
Sonic’s team believes that this HyperGrid design may be able to integrate decentralized liquidity of EVM game chains together.
Sonic’s scoring system and activities were launched on the 19th – Sonic Odyssey. Interested readers can participate accordingly.
Activity URL:
https://odyssey.sonic.game/
From the early stages, the Solana ecosystem has been known for its high-performance monolithic architecture. Under the official direction, the community has almost no projects that go against this concept. However, why are Solana Rollups now beginning to emerge?
Why now? And why is it necessary?
The Sonic team believes that with the increasing market attention to Solana-related applications, the number of network users is gradually increasing, often causing network performance issues or congestion. For example, recent mining projects like Ore and meme coin platform Pump.fun have had a significant impact on the network.
Therefore, in order to improve network performance to meet the operational needs of future games and allow high-value projects to capture more value and have customizable space, the motivation to build Sonic emerged.
On the other hand, Jason, a crypto researcher, believes that the main reason is the consideration of the project’s own interests. Although the founder of Solana previously expressed that Layer2 is not needed, network congestion on Solana is still a big problem as network usage increases. Layer2 is currently the most effective way to expand Solana and have an impact. Therefore, Solana has no choice but to move towards Layer2.
For head projects, the revenue generated from having a large number of users and traffic is a significant source of income. Why contribute it to the Solana network or other public chains for free? However, they are also concerned about completely separating themselves from the growing ecosystem, which could have a negative impact on the project. Therefore, creating a Layer2 is a solution that allows both parties to get what they need.
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 be focused on monolithic chains. However, with the emergence of Rollups networks like Sonic, or staking projects like Cambrian or Picasso, various signs indicate that Solana is gradually moving towards a multi-layered architecture.
In fact, projects like Pyth and MakerDAO have plans to build their own application chains in the Solana ecosystem. However, the original concept was based on the idea of a Solana forked sidechain. Now, there may be another option with Solana Layer2, which allows for more experimentation. We look forward to seeing the rapid and diverse development of the Solana ecosystem.
HyperGrid
Layer2
Rollups
Solana
Sonic
SVM
